Sovereignty and Status in East Asian International Relations

By Seo-Hyun Park
Associate Professor of Government and Law

Seo-Hyun Park provides a theoretical and empirical analysis of a key concept in East Asian security debates, sovereign autonomy, and how it reproduces hierarchy in the regional order. By using a combination of the comparative case study and conceptual history methods, Park examines the sources of the durability of hierarchical orders. The central argument presented in the book is that international hierarchy serves as a frame of reference for contests of political legitimacy in non-dominant states. It is through such domestic legitimacy politics that hierarchical orders endure beyond the coercive capabilities of the dominant power. The condition of international hierarchy, Park contends, is a powerful worldview and socio-political context that has continued to shape and constrain the rhetorical possibilities of legitimacy-seeking leaders in Japan and Korea. The book’s case studies describe moments of important shifts in Japan-U.S. and South Korea-U.S. alliance relations but also identify a deeper pattern of continuity in foreign policy debates in the region. By doing so, the book provides a more complex and nuanced picture of the origins and development of enduring ideational structures in East Asian international relations.

Cambridge University Press, 2017