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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 March 2016

T. J. Pempel
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Abstract

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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 new economic institutions represent collective responses to generalized pressures from globalized finance, whereas the new security bodies 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.”

Keywords

regionalismEast AsiaASEAN+3Chiang Mai InitiativeSix-Party TalksShanghai Cooperation Organizationeconomicssecuritymultilateralism
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of East Asian Studies , Volume 10 , Issue 2 , August 2010 , pp. 209 - 238
Copyright
Copyright © East Asia Institute 

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