The intermestic dimension in relations with (democratic) Indo-Pacific countries
The competition for global primacy among major powers is leading to the bloc formation of the world economy and increased geopolitical tensions across trade, diplomacy, and security. These moves are sending waves of alarm across the globe and challenging the multilateral world order particularly pronounced changes in the Indo-Pacific region. This region is emerging as a dynamic geopolitical balance, accelerating the realignment of intra-regional relationships and the reconfiguration of diplomatic and security strategies.
The evolving geopolitical landscape serves as a crucial external factor shaping the foreign policies of regional states as well as the western world. However, foreign policies cannot be fully understood as mere reactions to external pressures. Rather, shifts in the international order play a constitutive role, interacting with domestic political structures and discursive frameworks to inform and shape foreign policy orientations. Foreign policy is actively shaped through interaction with domestic political conditions, including governing ideologies, industrial structures, public opinion, and interest groups. These factors, alongside the roles of political and institutional actors, drive the realignment of key foreign policy directions—such as diplomatic and security strategies, economic and industrial policies—within the domestic context. This interaction can be more precisely explained through an intermestic approach, which transcends the boundaries between the international and the domestic, with interaction between the two is increasingly evolving into an inseparable relationship.
The webinar will explore the factors influencing foreign policy decisions in the English-speaking world toward the (democratic) Indo-Pacific countries, and among these countries through a multi-layered analysis, based on this international-domestic linkage structure, while also assessing the extent to which their engagement in the Indo-Pacific aligns with or reinforces their domestic democratic institutions.