Introduction

This book "AEC 2015: A model for Asia-wide regional integration?" brings together scholars and researchers who have been studying ASEAN from close by or from a distance to provide their assessment of the AEC process and progress from a perspective of wider regional integration. While it was not possible to obtain a contribution for every aspect of the AEC process, we have tried to cover most important areas or those that are most relevant for the rest of Asia and globally either in terms of impacts or in terms of valuable lessons and practices which could be leaned on by those who are pursuing any type of regional integration. In what follows we provide the brief summary of the chapters. As AEC pillars themselves are not perfectly balanced in terms of areas they cover and policies they refer to in the blueprint, while not being fully independent of each other, this book is also slightly asymmetric with a bit more focus on pillars 1, 3 and 4. Chapters, however, often provide opportunity to a reader to make connections between the pillars and also over time of integration process. The summary of chapters is provided below under the headings of three parts of the book for ease of reference.