East Asia And Mainstream International Relations Theories: Reasons For Incompatibility

When we observe the current stability in the East Asian region, the main point of interest is to explain the reason"why"for this conjuncture. In the field of International Relations, mainstream theories have a series of explanations designed to deliver such task. However, how applicable are those theories to the referred area?This study uses the geographical scope of East Asia with a special focus on Northeast Asia as the basis for a general analysis of the mainstream International Relations theories and its limitations when it comes to giving pertinent explanations for the current regional stability. Thus, this research contrasts the fundamental elements of each of the main IR schools of thought, that is, realism, liberalism and constructivism, with the evolving of events in East Asia.It is, then, indispensable to explore the causes for such insufficiency. Hence, four main reasons are brought up in order to explain the incompatibility between East Asia and the mainstream International Relations theories: (1) the fact that the field of International Relations mainly developed as a result of the Western experience, (2) the role of history in shaping theory-building, (3) intellectual domination and (4) the dilemma between area studies and political science.The conclusion of this study shows that the interaction of the four exposed conditionalities acted to eliminate possibilities of dialectic that are supposed to be present in the construction of knowledge between the West and the other regions of the world. It, thus, emphasizes that the process of theory-building in International Relations needs to be reconsidered for it neglects basic conditionalities affecting the descriptions, predictions and prescriptions propagated by International Relations theorists.