Rethinking regionalism: Europe and East Asia in comparative historical perspective Mark Beeson ABSTRACT Regionally based processes of political and economic integration, security co-operation, and even social identification have become increasingly important and prominent parts of the international system. Nowhere have such processes gone further than in Western Europe. Somewhat surprisingly, similar patterns of regional integration have been steadily developing in East Asia – a region many observers consider unlikely to replicate the European experience. This paper uses an historically grounded comparative approach to examine the historical preconditions that underpinned the formation of the European Union, and then contrasts them with the situation in East Asia today. While the overall geopolitical and specific national contexts are very different, such an analysis highlights surprising similarities and differences, particularly in the role played by the United States in both periods. A comparative analysis allows us to understand and rethink the incentives for, and constraints on, regional integra- tive processes. KEY WORDS ASEAN13; East Asia; European Union; hegemony; regionalism; United States; Western Europe. One of the most widely noted and counter-intuitive features of the contempor- ary ‘global’ era is that it has a distinctly regional flavour. While the recognition of the importance of regional processes is important and welcome, analyses have tended to focus on intra-regional economic and political integration. Less atten- tion has been paid to the larger historical and geopolitical contexts within which regional processes occur. There are even fewer considerations of comparative regionalism, especially with an explicit historical dimension. At a time when regional processes remain an important component of the international order this is a significant lacuna. It is the central contention of this paper that such an historically informed comparative analysis not only throws a revealing com- parative light on the dynamics that underpin regional processes, but it also high- lights another crucial, but oddly neglected variable in regional phenomena: the role of the dominant or hegemonic power of the era. RJPP127045 Techset Composition Ltd, Salisbury, U.K. 8/16/2005 Journal of European Public Policy ISSN 1350-1763 print; 1466-4429 online # 2005 Taylor & Francis http:==www.tandf.co.uk=journals DOI: 10.1080=13501760500270620 Journal of European Public Policy 12:6 December 2005: 969 – 985