Showing papers in "International Relations of the Asia-Pacific in 2004"

Rediscovering Asianness: the role of institutional discourses in APEC, 1989–1997

Abstract: Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) emerged as the largest regional body in history and gave rise to two institutional discourses: open regionalism and Asian values. Open regionalism entailed the articulation of a non-discriminatory and inclusive regionalism. While endorsing the idea of an Asia-Pacific community, APEC has suffered as a result of clashes between two of its core constituencies, its Asian and Anglo-Saxon members. In reality, APEC had lost its articulatory role by the mid-1990s; no significant agreements have been concluded since the Osaka summit of 1995. However, Asian values have emerged as a vehicle for the advocacy of Asian identity, instead of the open regionalism of APEC. This paper, then, focuses primarily on these two institutional discourses and explores the evolution of APEC; how discourses on ‘Asianness’ have been articulated as an alternative to the idea of an Asia-Pacific identity.

China and the WTO : the theory and practice of compliance.

Abstract: Since China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) in December 2001, attention has turned to the issue of whether or not China is a responsible member of the organization and how compliant China is with WTO rules. This article discusses the difficulties faced by China, as a responsible rising power, in trying to adjust itself to global trading norms. It examines the theory of compliance in international relations from the perspectives of neo-realism, liberal institutionalism and social constructivism, and then tests these perspectives by examining the mechanisms used to gauge China's compliance, both bilaterally by the United States and multilaterally through the Dispute Settlement Mechanism and the Transition Review Mechanism of the WTO. The result is mixed: different opinions exist as to how compliant China has been but, on the whole, most monitors agree that China has tried hard to comply with WTO requirements in various areas, though much remains to be done. The most severe tests will come in the next few years when China's financial and service sectors will have to face fundamental changes to the way they operate.

Dyadic effects of democratization on international disputes

Abstract: I explore the dyadic, as opposed to monadic, effect of democratization on war. Using a simple repeated game of interstate interaction, I show that, as a state shifts towards democracy, its citizens aquire more opportunities and become more willing to remove those leaders that they expect will reduce their welfare. Rational leaders anticipate this consequence, and their incentives to maintain cooperative relationships with other democracies increase as their states become democratic. The hypothesis drawn from the model predicts that democratization will have a pacifying effect in a dyadic relationship between democracies. Empirical testing is designed to isolate the dyadic effect from the monadic and to distinguish among competing hypotheses. The predictions are tested with widely used data on political institutions and militarized interstate disputes. The result shows that democratization indeed reduces the likelihood of waging war. However, this pacifying effect is largely attributed to the dyadic effect with a democratic opponent; the risk of war remains unchanged when facing a non-democratic opponent.