Economic Integration And Regionalism In Northeast Asia: A Neofunctionalist Perspective

The thesis is an attempt to explore the relationship between economic integration in Northeast Asia and its future regionalism. Applying the neofunctionalist approach of the integration theory to a trilateral China-Japan-Korea Free Trade Agreement, it is a comparative analysis to answer a set of questions centered on "how" the regional integration of NEA differs from that of Europe and "what" the lessons are for Northeast Asia under the theoretical framework of neofunctionalism. The part of Introduction presents the structure of the thesis, and also examines the different academic arguments on regional integration in general, and Europe and Northeast Asia in specific. Part 1 tries to clear some of the clouds around the theoretical approaches and the boundary the thesis draws, including the comparability of the European model and the boundary of Northeast Asia in this thesis. The theoretical basis of neofunctionalism is laid in Part 2. Part 3 is devoted to a comparative description of Northeast Asian regional integration. In Part 4 the focus is on the feasibility of a trilateral CJK FTA. Part 5 goes into detail on the facilitators and bottlenecks in building such a FTA as an initiation of Northeast Asian regionalism.