Understanding the 'new East Asian regionalism'

Author(s): John Ravenhill

Source: Review of International Political Economy , May 2010, Vol. 17, No. 2 (May 2010),
pp. 173-177
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/25699633

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

Taylor & Francis, Ltd. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to
Review of International Political Economy

This content downloaded from

124.153.16.66 on Mon, 02 Oct 2023 15:53:31 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 O Routledge
Review of International Political Economy 17:2 May 2010:173-177 l\ Taytor brands croup

Understanding the 'new East Asian

regionalism'
John Ravenhill
Department of International Relations, Research School of Pacific and Asian
Studies, Australian National University, Australia

In the years since the financial crises of 1997/98, East Asia has become a sig
nificant laboratory for observing regionalism at work. A geographical area
that previously had few examples of institutionalized mter-governmental
collaboration and little sense of collective identity has hosted dozens of
new regional schemes. A proliferation of bilateral and minilateral agree
ments has created a ''noodle bowl" of preferential trade arrangements.
Governments have established new region-wide groupings (ASEAN Plus
Three and the East Asia Summit). For the first time, governments have
entered into regional financial cooperation through negotiating a regional
pool of reserves (the Chiang Mai Initiative) and through various efforts
at promoting bond markets. Meanwhile, the scope of intergovernmental
cooperation within the one longstanding regional grouping ? the Associ
ation of East Asian Nations [ASEAN] ? has been substantially expanded.
The articles in this special section of RIPE address both the old (ASEAN)
and the new East Asian regionalism.1 'East Asia' and 'regionalism' are both
contested concepts - as Bjorn Hettne (2005: 543), a significant contributor
to the recent literature on regionalism noted, we face 'an intriguing onto
logical problem' because 'there has been little agreement about what we
study when we study regionalism'. It is important, therefore, to establish
from the outset the usage of these concepts here.
By 'East Asia', we understand the 16 countries that have participated
in the East Asia Summit plus Taiwan.2 Perhaps even more contentious is
the definition of regionalism. Several of the articles in this section focus
exclusively on regionalism's economic dimensions. They follow what has
become a common practice among economists and some international or
ganizations -both Asian and global - in using regionalism as shorthand for
the negotiation of preferential trade agreements. The Asian Development
Bank (2008:1), for instance, defines regionalism as 'any formal preferential

Review of International Political Economy

ISSN 0969-2290 print/ISSN 1466-4526 online ? 2010 Taylor & Francis
http:/ / www.informaworld.com
DOI: This
10.1080/09692290903582568
content downloaded from
124.153.16.66 on Mon, 02 Oct 2023 15:53:31 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 REVIEW OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL ECONOMY

trading arrangement between two or more countries'. Similarly, the collec

tion by Harvie, Kimura and Lee (2005) is typical of the recent literature in
economics in identifying multiple instances of bilateral trade agreements
signed between an East Asian state and a non-East Asian partner as exem
plars of the new East Asian regionalism
'Regionalism' defined in this manner is thus both broader and narrower
than how the concept commonly is used in the literature of international
relations. Broader, because it lacks a specific geographical referent - a us
age consistent with that of the World Trade Organization (WTO, 2009):
'RTAs [Regional Trade Agreements] may be agreements concluded be
tween countries not necessarily belonging to the same geographical re
gion'. Narrower, because it focuses only on the economic dimensions of
inter-state collaboration, and may only involve two participants.
The proliferation of preferential trade agreements [PTAs] involving
states of dramatically different sizes, levels of economic development,
and systems of governance affords an opportunity to test a number of
arguments that have been developed in the study of such agreements else
where in the world. A fundamental question is what political forces have
been driving and shaping these agreements. Borrowing from the literature
in economics, the conventional wisdom in IPE studies of regional trade
arrangements is that they have been driven by business interests moti
vated by the transaction costs of increased interdependence, by the desire
to access a larger protected market, or by a perceived imperative to "level
the playing" field when their foreign competitors enjoy preferential access
to third country markets.
Ravenhill finds little evidence from the new East Asian regionalism to
support such arguments. There are few instances where export-oriented
interests appear to have been involved in the political process that gener
ated the new preferential agreements. No substantial increase has occurred
in regional interdependence relative to that with the rest of the world; and
no evidence exists that firms are facing significant new transactions costs.
Moreover, because many of the impediments to the efficient management
of transnational production networks have already been removed, and
because their coverage is incomplete, the PTAs create few substantial ad
vantages for companies. For many, the benefits do not outweigh the costs
of gaining access to the agreements, reflected in the very low usage of
them. Rather than the new regionalism being driven primarily by busi
ness interests, Ravenhill argues that political considerations have been
dominant.
The East Asian experience does support another argument from the lit
erature on regionalism: institutional design matters. This is a central mes
sage from the articles in this special section. Solis argues that the manner in
which preferences are channelled through the decision-making process is a
key determinant of the influence of interest groups in trade policy-making.
174
This content downloaded from
124.153.16.66 on Mon, 02 Oct 2023 15:53:31 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 RAVENHILL: UNDERSTANDING THE 'NEW EAST ASIAN REGIONALISM'

She examines how the party-bureaucracy process of decision-making in

Japan has produced low quality preferential trade agreements that, to date,
have been concluded only with relatively unimportant trade partners. The
participation of several powerful bureaucracies in trade policy-making
in Japan and the absence of hierarchy has inhibited innovation. Various
attempts during the period of Liberal Democratic Party rule, most no
tably under Prime Minister Koizumi, failed to realize reforms intended to
centralize the decision-making process and to make it less vulnerable to
rent-seeking interests, particularly in the agricultural sector.
Which individuals and agencies participate in trade policy-making has
also had a major impact on China's negotiation of trade agreements. Jiang
argues that much of the existing literature on China's PTAs is misleading in
treating the country as a unitary actor. China's initial foray into PTAs ? its
agreement with ASEAN ? was primarily politically motivated and driven
by the political leadership (especially Premier Zhu Rongji) and the Ministry
of Foreign Affairs. Little domestic resistance was encountered not just
because of the political commitment at the highest levels but also because
of the novelty of PTAs for China and because potential imports from
ASEAN posed few problems for domestic interests. Once China began
negotiating with more developed partners, more domestic actors became
involved in the negotiations. In particular, the Ministry of Agriculture
capitalized on growing concern about rural unrest to push for continued
protection of agricultural producers. In services, state monopolies similarly
resisted liberalization that would threaten their monopoly rents. Unlike the
experience in negotiating the agreement with ASEAN, economic agencies
dominated policy-making. Decision-making on PTAs was fragmented: the
nominated lead agency in the negotiations, the Ministry of Commerce,
lacked the authority to overcome protectionist forces elsewhere in the
bureaucracy.
Institutional design, Aggarwal and Chow argue, has been at the heart
of ASEAN's ineffectiveness. ASEAN has significance for students of re
gionalism not just in its own right as East Asia's oldest regional grouping,
but also because ASEAN and the substantive and procedural norms that
govern the interactions among its members ? the "ASEAN Way" ? are at
the heart of wider East Asian cooperation, both in the ASEAN Plus Three
and East Asia Summit groupings. The scope of economic cooperation has
been broadened over the years, and new dispute mechanism mechanisms
introduced with the adoption of the ASEAN Charter. But the ongoing
dominance of a meta-regime that has remained largely unchanged in the
more than four decades since ASEAN's foundation, and which stresses
sovereignty and decision-making by consensus, Aggarwal and Chow as
sert, limits the constraints that regional collaboration imposes on members.
The substantial economic achievements of ASEAN economies over the last
quarter of the century accordingly owe little to regional collaboration. The
175
This content downloaded from
124.153.16.66 on Mon, 02 Oct 2023 15:53:31 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 REVIEW OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL ECONOMY

meta-regime has also limited the effects of agreements entered into at the
regional level to combat the problem of trans-border air pollution. Aggar
wal and Chow conclude by considering various alternative institutional
designs that might produce more effective functional cooperation yet still
be nested within the existing meta-regime.
East Asia has also been an important laboratory for testing arguments
about the influence of ideas and of epistemic communities on regional
collaboration (see, for instance, Acharya 2009, and Ba 2009). Capie notes the
apparent paradox that in a region where states continue to jealously guard
their sovereignty, "Track Two" (non-official) networks have been argued
to have played an important role both in creating regional institutions and
in shaping their agendas. Yet, observers and participants alike suggest that
the influence of the Track Two dialogues on governments has waned in
the last decade, and is much rarer than some accounts have suggested.
Capie explores various explanations for this diminished influence that
include the poverty of recent ideas emanating from Track Two meetings,
the departure of key individuals from the networks, and the weaknesses
of the institutions that Track Two meetings are attempting to influence.
He concludes that while such arguments provide a partial explanation for
Track Two's waning influence, a more complete explanation requires an
examination of the relationship between the influence of ideas and the
constraining effects of structures. Capie argues that some constructivist
writers have paid insufficient attention to the particular (and unusual)
circumstances in which ideas have an independent influence.
Just as East Asian regionalism has come a long way over the last decade,
so too has the scrutiny it has received. The articles in this special section
are part of a new generation of scholarship that no longer treats East Asian
regionalism as sui generis but as a phenomenon to be compared with such
efforts elsewhere, using the full panoply of theories at our disposal.

NOTES
1 A number of panels on various aspects of East Asian regionalism were conv
at the San Francisco International Studies Association Convention in
2008. Following the Convention, Mark Blyth, one of the editors of RIPE,
if I would put together a selection of the best papers on East Asian region
from the Convention for review for the journal. The understanding was th
papers would be evaluated individually through the journal's normal
process. I am delighted that all the papers have survived the rigorous re
and have been substantially revised and strengthened in the process.
2 The EAS participants were the ten member states of ASEAN (Brunei, Camb
Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand
Vietnam), China, Japan, Korea, Australia, New Zealand and India.

176
This content downloaded from
124.153.16.66 on Mon, 02 Oct 2023 15:53:31 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 RAVENHILL: UNDERSTANDING THE 'NEW EAST ASIAN REGIONALISM'
REFERENCES
Acharya, A. (2009) Whose Ideas Matter? Agency and Power in Asian Regionalism,
Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Asian Development Bank (2008) 'How to Design, Negotiate, and Implement a Free
Trade Agreement in Asia', Mandaluyong City, Philippines: Asian Development
Bank, Office of Regional Economic Integration, April.
Ba, A. D. (2009) (Renegotiating East and Southeast Asia: Region, Regionalism, and
the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University
Press.
Harvie, C, Kimura, F. and Lee, H.-H. eds. (2005) New East Asian Regionalism: Causes,
Progress and Country Perspectives, Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar.
Hettne, B. (2005) 'Beyond the 'New' Regionalism', New Political Economy 10, 4:
543-71.
World Trade Organization (2009) 'Scope of RTAs'. Accessed 9 February 2009.
http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/region_e/scope_rta_e.htm.

177
This content downloaded from
124.153.16.66 on Mon, 02 Oct 2023 15:53:31 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms