C:/ITOOLS/WMS/CUP-NEW/5112649/WORKINGFOLDER/BUZZ/9781107077478C06.3D 119 [119–143] 21.6.2014 6:25PM 6 Outside-in and inside-out: political ideology, the English School and East Asia Alice D. Ba Introduction This chapter considers the relationship between ‘political ideology’ and regional international society in East Asia. The assigned task, however, is challenging on at least three fronts. Theoretically, it is challenged by the English School’s historical, even characteristic, neglect of the domestic in favour of the ‘international’. Normatively, as the original questions posed for this chapter illustrate, 1 it is challenged by an underlying liberal bias and preoccupation with regime type where the key distinction between states is whether states are democracies or non-democracies. That bias is cer- tainly not limited to the English School (ES); it is reflective of most international relations (IR) theories that draw their cultural, institutional and political references primarily from European trajectories of state development and international relations. Nevertheless, the bias introdu- ces preconceptions that can obscure other features of the East Asian system, as well as more relevant categorizations. Lastly, this chapter’s task is challenged empirically by the diversity of states that constitute East Asia. The effort to draw generalized conclusions about East Asia may be especially complicated by the varied nature of regional relations in Northeast and Southeast Asian subregions. On the one hand, Southeast Asia’s cultural profile ‘is the most difficult to generalize because it does not possess that sense of perceived historical, cultural, or geographic continuity and unity’ found in Northeast Asia (Yengoyan 2009). On the other, the evolution of intra-Southeast Asian relations, especially since the creation of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in 1967, 1 The original questions offered as the premise of this chapter were: ‘How important is the division between democracies and non-democracies in the region, and does it explain the limits of regional international society in East Asia? Does regime security count as a distinctive institution of regional international society in East Asia among the non- democracies? Does the generally non-liberal nature of society and politics in East Asia restrict the development of civil society, both within states and within the region, giving a greater emphasis to the inter-state domain, and less to the non-state domains in East Asian international society? Is there an East Asian identity of any sort at the elite or mass level?’ 119 Alice D. Ba (2014) “Outside-In and Inside-Out: Political Ideology, the English School, and East Asia” in Contesting International Society in East Asia, edited by Barry Buzan and Yongjin Zhang (Cambridge University Press). http://www.cambridge.org/cl/academic/subjects/politics-international-relations/international- relations-and-international-organisations/contesting-international-society-east-asia