Global Multi-level Governance: European and East Asian Leadership

César de Prado

Global Multi-level Governance: European and East Asian Leadership
César de Prado

ISBN 92-808-1139-8
ISBN 13: 978-92-808-1139-1
260 pages; paper; US$34.00
May 2007

This timely and insightful book underscores the growing prospect of sustaining peace and prosperity through dynamic, multi-level governance in which individual states better engage in both global processes and institutions via broad and hyperlinked regional and interregional regimes.

Since the end of the Cold War, European and East Asian states have been actively enhancing a series of unique trans-boundary structures and agreements. The European Union is but the core of a fluid model of peaceful supranational cooperation, and countries in Southeast and Northeast Asia are gradually developing the ASEAN+3 process into a flexible East Asian community. Through new bilateral, multilateral and especially interregional relationships, both Europe and East Asia are now helping to transform other regions and the global community.

De Prado’s clear vision rests on his unique theoretical framework highlighting how energetic actors sustain political, advisory, economic and social multi-level governance. He provides four detailed cases that examine governments advancing agendas through formal institutions and flexible processes, track-2 think-tanks and networks linking governments with private actors, economic innovators connecting through info-communication technologies, and human resources learning in upgraded education systems.

The author concludes that the continuing convergence of European and East Asian political, economic and social agendas should spur the United States and other powers and regions to better engage in global multi-level governance, and reinvigorate multilateral regimes like the United Nations.

"The author presents to us an excellent contribution to our understanding of the complex development towards global multi-level governance. His very well researched case studies focus on the regional integration in the European Union and in South-East/East Asia, the interlinkages between them and their potential to effect global change. Particularly interesting, because much less studied until now, are the chapter on the "advisory factors" that are stimulating and facilitating the regionalisation process as well as the chapter on the efforts in both regions to promote a more knowledgeable civil society through changes in higher education systems. The book ends with a visionary outlook on further developments towards a better, knowledge-based multi-level world. Indeed very impressive."
—Horst Günter Krenzler, Professor at Munich University Law Institute and former Director General for External Relations at the European Commission

"Dr César de Prado has written an impressive book on the growing engagement between Asia and Europe. He argues convincingly that this could motivate the US, the indispensable superpower, and other stakeholders in the international system, to join hands in offering our diminished multilateral institutions a much needed injection of dynamism, leadership and new directions."
—Tommy Koh
Founding Executive Director, ASEF; Chairman, Institute of Policy Studies

"A carefully researched analysis of East Asian and European regionalism, their driving forces and the interaction between the regions. The study is remarkable both for its theoretical quality and its novel empirical data. A most valuable source for students of regionalism."
—Karl Kaiser
Visiting Professor, Harvard University; Former Director, German Council on Foreign Relations

"A rich and interesting book, crammed with an astonishing range of detail about networked governance from Europe to Asia. His theoretical framework encompasses actors from international organizations to corporations, universities to think tanks, offering a way to map the new world order."
—Anne-Marie Slaughter
Dean, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University

"This timely book provides a highly comprehensive and illuminating exposition of the new fluidity of global and regional multilateral governance. César de Prado did an excellent of job in providing a valuable analytical framework and persuasive cases for students of international relations and the new global order."
—Il Sa-Kong
Chairman and CEO of the Institute for Global Economics and Chair of the ASEM Vision Group, 1998-2000

"The demise of multilateralism has been announced prematurely. Cesar de Prado demonstrates how increased regionalism in Europe and in Asia has assured its remarkable comeback. His book shows convincingly how this came about and why."
—Albrecht Rothacher
Editor in Chief, Asia-Europe Journal

"This interesting book makes a strong case for the emergence of a multi-level global governance system that knits together regionally-based governments and non-governmental actors with specific reference to Europe's and Asia's knowledge systems. Interested readers will learn from de Prado's analytical framework and some well-researched case material."
—Peter J. Katzenstein
Walter S. Carpenter Professor, Jr. of International Studies, Cornell University

Reviews

Review (156 KB PDF)
from Panorama: Insights into Southeast Asian and European Affairs (No. 1, 2007)

JCMS 2008 Volume 46, Number 4

Pacific Affairs: Volume 81, No. 4 – Winter 2008-2009

Author

César de Prado is a “Ramón y Cajal” senior researcher at the Barcelona Institute of International Studies. He obtained his Ph.D. in 2002 from the European University Institute in Florence, after which he has been a researcher at the Universities of Lund in Sweden, the United Nations University in Bruges, the University of Tokyo, and the Spain-Japan Cultural Centre of the University of Salamanca. He has been a visiting professor in the programme of East Asian Studies at the University of Salamanca and lector on Asian regionalisms at the College of Europe in Bruges.

Contents Overview

Global multi-level governance
Theories. Multi-level states. The Disunited Nations System. Macro-regions. Transnational governance. Case study structure
Advancing multi-level intergovernmentalism
The European project and its external dimension. The formation of East Asia and its multi-level external links. Europe and East Asia as soft global powers
The crucial influence of Track-2 advisory processes
The policy intellectual world in Europe and in East Asia. Towards a global multi-level policy intellectual space
Global multi-level knowledge economies
Global info-communications governance. The knowledge-based economic spaces in Europe and in East Asia. Global multi-level economic knowledge governance
Towards higher levels of education
Globalisation of higher education. The renaissance of European higher education. The construction of an East Asian higher education space. Towards a multi-level world of learning
An effective world with regions
New theoretical journeys. Visioning knowledge to empower civil societies