Asian nations are no longer "rising" powers in the world order; they have risen. How will they conduct themselves in world politics? How will they deploy their considerable and growing power individually and collectively? These questions are critical for global governance. Conventional wisdom claims that, lacking in institutions that accumulate and coordinate the massive economic and growing military strength of Asian nations, the Asian region will continue to punch below its weight in world politics; thin and patchy institutionalization results in political weakness. In Asian Designs, Saadia M. Pekkanen and her collaborators question and provide evidence on these core assumptions of Western scholarship. The book advances a new framework for debate and sophisticated examinations of institutional arrangements for several major issue areas in the world order—security, trade, environment, and public health.Contributors
Vinod K. Aggarwal, University of California at Berkeley
C. Randall Henning, American University
Keisuke Iida, University of Tokyo
Purnendra Jain, University of Adelaide
David Kang, University of Southern California
Saori N. Katada, University of Southern California
Min Gyo Koo, Seoul National University
Kerstin Lukner, University of Duisburg-Essen
Takamichi Tam Mito, Kwansei Gakuin University
James Clay Moltz, Naval Postgraduate School
Saadia M. Pekkanen, University of Washington
Kim DoHyang Reimann, Georgia State University
Kellee S. Tsai, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Ming Wan, George Mason University

Asian nations are no longer "rising" powers in the world order; they have risen. How will they conduct themselves in world politics? How will they deploy their considerable and growing power individually and collectively? These questions are critical for global governance. Conventional wisdom claims that, lacking in institutions that accumulate and coordinate the massive economic and growing military strength of Asian nations, the Asian region will continue to punch below its weight in world politics; thin and patchy institutionalization results in political weakness. In Asian Designs, Saadia M. Pekkanen and her collaborators question and provide evidence on these core assumptions of Western scholarship. The book advances a new framework for debate and sophisticated examinations of institutional arrangements for several major issue areas in the world order—security, trade, environment, and public health.

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I am impressed by Asian Designs and would highly recommend it to scholars and students of Asian regionalism. Well written, the entire collection moves along smoothly and comes to an articulate and satisfying conclusion, with informed suggestions for future research. Instead of offering a reiteration of existing knowledge, it offers new insights and evidence into explaining current forms of Asian governance and makes valuable steps toward understanding and predicting future governing forms.