Abstract
This book investigates the unfolding process of regionalism and regionalisation in East Asia, focussing on the leading role being played by Japan. It attempts to integrate theoretical argument, historical interpretation and empirical mapping in order to both address gaps in the literatures of political science, international relations and Japanese studies and to foster dialogue between them. A central contention of the study, and the starting point of the book, is that accounts of regionalism emerging from the mainstream of theorising in international relations (IR) and international political economy (IPE) have been unable to understand and explain adequately the resurgence of regionalism in world politics that has taken place in the last two decades.1 This deficiency results from a prior inability to fathom the sources of power in modern society.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
R. Gilpin, US Power and the Multinational Corporation (New York: Basic Books, 1975)
R. Keohane, After Hegemony (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984)
S. Krasner, ‘State Power and the Structure of International Trade’, World Politics, 28 (1976) 317–47
I. Wallerstein, ‘The Rise and Future Demise of the World Capitalist System: Concepts for Comparative Analysis’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 16 (1974) 387–415; The Modern World-System I (New York: Academic Press, 1974); The Capitalist World-Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979); The Modern World-System II (New York: Academic Press, 1980); and The Politics of the World-Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984).
A. Wendt, ‘The Agent-Structure Problem in International Relations Theory’, International Organization, 41 (1987) 349.
See, inter alia, W Nester, Japan’s Growing Power over East Asia and the World Economy (London: Macmillan 1990)
T. Inoguchi, ‘Japan’s Role in International Affairs’, Survival, 34 (1992) 71–87
J. Frankel and M. Kahler (eds), Regionalism and Rivalry (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1993)
R. Garnaut and P. Drysdale (eds), Asia Pacific Regionalism (Pymble, NSW: Harper Educational, 1994)
C. H. Kwan, Economic Interdependence in the Asia-Pacific Region (London: Routledge, 1994)
R. Ross (ed.), East Asia in Transition (Armonk, N.Y: M.E. Sharpe, 1995).
An interesting though ultimately flawed exception is R. Drifte, Japan’s Foreign Policy in the 1990s (London: Macmillan, 1996)
M. Bernard, ‘Regions in the Global Political Economy: Beyond the Local-Global Divide in the Formation of the Eastern Asian Region’, New Political Economy, 1 (1996) 335–53 is much closer to the mark.
There are several comparative studies available. See, in particular, A. Gamble and A. Payne (eds), Regionalism and World Order (London: Macmillan, 1996)
See also, L. Fawcett and A. Hurrell (eds), Regionalism in World Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995)
B. Hettne, A. Inotai and O. Sunkel (eds), Globalism and the New Regionalism (London: Macmillan, 1999), and the other four volumes in this series;
and J. Grugel and W. Hout (eds), Regionalism across the North-South Divide (London: Routledge, 1999).
A. Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks (New York: International Publishers, 1971), edited and translated by Q. Hoare and G. Nowell Smith [hereafter cited as Selections].
R. Cox, Production, Power, and World Order (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987)
and R. Cox with T. Sinclair, Approaches to World Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
S. Gill, American Hegemony and the Trilateral Commission (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990)
K. van der Pijl, The Making of an Atlantic Ruling Class (London: Verso, 1984)
E. Augelli and C. Murphy, America’s Quest for Supremacy and the Third World (London: Pinter, 1988)
H. Overbeek, Global Capitalism and National Decline (London: Unwin Hyman, 1990)
See also, H. Overbeek, Restructuring Hegemony in the Global Political Economy (London and New York: Routledge, 1993).
M. Rupert, Producing Hegemony (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
See M. Beeson, Competing Capitalisms (London: Macmillan, 1999).
For background to the existing literature see, A. Hurrell, ‘Explaining the Resurgence of Regionalism in World Politics’, Review of International Studies, 21 (1995) 331–58
and E. Mansfield and H. Milner, ‘The New Wave of Regionalism’, International Organization, 53 (1999) 589–627. Note that this section selects for discussion ‘mainstream’ accounts of regionalism and world order, leaving aside the ‘radical’ (that is, Marxist) account provided by Wallerstein and other world systems theorists. The reason for this omission is simply that Wallerstein’s analysis suffers the same methodological and ontological drawbacks as neo-realism. Subsequently, his analysis of hegemony, hegemonic stability and world order adds only ‘the suggestions that hegemony is gained and lost in a particular sequence of preponderance (production, commerce, finance) and that it only exists when advantage is simultaneously held in all three spheres of economic activity.’
A. Payne, ‘US Hegemony and the Reconfiguration of the Caribbean’, Review of International Studies, 20 (1994) 151. Compare, for example, Keohane’s, ‘The Theory of Hegemonic Stability and Changes in International Economic Regimes, 1967–1977’, with Wallerstein’s, ‘The Three Instances of Hegemony in the History of the Capitalist World-Economy’, both reprinted in G. Crane and A. Amawi (eds), The Theoretical Evolution of International Political Economy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991).
Keohane, After Hegemony; L. Thurow, Head to Head (London: Nicholas Brealey 1993)
E. Olsen, ‘Target Japan as America’s Economic Foe’, Orbis: A Journal of World Affairs, 36, 3 (1992) 441–503.
These alternative ‘futures’ are discussed in detail in T. Inoguchi, ‘Four Japanese Scenarios for the Future’, International Affairs, 65 (1989) 15–28; see also Inoguchi, ‘Japan’s Role in International Affairs’.
There are a host of other such scenarios linked with the globalisation thesis: for a review see D. Heldet al., Global Transformations (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999), pp. 2–14.
R. Gilpin, ‘American Policy in the Post-Reagan Era’, Daedalus, 116, 3 (1987) 33–67
J. Nye, Bound To Lead (New York: Basic Books, 1990).
R. Holbrooke, ‘Japan and the United States: Ending the Unequal Partnership’, Foreign Affairs, 70, 5 (1991–92) 41–57
Y Funabashi, ‘Japan and America: Global Partners’, Foreign Policy, 86 (1992) 24–39
T. Koji, ‘Japan as Number Two: New Thoughts on the Hegemonic Theory of World Governance’, in F. Langdon and T. Akaha (eds), Japan in the Posthegemonic World (London: Lynne Rienner, 1993), pp. 251–63.
Keohane, After Hegemony; R. Rosecrance, ‘A New Concert of Powers’, Foreign Affairs, 71, 2 (1992) 64–82.
P. Meeks, ‘Japan and Global Economic Hegemony’, in Langdon and Akaha (eds), Japan in the Posthegemonic World, pp. 41–67. See also, D. Rapkin, ‘Japan and World Leadership?’, in D. Rapkin (ed.), World Leadership and Hegemony (Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1990), pp. 191–212
R. Leaver, ‘Restructuring in the Global Economy: From Pax Americana to Pax Nipponica?’, Alternatives, 14 (1989) 429–62
and R. Rosecrance and J. Taw, ‘Japan and the Theory of International Leadership’, World Politics, 42 (1990) 184–209.
C. Johnson, ‘Where Does Mainland China Fit in a World Organized into Pacific, North American, and European Regions?’, Issues & Studies, 27, 8 (1991) 1–16
J. Garten, A Cold Peace (New York: Random House, 1993); and
D. Unger and P. Blackburn (eds), Japan’s Emerging Global Role (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1993).
Due in large measure to the commercial success and public notoriety achieved by Paul Kennedy’s, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (London: Fontana Press, 1988). For a more recent analysis see R. Gilpin, The Challenge of Global Capitalism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000).
On early US thinking concerning monetary union see G. Baker, ‘The Emu has Landed’, The Financial Times, 5 May 1998, p. 27.
Since I agree with Grieco when he argues that the major differences between neo-liberal institutionalism and neo-realism are simply the result of divergent interpretations of the nature of anarchy, I do not propose to spend time exploring their separate natures and claims here. J. Grieco, ‘Anarchy and the Limits of Cooperation: A Realist Critique of the Newest Liberal Institutionalism’, International Organization, 42 (1988) 485–507
Neo-realism is a broad church: see R. Keohane (ed.), Neorealism and its Critics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986)
For more recent reflections on neo-realism and its antecedents see J. Rosenberg, The Empire of Civil Society (London: Verso, 1994)
and S. Guzzini, Realism in International Relations and International Political Economy (London: Routledge, 1998).
The best short critique of neo-realism and world systems theory is in Rupert, Producing Hegemony, pp. 3–10, but see also S. Gill, ‘Epistemology Ontology and the “Italian School”’, in Gill (ed.), Gramsci, Historical Materialism and International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 21–48.
See also R. Cox (ed.), The New Realism (London: Macmillan, in association with the United Nations University Press, 1997).
C. Kindleberger, The World in Depression, 1929–1939, 2nd revised edn (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), p. 304.
See also Kindleberger, ‘Dominance and Leadership in the International Economy: Exploitation, Public Goods, and Free Rides’, International Studies Quarterly, 25 (1981) 242–54.
R. Gilpin, US Power; War and Change in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981); and The Political Economy of International Relations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987).
S. Krasner, ‘State Power’; Defending the National Interest (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978); and ‘The Tokyo Round: Particularistic Interests and Prospects for Stability in the Global Trading System’, International Studies Quarterly, 23 (1979) 491–531. R. Keohane, After Hegemony; and ‘The Theory of Hegemonic Stability’. In a recent review, Wyatt-Walter has suggested that the ‘theory of hegemonic stability probably remains the most popular and influential theory in the subject of international political economy today.’
A. Wyatt-Walter, ‘The United States and Western Europe: The Theory of Hegemonic Stability’, in N. Woods (ed.), Explaining International Relations since 1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 126.
See, amongst many others, I. Wallerstein, ‘The Reagan Non-Revolution, or the Limited Choices of the US’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 16 (1987) 467–72
S. Huntington, ‘The U.S. — Decline or Renewal?’, Foreign Affairs, 67, 2 (1988–89) 76–96
J. Nye, ‘Soft Power’, Foreign Policy, 80 (1990) 153–71
B. Russett, ‘The Mysterious Case of Vanishing Hegemony; or, Is Mark Twain Really Dead?’, International Organization, 39 (1985) 206–31
S. Strange, ‘The Persistent Myth of Lost Hegemony’, International Organization, 41 (1987) 551–74.
See E. Vogel, Japan as Number One (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979).
See G. Friedman and M. LeBard, The Coming War with Japan (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991).
For evidence that such thinking has not changed overmuch see D. Wilkinson, ‘Unipolarity without Hegemony’, International Studies Review, 1 (1999) 141–72.
R. Leaver, ‘Restructuring in the Global Economy’; and ‘International Political Economy and the Changing World Order: Evolution or Involution?’, in R. Stubbs and G. Underhill (eds), Political Economy and the Changing Global Order (London: Macmillan, 1994), pp. 130–41. See also D. Snidal, ‘The Limits of Hegemonic Stability Theory’, International Organization, 39 (1985) 579–614
and I. Grunberg, ‘Exploring the “Myth” of Hegemonic Stability’, International Organization, 44 (1990) 431–77.
S. Haggard and B. Simmons, ‘Theories of International Regimes’, International Organization, 41 (1987) 504.
See also S. Strange, ‘Cave! Hic Dragones: A Critique of Regime Analysis’, International Organization, 36 (1982) 479–96.
J. Ruggie, ‘International Regimes, Transactions and Change: Embedded Liberalism in the Postwar Economic Order’, International Organization, 36 (1982) 379–415 A. Stein, ‘The Hegemon’s Dilemma: Great Britain, the United States, and the International Economic Order’, International Organization, 38 (1984) 355–86; G. Ikenberry ‘Rethinking the Origins of American Hegemony’, Political Science Quarterly, 104 (1989) 375–400.
See R. Ashley, ‘The Poverty of Neorealism’, International Organization, 38 (1984) 225–86.
J. Rosenberg, ‘What’s the Matter With Realism?’, Review of International Studies, 16 (1990) 285–303.
C. Murphy and R. Tooze, ‘Getting Beyond the “Common Sense” of the IPE Orthodoxy’, in Murphy and Tooze (eds), The New International Political Economy (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1991), pp. 22–3.
See S. Strange, ‘The Westfailure System’, Review of International Studies, 25 (1999) 345–54,
R. Hormats, ‘Making Regionalism Safe’, Foreign Affairs, 73, 2 (1994) 97–108.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2002 Dominic Kelly
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Kelly, D. (2002). Introduction: Japan in the New World Order. In: Japan and the Reconstruction of East Asia. International Political Economy Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403905307_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403905307_1
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-42795-6
Online ISBN: 978-1-4039-0530-7
eBook Packages: Palgrave Political & Intern. Studies CollectionPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)