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Networks of order in East Asia: Beyond hegemonic theories of the Liberal International Order

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Abstract

China’s rise is widely regarded as constituting a challenge to the Liberal International Order built in the aftermath of WWII and expanded after the end of the Cold War. This paper assesses the state of the liberal order as it is manifested in East Asia’s regional order today. It presents two main arguments. Empirically, by analysing international trade in the region over the last four decades, I find that China has already assumed a central position in the region’s trade structure. China’s economic ascent is also increasingly evident in the region’s institutional architecture. Theoretically, I propose an ‘autonomous conception of international order’ as a theoretical framework through which to understand these developments. In contrast to much of the existing literature, this approach theorises the liberal order independently of US hegemony. By doing so, it (a) makes a distinction between China’s geopolitical ambitions and its supposed revisionism of the rules and norms of the liberal order; (b) posits the liberal order as an independent factor in the strategic environment of smaller- and medium-sized states in the region; and (c) elucidates the increasingly ambivalent policies of the US towards the liberal order. Viewed through this framework, I argue that China’s rise challenges US’s regional hegemony, but has, so far, not resulted in revisions to the rules-based, liberal order.

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Notes

  1. For a discussion of these different strands of hegemonic theorising, see (Stokes 2018, 138–41).

  2. It should be noted that Mearsheimer defines international order independently of the global distribution of power. At the same time, however, he argues that a 'ideological’ international orders—of which the Liberal International Order is an example—can only be based on a unipolar distribution of global power, such as US hegemony after the end of the Cold War. If US unipolarity gives way to bi- or multipolarity, the liberal order will thus inevitable come to an end—if it has not already collapsed from its own internal weaknesses (Mearsheimer 2019, 12–14; footnote 3).

  3. An ‘important export destination’ is defined as an economy that absorbs more than 10% of a country’s total exports in a given year. These ‘important export destinations’ are visualised in the following graphs with directed lines from ASEAN economies (orange dots) and Taiwan (red) towards their destinations. The destinations can be both countries inside or outside the region. All graphs were produced in R using the ‘igraph’ software package. See (Csardi and Nepusz 2006). ASEAN was founded in 1967 and has grown in membership over time. Not all of the 10 current member states were members at the beginning of the research period. For the sake of clarity, however, I will refer to them collectively as the membership stands now throughout the research period.

  4. The data are from the International Monetary Fund’s Directory of International Trade Statistics (DOTS) database, using data on bilateral merchandise trade (International Monetary Fund 2018). The relevant data on Taiwan are missing from the DOTS database. The dataset was therefore supplemented by data on Taiwanese exports sourced directly from Taiwan’s National Statistics office. See (National Statistics Republic of China (Taiwan) 2019) Comparable data on Taiwan’s exports in year 1981 were not available.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge the generous support of the Taiwan Fellowship, which supported my stay as a visiting researcher at National Taiwan University in 2019. I would also like to thank my supervisors, Kristina Jönsson and Martin Hall, as well as an anonymous reviewer for their valuable comments on the original manuscript.

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    Thorsteinn Kristinsson

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Kristinsson, T. Networks of order in East Asia: Beyond hegemonic theories of the Liberal International Order. Int Polit 60, 1–24 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41311-021-00361-w

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