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The purpose of this paper is to examine how political/authoritarian regionalism affects foreign direct investment (FDI) in sub-national states in South Korea.

This paper employs statistical analysis to examine the relationship between regionalism and FDI, along with historical description of regionalism in South Korea.

The analyses suggest that not only authoritarian regionalism influence foreign investment to the region but also political regionalism matters. Sub-national states with higher authoritarian regionalism receive less foreign investment while sub-national states with high political regionalism, which imply political stability, receive more FDI than others.

The paper examined how local politics influence foreign investments in South Korea, and suggests stronger decentralization will positively influence FDI in the future.

If regionalism is defined as designing responsibly in reaction to a local context, then critical regionalism can be defined as doing so without denying the universally enlightening content of the modernist project. Armed with this definition, this article attempts to analyze two houses by architect Han Tümertekin that are set in a rural context in a very small Aegean village in Turkey. The aim of the paper is to explore the extent to which these two buildings embrace the tenets of critical regionalism and to understand the local relevance as well as international esteem of the buildings.

Proclaims that political aspirations often favour small units, economic advantages conversely, lie with fewer, larger entities. States, if given sufficient powers, the provincial level of authority is likely to prove the most successful and could polarise powerful new forces from the mass media. Posits, further, planning strategies can function effectively only at such a level with greater flexibility for change than is possible in a network of smaller units. Documents that regionalism is a widespread and growing force at many levels, having a variety of manifestations. Recommends that compromise must be of the essence for any accommodation of the phenomenon, but an administrative device alone has never been enough.

Since the financial crisis, East Asian countries have worked on bilateral/regional Free Trade Agreements (FTAs). Currently, East Asian countries are working on over 30 FTAs. So far, the United States (U.S.) has exerted its considerable political and economic power in East Asia, but its political and diplomatic position is increasingly shaky for many reasons-emergence of China’s economic and military strength, growing regionalism in East Asia, weakening influence of the Asia Pacific Economic Conference (APEC) forum, and growing anti-American sentiment after the anti-terrorism war. The U.S. will be even more concerned about the development of FTAs in East Asia, since the country will suffer economic and non-economic losses when the East Asian regionalism is developed. This article evaluates a U.S.-Korea FTA in terms of U.S. involvement in East Asian regionalism, and tries to provide an economic assessment of the FTA. This article points out that the U.S. should take advantage of the U.S.-Korea FTA to secure its interests in East Asia and to avoid exclusion from East Asian regional economic integration.

This paper analyses the current and potential impact of Southeast Asia’s regionalism on the European Union. It begins by giving an overview of the different manifestations that this regionalism takes (ASEAN and AFTA, sub‐regional economic zones, APEC) and comments on the overlapping linkages between them. The EU’s stake in Southeast Asia is then discussed in the context of broadening the EU’s interregional relations with East Asia. A detailed evaluation of the opportunities and threats that regionalist developments in Southeast Asia pose to the EU is presented thereafter. It is argued that the balance of effects will vary less for “insider” EU firms, which have established operations within ASEAN, and more for “outsider” EU firms. The potential benefits the former anticipate from Southeast Asian regionalism are considerable.

The purpose of this paper is to examine key challenges to effective regionalism for Indonesian higher education (HE), including charting its international engagement in regional HE networks and associations, and links to China and the Islamic world.

Based on empirical and documentary analysis, the article examines key challenges to effective regionalism for Indonesian HE.

As a leading stakeholder within ASEAN, Indonesia could be expected to play a major role in such regional networks as ASEAN Universities Network (AUN) as well as APRU, SEAMEO RIHED, and the like. Yet, even relative to some of its regional neighbours, (Singapore, Malaysia, and the somewhat anomalous Australia and New Zealand), the Indonesian HE system is peripheral, with a relatively minor presence in the international knowledge system.

The world's most populous Muslim‐majority nation, and a rising regional power, including within ASEAN, nonetheless Indonesia confronts key challenges in its HE system, both national and international. The rising demand for HE cannot be filled by public sector HEIs alone, while the proliferation of private sector HEIs, some unaccredited, poses significant issues for quality control and governance. Adding to this are external challenges, including the monitoring of international programmes and partnerships. Financing of HE is a further significant constraint, while corruption is also a major influence in Indonesian society, including in HE (thus further raising the governance stakes).

The two examples cited – of Islamic higher education, and of China‐Indonesia relations – each demonstrate the extent, and the limits, of regionalism in Indonesian HE.

Building a large trading bloc tends to produce substantial economic gains, while minimizing economic losses from overlapping FTAs. East Asia has tried to generate the impetus for promoting region-wide trading blocs, but most of those blocs have been overlapped and multilayered. This paper reviews the evolution of East Asian regionalism from the APEC FTA under the 1994 Bogor Goal to recent RCEP promoted in 2013. This paper underlines that the continued expansion of multilayered trading blocs in East Asia works as a serious obstacle to regional economic integration, rather than exploring the realization of a region-wide trading bloc.

The purpose of this paper is to examine regional voting patterns in South Korea using the results from six presidential elections since the 1990s.

A χ² test was used to determine the municipalities where a regional voting pattern emerged, and λ correlation coefficients were calculated to examine changes in the regional voting patterns.

The analyses lead to three key findings. First, voting patterns differ in Yeongnam and Honam: regional voting in Yeongnam is getting weaker, it remains strong in Honam. Second, the tendency to vote along regional lines decreased significantly in the election in which the Honam party fielded a candidate with a Yeongnam appeared identity. Third, regional voting patterns declined but then stabilized at a constant level, regardless of the candidates’ local identity, which was confirmed in “Bu-Ul-Gyeong.”

This paper can empirically verify the manifestation of regional voting pattern and confirm the trend. It is possible to derive a condition for suppressing the regional voting pattern.

The major economies of East Asia, namely Japan and the Four Asian Tigers, have always prioritized the WTO-led multilateral trade liberalization over other trade arrangements primarily due to their unique economic structure with a high dependency on the world’s major markets such as the US. Along the same line, even the huge blow from the Asian Financial Crisis in 1997 only managed to trigger a few initiatives to aide East Asian regional integration while being led by different centering bodies, APEC and ASEAN. These dispersed efforts naturally resulted in no realistically significant achievements in the light of ‘integration’ until the present day. Under these circumstances, East Asia now faces a second opportunity to achieve its economic independence from the extra-regional influences via regionalization: the 2009 Global Credit Crunch. This paper hereupon critically reviews the actual progress and the likely impacts of the current global recession on the East Asian region.

Advocates of the role of city‐regions in economic development seek lessons from other countries to boost the case. But processes of lesson learning raise many challenges and the purpose of this paper, therefore, is to argue that it is necessary to shift from descriptive comparison to a better understanding and explanation of what works where.

The approach taken in the paper is to review recent debates about the design of comparative studies and suggests a range of comparative questions.

The paper draws on insights from the ESRC Research Seminar and other papers in this issue and helps clarify some of the issues that may be involved in developing a better comparative understanding of the emergence and impacts of new “experimental”, time‐limited regional institutions.

The paper argues for more rigorous comparative research.

Questions are raised about current lesson learning concerning the governance of city regions.

The paper contributes to new debates about the potential of comparative study.