Political science has developed extensive specialized bodies of literature in many fields to build theory and explain the phenomena important to their various areas. Unfortunately, scholars often miss out on valuable opportunities to talk to each other to share theories and insights that provide better and broader analysis. Contesting International Society in East Asia is an excellent work that seeks to bridge two areas by applying the theory of the English School to the study of East Asia. Barry Buzan and Yongjin Zhang have gathered an impressive list of East Asia specialists to analyze the links between these two fields.

The English School theory is centered on the development of an international society with states converging toward shared norms, rules, and institutions helping to bring order to states and global interactions. While the English School typically focuses on global-level analysis, this volume seeks to determine the degree to which East Asia is converging toward Western-international society or developing its own unique regional version. The conclusion of Buzan and Zhang is that East Asia is a highly contested space developing its own norms, institutions, and processes distinct from the West but also converging with Western-global international society, producing a struggle over which path will dominate. Thus, as Buzan and Zhang maintain, within East Asia “there is no agreement on membership, on legitimate behavior or on how much East Asia should differentiate itself from Western-global international society” (p. 28). The book succeeds in its goal of providing a careful and critical assessment of how the English School can inform and improve analysis of East Asia while also helping to sharpen the analysis of English School concepts as applied to regional contexts.

The first three chapters lay the groundwork by providing an extensive review of the English School and the overall framework of the study. The two subsequent chapters by Feng Zhang and Shogo Suzuki address important historical background with a focus on China, Japan, the impact of colonialism, and the imposition of European international society that brought an end to the Sino-centric system and prevented a distinct regional order. Yet both authors maintain there was more occurring here to build a distinct regional society than is often recognized.

In Chapters 4 through 6, the book examines contemporary East Asia international society by looking at culture, economics, and ideology. David Kang addresses the cultural dimension asking if there is a separate, culturally distinct East Asia and what difference it makes? Kang concludes that East Asian states have largely accepted international norms but that they exist alongside competing regional values. Mark Beeson and Shaun Breslin follow in Chapter 5 with an examination of economic development, particularly the concept of the developmental state that helps to distinguish East Asia from international norms. While participation in the international economy has pushed the region to adopt global economic norms, institutions, and processes, there are also indications, particularly through China’s rise, that indicate further convergence toward international society is not a certainty. Moreover, despite economic integration, there are numerous, geopolitical differences that could pull the region apart.

In Chapter 6, Alice Ba addresses the connections of political ideology and regional international society. The chapter complements Beeson and Breslin by focusing on the statist economic model, but instead as an example of regional ideological convergence that creates a unique construct grounded in economic and political values that subscribe to Western international society but run parallel to those values. While recognizing the tensions between various states, Ba believes that this common political/economic ideology and the success it has brought may help to mitigate future conflict.

After three chapters that examine internal factors, the next three look at broader regional dimensions including regional geopolitical order, great power management, and regional institutions. These chapters by Yuen Foong Khong, Evelyn Goh, and Rosemary Foot respectively provide an important contrast to the previous chapters in their focus of analysis but reach essentially the same conclusion. East Asia is a mix of distinct norms, institutions, and processes struggling to craft its own regional identity in the face power politics, U.S. hegemony, and a lack of inter-state trust while also converging toward Western-international society. Consequently, according to Goh, while smaller Southeast Asian states have been able to play a larger role than expected, regional order is closely tied to while also mirroring the global order that is dominated by the United States. Moreover, crafting a distinctly East Asian regional society will require leadership from the chief regional powers of China and Japan, a result that is difficult to envision given their competitive postures.

Finally, in the concluding chapter, Buzan and Zhang do very well integrating the findings of the preceding chapters to draw conclusions and tie the analysis together. Indeed, one of the strengths of the work is the editors’ effort to integrate the individual chapters. The book concludes with an assessment of the four characteristics of regional international societies: unique from the Western-global core; different from other regional international societies; internally homogenous and integrated; and its placement on a pluralist to solidarist continuum. In the end, Buzan and Zhang conclude that “there is no coherent way of differentiating East Asia from the Western-global core” (p. 212) and with the exception of the statist economic development model, it is difficult to distinguish East Asia from other regional societies. East Asia displays low levels of internal homogeneity though integration is occurring in economics among others. The book concludes with a concise review of the lessons for the primary audiences the book seeks to engage—the English School, East Asian specialists, and comparative regionalists.

Edited volumes are often a collection of conference papers that individually are solid scholarship but do not provide a coherent treatment of the intended topic. There are usually few links between the chapters and little analysis that ties them together. This book is not one of them. The editors and authors have produced an exceptionally coherent work and maintained the themes put forth at the start. The book is an illuminating application of the English School to the region and provides another tool to better understand the complexity of a diverse and multifaceted East Asia making an important contribution in both fields.

One of the questions raised at the outset would have benefited from more attention throughout the book, namely, how distinctive is East Asia from other regions? For example, many chapters discuss the interconnection between regional and international factors - is this unique to East Asia and if so, how? In the age of globalization in economics, culture, politics, and communication, it is likely that many of these factors are similar for other regions. The last chapter draws out some analysis in this regard but more would have been helpful, especially since comparative regionalists were one of the target audiences. Despite this minor quibble, the book achieved its goal of providing cross-discipline analysis that will appeal to a variety of audiences not only for its substance but also as a model for the application of analytical frameworks to different areas of study.