Open Regionalism: Cultural Diplomacy and Popular Culture in Europe and Asia.

The cumulative impact of globalization and internationalization in Europe and Asia is profound. This chapter develops its argument in several steps. Sections 1 and 2 highlight, respectively, the significance of regionalism and regionalization and of globalization and internationalization. Sections 3 and 4 illustrate the different ways that globalization, internationalization and regionalization combine to create a world of open regions. They do so by investigating cultural affairs, an issue that illustrates with particular clarity the confluence of international and global factors. Section 3 analyzes cultural diplomacy, like national security, a central prerogative of the state. Internationalization theory expects persistent national differences, illustrated here by the different approaches that the Japanese and German state have taken in this policy domain. Section 4 looks at popular culture, like finance, a preferred domain for processes that are escaping state control. Globalization theory expects convergence across nations and regions. Taken together, both sections make two claims. First, different combinations of global and international effects create open regionalism in both Europe and Asia. Second, the international and global processes that create openness are not sufficiently powerful to wash away enduring regional differences that set Asia apart from Europe. Section 5 identifies these differences. In Asia the politically defining institution is the market, typically operating along ethnic or national lines. Identity capitalism is thus the characteristic practice of Asian regionalism. Europe’s defining institution is law with its primarily regulatory effects on policies and behavior. Formal political institutions are the most typical regional practice of European regionalism. The paper’s final section 6 contrasts briefly today’s open regionalism in cultural affairs with the historical experience of closed regionalism of the 1930s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]