The European Union and Japan. A new chapter in civilian power cooperation?

The EU and Japan have one of the most important trade relationships in the world. Fittingly, this book presents a detailed analysis of their bilateral regulatory environment and negotiation processes. Moreover, the two polities have also co-operated extensively in bilateral and multilateral contexts on a range of global governance issues. Nevertheless, the relationship is widely acknowledged to have significant untapped potential. Deploying the concept of civilian power, the book takes a fresh, honest and provocative look at this important relationship, in a post-Fukushima, post-sovereign debt crisis world.

First the book analyses the place of EU-Japan relations within the worldviews of the Japanese and European bodies politic. Subsequently, three thematic sections evaluate their cooperation on such issues as trade, energy security, environmental politics, development, human rights, post-conflict reconstruction, health and biosecurity. The eminent scholars of the EU-Japan relationship gathered in this book offer informed, empirically rich and policy-relevant insights into the present and future prospects for the relationship.

Contents:

Introduction: EU-Japan relations in a fluid global order - Hartmut Mayer

Part I: Japan, the EU and Civilian Power Relations
1. Japan as a ‘proactive civilian power’? Domestic constraints and competing priorities - Hidetoshi Nakamura
2. The EU in a changing global order: is emergent German hegemony making the EU even more of a civilian power? - Mario Telò
3. The EU through the eyes of Japan: perceptions of the European Union as a civilian power - Paul Bacon and Martin Holland

Part II: Enhancing Trade Relations and Regulatory Standards
4. Three balancing acts: the EU’s trade policy towards East Asia - Min Shu
5. The political and institutional significance of an EU-Japan trade and partnership agreement - Frederik Ponjaert
6. Food fights or a recipe for cooperation? EU-Japan relations and the development of norms in food safety policy - Gijs Berends

Part III: Promoting Environmental, Economic and Energy Security
7. Environmental and energy policy: learning and cooperation between the European Union and Japan - Miranda A. Schreurs
8. Sympathy or self-interest? The development agendas of the European Union and Japan in the 2000s - Bart Gaens and Henri Vogt
9. Saving the Kyoto Protocol: what can we learn from the experience of Japan-EU cooperation? - Hiroshi Ohta and Yves Tiberghien

Part IV: Protecting Political, Food and Health Security
10. EU-Japan relations: civilian power and the domestication/localization of human rights - Paul Bacon
11. The EU, Japan and the Balkans: cooperation for post-conflict nation-building - Dimitar Bechev
12. Global governance of dual use in biomedical research: cooperation between the EU and Japan on how to minimize or prevent misconduct and misuse - Yasue Fukuda
13. Accountability and the governance of food safety policy in the EU and Japan - Koji Fukuda