Introducing Asia, Europe and the challenges of globalization

The theme of this volume, contemporary Asia-Europe relations, addresses interactions between what international relations theorists call regions, delineated along geographical lines of continents. Regions are neither territories placed under the sovereignty of political institutions, nor supranational or transnational actors in the strict sense of the term. They consist of wide and complex interactions based on territorial contiguity or relative proximity, established through economic, cultural and political interdependencies, historically developed over time and geographically located across space. They can jointly be understood as patterns of territorial relations encompassing neighbouring states, and as sub-systems of international relations at the global level. Europe and Asia qualify immediately under this definition.