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precedent that may differ with the traditional explanations based on regional leadership exerted by great powers. It is clear the processes of regional institutionalization are not happening in the same way in East Asia as it is in Europe or The Americas, but how?
and how does this influence the prospects of regionalism both as a field of study and in the objective reality? The relevance of testing the hypotheses put forward by this study arises when trying to give answers to this type of questions that can suggest future prospects for research in less developed parts of the world where regionalism is at an even earlier stage, like Central Asia, the Middle East or Africa. This is how this research expects to push the boundary of existing knowledge about both, regionalism and middle powers.
1.4. Theoretical Standpoint of this Study
Having the main research questions, variables and research contributions as referent, the following sections of this chapter I aim to provide the vantage point from which this research project looks into the phenomena it deals with. In so doing several different approaches that are considered helpful, mainly from IPE and IR theories have been integrated, to allow a comprehensive understanding of regionalism and the issue of cooperation and collective action among states. Later on, in chapter II the specific discussion of the main concepts identified as variables is carried out for analytical purposes, while the following sections below provide the general theoretical context and the standpoint of this dissertation.
1.4.1. The Neoliberal Perspective
The study of International Political Economy and its several theories helps us to draw attention to the increasingly transnational nature of economic activity and the disjuncture between national boundaries as the limits of political space, characterizing the current global system and its regions. Robert Gilpin in his 2001 book “Global Political Economy: Understanding the International Economic Order” reviews the different approaches that scholars use to understand regionalism, among other processes related to globalization. Since the emphasis here is on regional institutionalization, the main approaches taken into account from IPE all lean towards the so called “neo-liberal” strand which is more likely to emphasize cooperation, as
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opposed to realism and Neorealism which focus more on conflict. As the main approach that somehow counters the neoliberal option of this study, the neorealist perspective sees interests in security issues as almost the only ones prevalent and thus its insistence in conflictual rather than cooperative behavior among states, as Yoshimatsu explains:
“Even when the neorealists consider interstate cooperation, they posit that such cooperation is generally difficult because cooperation under anarchy is similar to a prisoner’s dilemma in which the dominant strategy will be to defect, making states worry about cheating. However, this approach is weak in grasping the evolving nature of interstate cooperation, which has gradually changed largely as a response to intensive trends towards economic globalization. Furthermore, the neorealist perspective has limitations in taking into account the meaningful influence of specific characteristics embedded in the political economy of a region and the states in the region.” (Yoshimatsu, 2010: 229)
Initially, Neofunctionalism appears to be one of the most influential neoliberal prospective to explain regionalism, associated to the thoughts of Ernst Haas. This approach is the most important effort by political scientists to explain regional integration and cooperation in general and the European case in particular. It argues that economic, technological and other developments during the 20th century have driven peoples and nation-states toward peaceful economic and political integration at both, regional and global levels. The problem of war can be solved and the war-prone system of nation-states can be escaped through international agreements in specific and functional areas, with an important “spillover” effect from one area of integration to others, which a key element in this approach to cooperation. This process would lead to political cooperation and a transnational political community. (Gilpin, 2001) Economic interdependence is understood under these terms. In their co-written work on Power and Interdependence, Keohane and Nye5 expose what they denominate ‘complex interdependence’ as an ideal type that – in contrast to Neorealism – better represents the new world order, and thus it is more capable to grasp reality in a closer and more accurate way than Realpolitik. These authors indentify their interdependence as having three main characteristics: 1) multiple channels to connect societies, consisting of informal ties between governmental and nongovernmental elites, formal ties between foreign offices and transnational organization in the form of interstate,
5 Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye expose their theses about these issues in Power and Interdependence:
World Politics in Transition (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1977, 1989, 2001), chapter 2; and in “Power and Interdependence Revisited,” (International Organization, 1987. 41(4): 725-753).
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governmental and transnational relations; 2) absence of a hierarchical setting of agenda within the interstate relationships, which means other issues than military/security may arise to the top of the agenda, and when the distinction between domestic and foreign policy becomes blurred; and 3) no use of military force within the same region, which highlights the importance of regionalism as a trend in a world where a complex interdependence prevails. (Keohane and Nye, 1987) These three main conditions are much more approximated to a better interpretation of some global issues today, like those of economic or environmental nature, and even help to characterize the entire relationship between some countries in this new world order.
Since this research deals with regional institution-building, another key approach taken into account is the so called Neoliberal Institutionalism or Neoinstitutionalism, with – again – Robert Keohane as the most prominent scholar;
emphasizing the role of institutions in solving economic and other more political problems. International organizations matter as important actors and regional institutions are relevant since they can increase incentives for states to solve their disputes and cooperate. (Gilpin, 2001) Neoinstitutionalists often cite cooperation in trade, human rights and collective security, among other issues, as the basis upon which institutions are built in the current international order. These instances of cooperation have been labeled as “regimes”, and the most commonly cited definition of regimes comes from Stephen Krasner, who, although mostly recognized as a Neorealist, defines regimes as those institutions that possess a set of explicit and implicit norms, rules and decision-making procedures which can facilitate the convergence of actors’
expectations in a given area. (Krasner, 1983) Institutionalists like Keohane point out that the increasing visibility and specificity of international institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, World Trade Organization (WTO), North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Community (now the European Union or EU); became the evidence for their theory. (Keohane, 1993)
Institutions rose in a context of interdependence to help states to overcome collective action problems. Hegemony, Keohane explains, “was not essential to the maintenance of regimes based on mutual interest, although American hegemony had been an important factor in establishing many of them in the first place.” (1993:284) Indeed, this author argues that institutionalists do not elevate regimes to “positions of authority over states: on the contrary, such regimes are established by states to achieve their purposes.” (Keohane, 1993: 271) This is why the Neoinstitutionalist paradigm has
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become one of the most prevalent to study institutions as intervening variables where people’s values and culture are embedded, especially because it includes the invisible connotation of implicit norms. The setting of an efficient process of decision-making and procedures through the building of institutions allows reducing uncertainty in certain areas, as well as lowering the transaction costs of information through the channels established for communication and interaction. Thus practices become institutionalized. Indeed, as Peters emphasizes, this new version of classic institutionalism goes beyond the description of institutions and it “seeks to explain them as a ‘dependent variable’ and, more importantly, to explain other phenomena with institutions as the ‘independent variables’ shaping policy and administrative behavior.”
(Peters, 1998: 206)
Subsequently this neoliberal perspective, although optimistic in nature, it also possesses a much more “realist” point of view as it remains aware of the vested interests behind institutions. For instance, Neoinstitutionalism recognized the accurate realist emphasis that the strongest international regimes of the 20th century were actually constructed in the shadow of U.S. hegemony, and thus they followed its hegemonic logics. However, when it comes to the issue of institutions it is the Neoinstutionalist approach – and not the realist – the one that can offer a more comprehensive understanding the international system that appeared after the collapse of the Soviet Union: the consolidation of regionalism as a global trend with the European Union’s and other regional frameworks, the increased globalization of the economy and the rise of large emergent developing countries in Asia and elsewhere.
Today neoliberal institutionalist predictions appear to be more accurate. They saw economic and ecological interdependence as secular trends, according to Keohane, and therefore expected a continuing increase in the number and complexity of international institutions, and in the scope of their regulation. In sum, “International institutions exist largely because they facilitate self-interested cooperation by reducing uncertainty, thus stabilizing expectations. It follows that the expectations of states will depend in part on the nature and strength of international institutions.” (Keohane, 1993: 288) When we see at the way the world is organized today, is not difficult to concur with these propositions. Almost twenty years ago Keohane took a stand when he predicted that the European Community (today the EU) will be larger and have greater impact on its members’ policies in the year 2000 than it was when the Berlin Wall came down. In the year 2012 this prediction can be not just confirmed to be true, but it also stimulates the
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Finally, a third and most recent point of view from is the so called Inter-governmentalist posture. According to Gilpin, this approach derives from both Neofunctionalism and Neoinstitutionalism. It shares with the former the emphasis on economic interests as the principal driving force of regional integration, while coincides with the latter on stressing the importance of regional institutions as the means to achieve and secure integration. However, it differs from these approaches as it gives a central role to national governments and nation-states as main actors; aspect that makes it coincide with Neorealism only to that extent, while it remains a more liberal strand as it focuses more in cooperation and collective action. (Gilpin, 2001) Inter-governmentalism will be further characterized in following sections, as it fits well the East Asian case and thus becomes a central theoretical consideration for this study which focuses on governmental policies that have helped foster regional cooperation and the processes of regional institutionalization.
The main neoliberal perspectives described above help to connect or bridge between the world of politics and economics to understand cooperation and institution-building; and to apply it to the East Asian regional setting in particular. This bridging becomes necessary due to the characteristics of this study, which takes into account the Neofunctionalist idea of spillover effect, seeing economic and functional integration as the first steps to promote cooperation in other areas, advancing further towards the creation of a regional community where regional institutions and governance become increasingly influential in regional affairs, as Neoinstituionalism proposes. This ideas, however, derives from the way the European integrative process has been carried out and studied so far, where supranational entities have taken up tasks formerly performed but national governments and where a strong regional identity has been built. It remains to be seen how this can be transplanted to other parts of the world like East Asia. (Peng, 2004: 427) Thus the Inter-governmentalist approach is integrated as it rests in between the other two and it pays also more attention to national governments and their leadership role in promoting cooperation and creating regional governance. This also may be more helpful for studying those many aspects of the integration processes in East Asia that do not fall into any conventional means of regional arrangements like the ones carried out in other parts of the world, where more institutionalized mechanisms were applied first to guide and regulate a process of regional economic integration that came gradually, as many experts convey. (Kasahara, 2004) In East Asia things have
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unfolded differently. Nevertheless, regional cooperation and integration processes in East Asia and the building of institutions as an outcome of them, although initially based only on the economic ground, are slowly moving towards other issue-areas, often unspoken ones, which certainly will influence the formation of a collectivity more or less defined, which may become visible at first in the discourse of governments and their officials, serving as the based for a regional community in the future.
1.4.2. The Social Constructivist Approach
The issue of collective action and institutional cooperation to tackle the increasing transnational nature of common problems and the sense of community that these actions may imply deserve here some attention from a theoretical point of view. In order to do so, the so called Social Constructivist approach drawn from International Relations theory will be considered. During the late 80’s and especially the 90’s, after the collapse of the USSR and the end of the Cold War as the main scenario for world politics, efforts to bring culture, ideas and identity, as an individual and collective level of analysis materialized within the IR field. Such attempt was first systematized by Alexander Wendt, although the term “Constructivism” was first coined by Nicholas Onuf in 1989 since this prospective builds upon the theoretical approach from Sociology put forward by authors like Berger and Luckmann in 1966.
This approach helps to understand how cultural aspects can affect – and be affected by – globalization and regional processes of integration. When applied to an international setting, Social Constructivism emphasizes the identity formation, the perception of ‘other’ actors and the influence of the ‘culture’ present in that particular international instance. Wendt’s view essentially argues that shared ideas and culture - not the realist material power structures - is what constitute and determine relations between states, as collective subjects. Indeed, Constructivists put the emphasis on the social construction of subjectivity, involving a socio-psychological way of understanding the interactions among different states as social subjects. Shared ideas in any given inter-state relationship, especially regarding the nature of the ‘Self’ and the
‘Other’ are what constitute the “political culture” proposed by Wendt, and what determine the character of the relation, for example as friend or foe. This in turn will influence the kind of political culture institutionalized within this relationship, and it
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may also determine the interests of the actors involved in the process of interaction.6 In a 1994 article Wendt shows how broadening Systemic Theory beyond the rationalist concerns can help to explain structural change in world politics. The collective action problem that dominates international politics today needs to be understood as influenced by state interests and identities which are endogenous and not exogenous to their historically contingent interactions. Wendt explains that “how a state satisfies its corporate interests depends on how it defines the self in relation to the other, which is a function of social identities at both domestic and systemic levels of analysis.” (Wendt, 1994: 385) Hence the idea of national interest is seeing here as something flexible and not rigid. The emphasis is on the processes of interaction where social identities, as Wendt clarifies, evolve as sets of meanings that an actor attributes to itself while taking the perspective of others. Therefore actors normally have multiple social identities that vary in salience, and thus their interests may vary too. These social identities and interests are always in process of interaction and although sometimes they may seem as relatively stable, it is important to point out that this is an ongoing achievement of practices, something always in flux. Roles vary, rivals become competitors in one area but that doesn’t mean they can have friendly relations and even cooperate in other functional areas where their interest converge and there is need for collective action.
This is a very important contribution to take into account for this research, since Wendt links these two terms (identity and interests) in regards to the issue of collective action problems, which is essential as starting point for regional cooperation and institution-building. Collective action, he argues, will depend on whether the actors’
social identities generate self-interests or collective interests. Wendt explains this process as “the extent to which and manner in which social identities involve an identification with the fate of the other. (…) Identification is a continuum from negative to positive – from conceiving the other as anathema to the self to conceiving it as an extension of the self. It also varies by issue (…) in any given situation; however, it is the nature of identification that determines how the boundaries of the self are drawn.” (Wendt, 1994: 386) Indeed, this process of identification with the other shapes the interests of the participants in a continuum along which the actors in world politics
6 Alexander Wendt first explained his holistic perspective in his famous article published in 1992,
“Anarchy is what states make of it: The Social Construction of Power Politics,” in the Journal International Organization 46(2): 391-425.
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normally fall, between the extremes of egoistic or solidaristic behavior. This, according to Wendt, allows treating identities and interests as dependent and endogenous variables to the interactions among states, which also means that collective action and the institutions that may stem from them shall be understood as way of creating new definitions of the self.
These processes can be divided in two. First is the rising interdependence due to economic interactions and also due to the emergence of a “common other.” Second is the transnational convergence of domestic values, also related to the previous process.
Only when we treat identities and interests as intertwined processes, as Wendt argues, it is possible to see how the evolution of cooperation can lead to the evolution of a community. Clearly, this could be the result of an unintended or conscious strategy of self-transformation. In their interactions, actors are actually trying to project and sustain presentations of the self, but at the same time learning to identify with each other, to
“see themselves as a ‘we’ bound by certain norms.” (Wendt, 1994: 390) Hence, for Wendt the international system is not entirely anarchical as it has been the constant point of departure in IR theory for several decades. Instead, the current world system is better characterized as constellation of “particles” of governance. If state is defined “as
“see themselves as a ‘we’ bound by certain norms.” (Wendt, 1994: 390) Hence, for Wendt the international system is not entirely anarchical as it has been the constant point of departure in IR theory for several decades. Instead, the current world system is better characterized as constellation of “particles” of governance. If state is defined “as