Paper short abstract:

EU and Japan as strategic partners share fundamental values and principles (democracy, human rights etc.) and pledge to co-promote them in international fora. This paper studies how these commitments materialize in the interparliamentary dialogue both in bilateral and multilateral contexts.

Paper long abstract:

Japan and the EU are strategic partners who have pledged to base their relationship on shared fundamental values and principles such as democracy, the rule of law, human rights and good governance and to promote them in international fora in cooperation. This paper analyzes how context determines and drives political diplomatic dialogue in the case of promotion of the shared values and related norms. First, the focus is on the parliamentary context of the Japan-EU dialogue. While parliamentarians are essentially domestic actors engaged in the domestic political context, paradoxically they are increasingly involved in international issues due to globalization of the national agenda as well as growing interest towards parliamentary diplomacy. Parliamentary diplomacy is distinctive from government-led state-level diplomacy as they have more flexibility to promote their own agenda as they are not official international representatives of their government. This chapter discusses the international promotion of shared values within the Japan-EP parliamentary context vis-à-vis the inter-governmental dialogue.

Second, the chapter studies how context affects the dialogue when the scope of participation changes. Thus, Japan-EP dialogue on the shared values is studied within the bilateral as well as the multilateral setting. Outside their annual bilateral meetings, Japanese parliamentarians and members of the European Parliament meet within various multilateral fora. Here the focus is on the biennial Asia-Europe parliamentary Partnership (ASEP), which brings together all Asian and European parliaments within the Asia-Europe Meeting process. Based on an analysis of the parliamentary meeting reports, this article argues that the joint promotion of shared values is challenging. While at bilateral level dialogue is easy, though mostly rhetorical, in the multilateral setting, where Japan's key Asian neighbors and trade partners are present, the difficulty of promoting the shared values together is evident. The dialogues are discussed with examples and their political and policy consequences are discussed within the wider contexts of political Asia-Europe relations.