When we take a look at the institutional dynamics and transformations unfolding in East Asia 1 over the past 20 years, we can observe a great many changes occurring within the regional institutional landscape. More and more novel institutional arrangements have emerged that are contributing to integrative processes in the region and affecting regional policies, thereby constituting the regional order. In the academic discipline of International Relations (IR), 2 the creation of regional institutions is commonly studied as being an integral part of regionalism in world politics (e.g. Fawcett and Hurrell 1995; Hurrell 1995). Herein, the regional architecture of East Asia is often used as a salient case for investigating the dynamic interplay of integrative processes (e.g. Rozman 2012; Stubbs 2002; Terada 2012; Webber 2001). Besides the questions of why and how specific regional institutions are designed, another central research theme is in what ways regional institutions matter and to what extent they have an effect on regional and international relations.
Regional institutions are designed by individual actors, while at the same time also having an effect on the latterâs actions and behavior. Though institutions constrain their members to a certain extent, only individuals can change them and it is they who are ultimately responsible for the institutionâs actions. These circumstances provoke certain questions relating to the ontological status of institutions: Do they have causal effects independent of their member states? Are they real entities? Or, are their members the only real entities? In my view, such ontological questions about the nature of institutions need to be addressed first, in order to understand how we can even begin to study them.
By drawing on critical realism (Bhaskar 1998, 2008)âa philosophy of science 3 that argues for a world existing independently of our conceptions or knowledge about itâthis work aims to reconsider the emergence of regional institutions in the international system by introducing the concept of âemergenceâ (e.g. Bedau and Humphreys 2008; Greve and Schnabel 2011) to IR theory. 4 How we can best think of emergence in the international system remains an underexplored yet highly relevant theme in IR. First, in terms of theory, it addresses the question of how we can most satisfactorily conceive of the ways in which forms of social order emerge out of underlying social structures and relations, but at the same time generate their own irreducible characteristics and abilities. Second, as to empirical work, it is important to study how emergence works in particular settings and in what ways emergent entities within the international system have a causal impact on their individual partsâ actions and behavior. From this perspective, emergence is significant for understanding ontological questions in the social sciences (see Elder-Vass 2012). The concept is, therefore, âcritical to the examination of the most fundamental questions of the origin and behaviour of modern statesâ (Root 2013, 32), and to the scrutiny of other entities of the international system such as institutions.
In this book, I seek to introduce a conceptualization of social emergence to IR theory, in order to rethink how novel structures or forms of orderâsuch as regional institutions in East Asiaâemerge in the international system, thereby developing their own causal effects. Rather than focusing only on when and/or how particular regional institutions emerge, my main interest is instead to consider in what ways regional institutions can be understood and studied as emergent entitiesâand their creation as an emergent process in the international system. This requires the following issues being addressed:
- First, identifying the novel or innovative properties of the emergent structure. That is to say, the emergent properties that a regional institution possesses but none of its parts possess need to be detected.
- Second, the relationship between an institution and its parts. In this regard, it is asked in what ways a regional institution depends on the interactions of its parts but is not reducible to the latter at the same time, so that it cannot be deduced from them alone. This is connected to the question of whether a regional institution has some kind of downward causal effect on its parts.
- Third, the underlying structures and mechanisms from which new forms of order emerge. This means looking into how regional institutions emerge from the interactions among and between states, and thus identifying the mechanisms of institutional emergence (while taking into account that both the process of emergence and the specific form of an emergent institution cannot be foreseen).
Accordingly, the particular research problem that I am interested in here is the nature of regional institutions and their emergence. The focus of analysis is specifically on institutional dynamics, so that emphasis is put on process. The critical realist approach advanced here conceives of the international system as a stratified and open one made up of emergent entities, and starts from a different point of view when studying regional institutions than most IR approaches do. It builds on the assumption that the complexity of the international system repeatedly displays new forms of social structure that arise from the continuous interactions of its components.
These new structures demonstrate properties that the parts themselves do not possess. Regional institutions, according to the main argument of this work, can be understood as such emergent entities of the international system, ones that arise out of underlying structures and relations but that are not simply reducible to any of their constituent parts. I do not, then, aim to lay out specific factors or events that have led to the emergence of regional institutions, which means I do not intend to explain the individual causes of particular instances of institution building. Rather, based on critical realist ontology, I aim to examine the particular underlying structures, relations, and processes that are at work in the emergence of regional institutionsâand the latterâs emergent properties and powers, which are implicated in the process.
Besides offering a novel perspective on how to understand regional dynamics and institution building in East Asia, another aspiration of this work is to illustrate how emergence works in this particular regional setting. For this purpose, it investigates in depth two regional institutions: Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Plus Three (APT) and the East Asia Summit (EAS). The East Asian case is a particularly interesting one due to the distinct dynamic of a mixture of diverse bi-, tri-, and multilateral groupings that partly overlap in their issues and tasks. In this way, regionalism in East Asia is particularly pragmatic and flexible. Definitions of what constitutes the East Asian region are determined by the principle of âvariable geometryâ (Asian Development Bank 2008), in that the structure of cooperation often adapts to the shifting priorities of different groups and members. As such, there are multiple tracks and speeds that mark the different parallel arrangements in the region.
Furthermore, integrative processes in East Asia are rather informal and inclusive as compared to other regions. This shows up in the regional institutionsâ distinctive designs, which are characterized by an âAsian wayâ of institution building that emphasizes decisions based on deliberation and consensus (e.g. Kahler 2013). A further characteristic of the regionalism in East Asia is the central role that the ASEANârather than a single regional powerâplays within related institution-building processes.
With Russia and the USA having become recent members of the EAS, a new dynamic in the regional integration process might now develop. The growth of China and India into the main regional powers demonstrates the importance of East Asia for the world economy and politics. ASEAN economies are growing steadily in a relative stable political environment. Both institutional processes, APT and the EAS, illustrate the awareness of East Asian leaders of the need for further regional cooperation and integration. Besides, both groupings have served China by being a platform through which to attain greater political and economic influence in the regionâsomething the USA is still concerned about (Chye 2012, 121).
With due regard to these current dynamics, institutional processes in East Asia are thus exceptionally open and often unpredictable. For example, the creation of new institutional arrangements often occurs in response to external impetusâsuch as the establishment of APT after the Asian financial crisis of 1997. Sometimes, institutional membership is expandedâas in the case of the EASâs aforementioned recent membership enlargement to now also include the USA and Russia. However it is also common to establish a new institutional forum so as to include an enlarged number of possible participants, as was the case with the EASâs inception.
While most IR studies concerned with institutional developments in East Asia focus on those incidents and events that we can tangibly observe, this work seeks to shed light on the mechanisms within such institutional dynamics that we cannot directly see but that still contribute to emergence. What is also striking is that although most of the contemporary literature on East Asian regionalism commonly uses the term emergence to describe the institutional dynamics in the region (e.g. Stubbs 2002; Terada 2003), it is not further conceptualized or declared to be worthy of consideration in itself. Some authors criticize, similarly, the fact that there are too few systematic studies explaining the emergence of and change in Asian regionalism (e.g. Yu 2003, 263).
Much the same applies to the institutionalist literature (e.g. Hall and Taylor 1996; March and Olsen 1989), which aims to explain institutional changes and transformations but fails to adequately consider the process of how institutions initially come into being (see Pierson 2000). In my view, conceptualizing emergence in the international system is a crucial step toward analyzing such processes and dynamics, and furthermore, it provides an alternative perspective regarding how to best account for the ever-changing nature of diverse forms of social order. In this connection, it is crucial to highlight how I start from a different point of view when I examine regional institutions and their emergence than IR studies influenced by regionalism and institutionalism commonly do. This does not mean, however, that the latter are simply disregarded, but that they (as discussed in the following two sections) serve rather as a starting point from which to develop a critical realist view on social emergence in the international system.
1.1 Regionalism in East Asia: Changing Institutional Patterns in a Complex Region
In IR, the emergence of regional institutions has thus far been mainly considered in the context of regionalism in world politics (e.g. Fawcett and Hurrell 1995; Haas 1958; Hurrell 1995; VĂ€yrynen 2003). Regionalism commonly implies âthe deliberate act of forging a common platform, including new intergovernmental organizations and transnational civil society networks, to deal with common challenges, realize common objectives, and articulate and advance common identityâ (Acharya 2010, 1002). In this context, the evolution of regional cooperation in East Asia has been remarkable, coming especially in response to the Asian financial crisis of 1997. Despite different theoretical approaches, a great many studies have in common the interpretation of this crisis as an event that set new forms of regionalism in East Asia in motion.
Various contributions have analyzed the crisis and its aftermath from a politicalâeconomic perspective, in order to capture the interaction of the diverse factors that caused itâas well as to evaluate its implications (e.g. Hende...