The Quest for Economic Security in East Asia

While aggressively embracing free trade agreements (FTAs) in general, East Asian countries have incorporated security and political factors in promoting FTAs under the swiftly shifting regional economic and security environments, epitomized by the end of the Cold War, the Asian financial crisis, and the intensifying Sino-Japanese rivalry. Therefore, a sole focus on economic factors would fail to shed light on East Asian strategies for linking FTAs and security. While FTAs have mushroomed in East Asia since 2000, East Asian countries have pursued FTAs not merely to increase their economic interests. In many cases, they have attempted to link FTAs to broader security considerations. However, they have demonstrated markedly diverse ways of linking FTAs and security, depending on their primary economic and security imperatives as well as their domestic political situations.

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Soft Balancing, Hedging, and Institutional Darwinism: The Economic-Security Nexus and East Asian Regionalism

Journal of East Asian Studies ◽

10.1017/s1598240800003441 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 10 (2) ◽

pp. 209-238 ◽

Cited By ~ 48

Author(s):

T. J. Pempel

Keyword(s):

East Asia ◽

East Asian ◽

Economic Security ◽

Individual State ◽

Regional Institutions ◽

Soft Balancing ◽

Asian Regionalism ◽

Complex Ecosystem ◽

Per Se ◽

Institutional Linkages

East Asia has increased its formal institutional linkages in both the economic and security arenas. This article addresses three questions concerning this expansion. First, why has the number of institutions increased? Second, why is there so little overlap in the purposes and memberships of these many new bodies? Third, why have most regional institutions achieved such limited policy successes? The article demonstrates that the bulk of the neweconomicinstitutions represent collective responses to generalized pressures from globalized finance, whereas the newsecuritybodies deal with regionally endogenous problems of a highly particularistic character. Furthermore, most regional bodies in East Asia still reflect the preeminence of individual state strategies rather than any collective predisposition toward multilateralism per se. East Asian regionalism thus represents a complex “ecosystem” of institutions whose future is likely to see the enhancement of some and the diminution of others through a process referred to here as “institutional Darwinism.”

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