This project is trying to understand and explain the increasingly complex relationship between de facto market driven regional economic integration on the one hand and the more constrained process of de jure institutional cooperation and policy coordination on the other. Traditional theoretical explanations of regional integration and regionalism cope poorly with this interaction. The project investigates three questions:

(i) Does the development of Asia Pacific economic cooperation inhibit or promote 'access' to the region (as a market, and a source of finance and ideas) for European state and non-state actors?

(ii) Do inter-regional linkages between economic policy-making communities in East Asia and Europe mitigate or exacerbate policy differences between the regions?

(iii) What conditions need to develop at the institutional level between Europe and Asia to balance triadic relations between Europe and North America and North America and Asia?

These remain crucial questions. The answers are, of course, clearly conditioned by the events in Asia since July 1997. Recent developments in the region, especially the new Miyazawa Initiative and discussions over what future cooperation should be developed in the monetary domain are active on the policy agenda. Higgott is currently working on a paper that will report on the nature of this cooperation and its implications for policy in the short to medium- terms.

 

Output:

 

Richard Higgott, "The Politics of Economic Crisis in East Asia: Some Longer Term Implications", CSGR Working Paper 02/98, March 1998 Abstract, Full Document