Order Transitions and Primary Institutions . A Theoretical Framework
China ’s recent regional initiatives represent a fundamental lens through which we can analyze and understand Beijing’s rapidly evolving role in the regional and global order .
Thirty years ago, Deng Xiaoping theorized the need to avoid any leadership role in Asia , in order to concentrate on domestic reforms and modernization (Vogel 2011). Since the rise to power of Xi Jinping and the Fifth Generation of Leaders , China has proposed a comprehensive blueprint aimed at transforming regional governance in Asia .1 The objective of reforming and integrating the current regional and global economic order led to the promotion of the three most relevant initiatives of the Xi era: the Belt and Road initiative (BRI) ; the Asia Infrastructure and Investment Bank (AIIB ) and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). This plan has the potential to trigger a substantial evolution for the contemporary economic order, regionally and globally, and to redefine the Chinese role in Asia and beyond.
This book aims to analyse the origins, content and possible consequences of China ’s regional blueprint, and the three flagship initiatives associated with it. The book will employ a theoretical framework drawn from the English School or International Society approach to international relations, especially from recent theoretical developments that incorporate issues such as power shifts and order transitions, when considering the Asian context. This framework has several advantages. Firstly, it eschews the two main Manichaean narratives that have characterized mainstream International Relations (IR) theories relating to the rise of China : the realist narrative , which predicts a future of security competition between China and the other key Asian states, and the liberal integrationist narrative , which underlines the capacity of the global order to socialize and include a new great power through economic and social means.
Realists and power transition theorists have emphasized how Beijing’s ascendency, as with the rise of other great powers in the past, is likely to generate instability and security competition, and even trigger a hegemonic war (Friedberg 1993; Mearsheimer 2010). Structural realists tend to consider contemporary China as a potential hegemon for East Asia . As a result, according to these interpretations, a rising China will, whether or not it means to do so, destabilize the present regional order , create instability, and threaten its neighbours (Kirshner 2010). From this perspective, China and the United States (US) , are likely to fall into the Thucydides’ trap (Allison 2017): as the Ancient Greek historian stated about the conflict between Athens and Sparta, it was “the rise of Athens and the fear that this inspired in Sparta that made war inevitable” (Gilpin 1984, p. 289). Similarly, Beijing’s ascent would create a competition for security and primacy between Beijing, as a new rising power, and the US .
Analyses inspired by constructivist and liberal theories have generally provided less pessimistic predictions. They have indicated how several factors, from economic interdependence to institutionalization of the contemporary order, are likely to prevent a hegemonic conflict. Liberal theorists, such as John Ikenberry, have highlighted how China has been growing within the system, and has realized that it is much easier to join the current liberal international order rather than trying to subvert it (Ikenberry 2008). Other liberal analyses have illustrated how the important level of economic, commercial and financial integration have prevented the US and China from engaging in a great power competition. Others have located the possibility of a peaceful rise to the broader framework of a capitalist peace (Weede 2010).
Constructivist analyses have underlined how Beijing has been socialized by its participation in the vast array of international institutions and regimes that underpin the current order (Johnston 2008). Other analyses, inspired both by the constructivist and the liberal perspective, have argued that the Chinese rise represents a factor of stability and peace for the region . David Kang highlighted how the Beijing ascendency was above all a return to normality for the region (Kang 2008). Other Asian states, according to Kang, are likely to consider it both as an opportunity for trade and economic development and a return to a natural situation, after a long interlude, which began with the demise of the empire and culminated in the prolonged period of self-isolation following the Maoist revolution (Kang 2010).
The English School of International Relations has provided several interesting theoretical insights on the rise of China that overcome the Manichaean contraposition between the realist and liberal perspectives. The English School considers the rise of a new great power, such as China , as the origin of both a power shift (namely, a redistribution of material capabilities) and a process of order transition—a process of renegotiation of the patterns of hierarchy in the regional order , and the normative content of the order itself. The rise of a new power in a region entails a process of contestation , adaptation and renegotiation of the normative roots of an international (or regional) society (Goh 2013; Buzan and Zhang 2014a).
In contrast with early constructivist accounts, China is not simply the subject of a process of socialization through which it absorbs rules and norms of the international order . It can also promote its own norms and its own ideas concerning key institutions of the international society . This dialectic between assimilation and contestation represents a fundamental theoretical and analytical insight, since it helps to avoid an over-simplistic and dichotomist choice between postulating the logical necessity of the Thucydides trap and theorizing a unidirectional and unproblematic process of socialization and homogenization (Zhang 2011; Buzan 2010). This approach, focusing on the dynamic between socialization, contestation and resistance, is capable of describing and theorizing a fundamental effect of the Chinese ascendency and of the contemporary order transition: the process of influence and socialization has been mutual. China has been socialized according to the norms and institutions of the Western-led international order . However, China is demonstrating itself as increasingly capable of shaping the normative and institutional foundations of the order, regionally and globally.
Regional Orders and Primary Institutions
The crucial and perhaps most distinctive concept of the English School approach is that of primary institutions . In our analysis, primary institutions are central to an understanding how and to what extent China ’s regional initiatives are leading to a process of renegotiation of the current regional order in Asia .
The English School literature has indicated several key features of primary institutions . As stated by Hedley Bull, in his classic account: “By an institution we do not necessarily imply an organisation or administrative machinery, but rather a set of habits and practices shaped towards the realisation of common goals.” (Bull 1977, p. 74). Barry Buzan later specified the concept further, defining the fundamental properties of primary institutions as “durable and recognised patterns of shared practices rooted in values held commonly by the members of interstate societies, and embodying a mix of norms, rules and principles” (Buzan 2004, p. 181). Importantly, these norms, rules and practices should be shared and considered as legitimate by members of the international society . Primary institutions constitute the fundamental normative pillar of an international order . As a result, they represent a crucial constraint to asymmetry of economic, political and military power.
Primary institutions , moreover, “play a constitutive role in relation to bot...