75development of Asian regionalization, and regionalization of higher education
research in Asia are presented and followed by the discussion and conclusion sec-
tions of this chapter.
Regionalism and Asian Regionalism Research
Given that this chapter is focused on regionalization of higher education in Asia and the
developments of its research, it is necessary to address the basic understanding of
regionalism, its related concepts and issues. Furthermore, there remains the need to
incorporate the power dimension and dynamics to understand the evolution of region-
alism studies and subsequently the regionalization of higher education research in
Asia.
The distinction between regionalism, regionalization, regional integration, and
regions falls in their being an ideology, a process, a condition, and a result of the
regionalization process, respectively. Regional integration is the condition that the
regionalization process aims to achieve to establish a real region, which is mini-
mally defined as “a limited number of states linked together by geographic relation-
ship and by a degree of mutual interdependence.” Regions are actually social
constructs constructed by its actors’ interests and their subjective understandings
and form part of the international system and are usually constructed by intergov-
ernmental collaborations between two or more states and differentiated in terms of
social, economic, political, and organizational cohesiveness^2 (Ravenhill 2001 , 2010 ;
Hettne and Soderbaum 2000 ; Hettne 2005 ; Chao 2014b). Regionalism has been
recently defined as “an outcome of the integration processes usually involving the
coalition of social forces: markets, private trade investment flows, policies and deci-
sions of organizations and state led initiatives” (Robertson 2008 ) expanding its
original focus on government initiatives to include other social actors.
In fact, Lombaerde and Soderbaum ( 2013 ) four-volume edited publication on
regionalism broke down regionalism’s development into classical regional integra-
tion (1945–1970), revisions of classical regional integration (1970–1990), new
regionalism (1990–2000), and comparative regionalism (2000–2010). Shifting from
their initial focus on economic and security regionalisms, Asian regionalism
research has increasingly focused on political regionalism which includes a focus
on regional community building and regional governance as shown in the list of
selected publications and edited volumes presented in Appendices 1 and 2, respec-
tively. Even though its focus has changed from time to time, regionalism has actu-
ally evolved from classical (old) regionalism to new regionalism and subsequently
increased its focus on comparing regions and regional integration developments.
Contemporary developments, such as the economic and security developments and
the increased momentum on Asian integration and community building in the early
(^2) This definition is based on supranational regions which are different from subnational regions.
5 Regionalism, Regionalization of Higher Education, and Higher Education Research...