Messages from a middle power: participation by the Republic of Korea in regional environmental cooperation on transboundary air pollution issues

This paper addresses the question whether or not regional middle power states are capable of making a significant contribution to enhancing regional cooperation via regime creation processes. A combination of “nonregime” and the middle power analysis is applied to produce hypotheses about less-developed cases of regime creation in Northeast Asia. Among the attractions of such an approach are that (1) cases of failure to create international regimes as well as cases of success are important to understand the emergence of global governance institutions, and (2) the different roles of various state actors should be understood beyond hegemonic power. The explanatory power of this approach is illustrated by transboundary air pollution issues in Northeast Asia, chosen because the international relations literature has emphasized the development of European regional environmental cooperation and global environmental issues. The paper examines participation by the Republic of Korea (ROK) in both comprehensive and issue-specific environmental cooperative mechanisms to tackle transboundary air pollution. It concludes that the ROK as a middle power has played a promising role to initiate and lead some positive competition between member countries, but at the same time, it highlights challenges that need to be met for creating solid regional environmental cooperation.