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Palgrave Macmillan

Social Emergence in International Relations

Institutional Dynamics in East Asia

  • Book
  • © 2016

Overview

Authors:
  1. Maren Wagner

    1. GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies, Hamburg, Germany

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  • Introduces the concept of emergence to International Relations, thus providing a novel theoretical contribution that opens up new areas of enquiry
  • Presents a critical realist approach to institutional developments in East Asia
  • Stimulates the academic debate on how we can obtain a broader and more comprehensive picture of the dynamics of world politics
  • Speaks to academic specialists, practitioners and professionals in the field of International Relations

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Table of contents (7 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xi
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  4. Back Matter

    Pages 287-294
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Keywords

About this book

This book presents a conceptualization of social emergence in international relations as a novel angle to analyse institutional dynamics in East Asia, introducing the concept of emergence from a critical realist perspective. The author examines East Asia’s characteristic mesh work of regional institutions that affect integrative processes and regional policies, exploring how such institutions emerge and acquire their own nature and why this pattern persists over time, an unresolved and contested subject in the field of International Relations. This book suggests that regional institutions are emergent entities of the international system that arise as forms of self-organization by states to achieve certain emergent properties and powers. The author’s approach sheds light on the particular emergent properties and powers of regional institutions and identifies discourse as a key mechanism of social emergence. Besides engaging in relevant questions of the philosophy of science and its methodological implications for studying social emergence in world politics, the book also analyses the concrete case of two East Asian regional institutions: ASEAN Plus Three and the East Asia Summit. This book will engage scholars and postgraduate students of Asian Studies and International Relations.

Reviews

“This beautifully written and important new book breaks new ground by applying critical realism in a substantive and innovative way to explain regional dynamics and institution building in East Asia. Not only is this one of the best accounts of emergence I have read but the book also demonstrates how institutional development in East Asia goes beyond micro-level processes related to individual actors and is dependent upon emergent, and relatively enduring, mechanisms that shape the region in particular ways. Wagner has not only written a book that is empirically rich but one that is also theoretically sophisticated. This is a must read for all students and scholars of East Asian institutional development but also anyone interested inthe broader dynamics of emergent processes of world politics.” (Professor Colin Wight, Chair of Department of Government and International Relations, University of Sydney)

“Maren Wagner’s critical-realist take on the emergence and dynamics of regional institutions in post-cold war East Asia is an excellent and very persuasive example of how a social-ontological approach can bring agency back into the analysis of world politics in wonderfully refreshing ways. This book is a must-read for all students of IR theory and East Asia affairs.” (See Seng Tan, Professor of International Relations, Nanyang Technological University)

Authors and Affiliations

  • GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies, Hamburg, Germany

    Maren Wagner

About the author

Maren Wagner is a Research Fellow at the German Institute of Global and Area Studies (GIGA) and is Coordinator of GIGA's Doctoral Programme. She completed her PhD in political science at the University of Hamburg, Germany, and worked as an Assistant Lecturer at the University of Kiel, Germany.

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Social Emergence in International Relations

  • Book Subtitle: Institutional Dynamics in East Asia

  • Authors: Maren Wagner

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-33551-3

  • Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham

  • eBook Packages: Political Science and International Studies, Political Science and International Studies (R0)

  • Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-319-33550-6Published: 12 October 2016

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-3-319-81544-2Published: 16 June 2018

  • eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-33551-3Published: 03 October 2016

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XI, 294

  • Number of Illustrations: 1 b/w illustrations

  • Topics: Asian Politics, Regionalism

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