Samuel Huntington provoked great debate among international relations (IR) theorists with an article titled ¡¥The Clash of Civilizations?¡¦ and thus caused ¡¥civilizational turn¡¦ in international studies. While criticizing Huntington¡¦s mode of analysis, the IR theorists seek alternative ways of interpreting civilization. This civilizational turn has also emerged in the discussion of ¡¥non-western IR theories¡¦. Reflecting the Eurocentrism of the discipline, some of the IR theorists have kept searching alternative ways of theorizing the world through cultures and historical experiences originated in the non-western areas, which conceive of learning across different ways of being (ontology) and knowing (epistemology). This dissertation analyzes the possibility of an Asian school of international relations through civilizational analysis of non-western IR theories with Asian perspectives. While Asia is often regarded as a highly heterogeneous area both culturally and economically, this dissertation explores the compatibilities or even commonalities among discourses of Asian intellectual communities on civilization which may consist of a school of thought serving to enrich and dialogue with contemporary IR theories. The dissertation consists of three case studies: Confucian ¡¥Harmonious world¡¦, Nishida¡¦s philosophy on ¡¥nothingness¡¦ and postcolonial India with principles of non-violence, nonalignment and subaltern studies. Based on different ontologies and epistemologies, these three schools of thought contribute a common alternative way of interpreting world politics: the middle way, which provides the rationale for the possibility of an open Asian regionalism.

This thesis examines the relationship between Japan and South Korea and the paradox of its disputes despite the economic interdependence with the relational theory of world politics by Qin (2018b). World Trade Organization (WTO) Dispute Settlement Body (DSB) complaints between the countries between the years 2016 and 2020 have been analyzed to study this. The method utilized is that of a predicate discourse analysis. Both qualitative and quantitative approaches are employed within the analysis as it includes the extraction of the predicates from qualitative complaint documents but additionally, a quantitative table of the predicates is generated to provide information on the frequencies and case locations of the findings. Neither the theory nor the unit of relation has been widely examined by Western international relations (IR) scholars, which allows this study to lead way for future research on the further expansion of knowledge and utilization of the relational theory. Furthermore, it provides insight into the relational object space of disputes in the relationship between the economically interdependent Japan and South Korea. The theoretical concepts of relational identity, actors as relators, hierarchy, and cultural communities in the analysis explain the existence of the paradox of disputes despite interdependence.