Ebook: Asia’s New Institutional Architecture: Evolving Structures for Managing Trade, Financial, and Security Relations

This book investigates the origins and evolution of Asia’s new institutional architecture in trade, finance, and security from both a theoretical and empirical perspective. The traditional institutional equilibrium in Asia has come under heavy strain in the "post triple shocks period" - the post-Cold War, the post-financial crisis of 1997-98, and the post-9-11 attacks. The new dynamics of rivalry and cooperation among states at both the intraregional and transregional levels is now shaping a new institutional architecture. Political and business leaders from Northeast and Southeast Asia interact with each other more frequently. South Asia’s participation in the rest of Asia in recent years is truly impressive. As we show, the future institutional trajectory of Asia is still open, but we believe that the book provides a timely examination of key shifts in the region. In doing so, our hope is to provide policymakers and analysts with an institutional road map for the future.

The first comparative systematic study of Asia’s emerging economic and security architecture. Via a series of theoretically sophisticated, yet empirically rich studies of Asia´s contemporary regional economic and security structures, Aggarwal, Koo and their colleagues, using an institutional bargaining approach, provide a template for the analysis of a most important set of evolving international relationships. This volume, while measured in its conclusions and sensitive to the problematic nature of Asian cooperation, nevertheless leaves us in little doubt as to both the theoretical and policy significance of the regional institutional endeavours in train in the early 21st century.
Richard Higgott, University of Warwick

This volume offers a fresh and analytically rigorous perspective on the changing role of Asia's regional institutions since the end of the Cold War. Offering valuable insights into their design and function, this book challenges the conventional wisdom that regional institutions play a marginal role in Asia's economic and security architecture. The publication of this volume is a testimony to the increasing theoretical sophistication and empirical richness of the study of Asian regionalism as a field of scholarly inquiry in its own right.
Amitav Acharya, University of Bristol

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How effective are regional and interregional institutions in managing Asia's increasingly complex economic and security ties? This question is currently the subject of intense debate among both academics and policymakers. Based on an innovative approach to analyzing institutional design, this path-breaking book provides a rich theoretical and empirical analysis of trends in Northeast, Southeast, and South Asia. In particular, it shows how three major shocks-the end of the Cold War, the 1997 Asian financial crisis, and the 9/11 attacks-have challenged Asia's long-standing trade and security order and generated a new set of institutional structures for coping with regional dynamics. Whereas the original postwar trade and security order revolved around bilateral alliance structures, global economic and security institutions, and long-standing corporate and ethnic networks, the new institutional environment in Asia is manifested by the proliferation of preferential trading arrangements and security dialogues, both official and unofficial, formal and informal, bilateral and minilateral. Asia's New Institutional Architecture brings together a multinational group of specialists on Asian trade and security to provide a theoretically grounded analysis of historical and current developments in the region. The book will be must reading for those interested in examining future trends for Asia and its relations with the world.