Lecture Abstract:

Questions of regional order typically focus on questions of structure and form. The preoccupation with balances of power or institutional membership has been especially indicative of that focus. In contrast, less attention is generally paid to the substantive content of regional order – for example, the security logics that drive particular security practices or integrative trends. Yet, such logics are important as they define how regional actors relate to one another. They have also experienced important changes and flux – changes that have bearing for both ASEAN and its individual member states. Such flux has been given particular salience by recent proactive US and Chinese initiatives on the economic and institutional front, though how exactly and the extent to which these initiatives will change or redirect the content and logics of regional order remain outstanding questions.

About the Speaker:

Alice D. Ba is Associate Professor of Political Science & International Relations at the University of Delaware. Her research focuses on the politics and processes of regionalism in East Asia and the Asia Pacific, especially ASEAN; Southeast Asia’s relations with major powers; and comparative questions of cooperative regime building and institutional change. The author of (Re)Negotiating East and Southeast Asia:  Region, Regionalism, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Stanford 2009), her edited volume (with Cheng-Chwee Kuik and Sueo Sudo), Institutionalizing East Asia: Mapping and Reconfiguring Regional Cooperation is forthcoming in early 2016. Current projects investigate East Asia’s mixed security logics, China’s relationship to East Asian integration, and Japan’s contributions to safety and security regimes in the Malacca Strait.  She is at RSIS as a Visiting Fellow under the Fulbright Specialist Program.