Awkward states and regional organisations: the UK and Australia compared

  <div id="mainContainer"><div class="main" id="main1"></div></div>Both the UK and Australia have experienced difficulties with engaging in regional integration. The UK has famously been labelled by Stephen George as an 'awkward partner' in the EU context, with other member states as well as the UK itself often questioning Britain's economic, political and cultural closeness to the rest of the EU in the face of its transatlantic ties and allegedly 'special relationship' with Washington. Australian policy towards regional organisations in South East Asia and the Asia-Pacific has also been equivocal about regional integration, championing the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum (APEC) as a means of reorienting itself towards Asia but always with the danger of being considered a proxy for the US by other nations in the region. Yet more recently Australia has proposed a new regional architecture for Asia. This paper compares the UK and Australia as 'awkward' states in regional integration, tracing their respective positions on three key 'material' issues of regional integration - institutions, economic policy and security - as well as the more ideational issues of belongingness and identity. It debates which mix of material and ideational factors best accounts for this difference of the UK and Australia from the mainstream in their respective regions. These conclusions are then used to generate hypotheses for future comparative research.