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Contemporary Southeast Asia Vol. 36, No. 3 (2014), pp. 483–85 DOI: 10.1355/cs36-3k
© 2014 ISEAS ISSN 0129-797X print / ISSN 1793-284X electronic
Comparing Institution-Building in East Asia: Power Politics,
Governance and Critical Junctures. By Hidetaka Yoshimatsu.
Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave MacMillan, 2014. Hardcover:
231pp.
Comparing Institution-Building in East Asia makes a solid, empirically-
based contribution to the field of East Asian regionalism, and
is suitable for academics, researchers and postgraduate students.
However, the author’s four-factor historical institutionalist model
and its relation to International Relations theory, together with the
meticulous nature of its process-tracing (a social science method
of identifying causal relations and mechanisms through the
detailed analysis of an empirical case-study over time) of each case
study, make it less accessible to non-academic and undergraduate
readers.
The books’ two major strengths are founded on this inductive,
empirically sensitive model and the choice of case studies. First,
the five cases of East Asian institution-building, i.e. trade, exchange
rate management, rice reserves, oil reserves’ coordination and acid
rain monitoring are highly comparable: all started in the last fifteen
years or so, include and exclude the same states (with a few
exceptions), have undergone a similar two-stage development of
original soft institutionalism, followed by attempts at institutional
strengthening and are in the realm of “low politics” in interstate
relations. This admirable consistency across the five case studies
enhances the analytical value of the commonalities and variances
across them. Yoshimatsu provides a compelling argument for
how the commonality of early Japanese leadership interacts with
Southeast Asian states’ commitment to ASEAN “centrality” and
Chinese and South Korean competition with Japan to determine
the outcome of the second stage of institutionalization in all five
cases. One related commonality that is not fully developed in this
succinct book is the benefits of East Asia-wide regionalism and
ASEAN centrality in moderating the negative effects of Northeast
Asian power politics on interstate cooperation.
Second, as is true with many Japanese social science scholars,
the author’s attention to empirical detail and conscientious process-
tracing clarifies well the sectoral specificities of interstate interaction
between China, Japan and South Korea, and Southeast Asian
states’ interests in wider East Asian cooperation. On trade, through
participation in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), Japan is less
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Reproduced from Contemporary Southeast Asia: A Journal of International and Strategic Affairs Vol. 36, No. 3 (December
2014) (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2014). This version was obtained electronically direct from the
publisher on condition that copyright is not infringed. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the prior
permission of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Individual articles are available at
<http://bookshop.iseas.edu.sg>
484 Book Reviews
committed to the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership
(RCEP). South Korea prefers its own existing regional scheme to
the Japanese-led one for acid rain monitoring. China has shown
little interest in efforts by ASEAN Plus Three to enhance energy
security. Yoshimatsu’s commitment to careful process-tracing enlivens
the first of four factors in his model and the efforts to provide a
more nuanced explanation than the parsimonious power politics
model of Realism:
the configuration of policymakers’ preferences for political legitimacy
is different between Japan and China: Japanese government
officials seek to pursue political legitimacy of their own ministries
through regional commitments, while the ruling party’s aspiration
for maintaining its political legitimacy has strong influences on
Chinese behaviour and policies towards East Asian cooperation
(p. 6).
By delving into bureaucratic details, the author provides useful
insights into the nature of Japanese and Chinese bureaucratic
politics, how these have changed in China in particular over the
last decade, and how these forces direct and limit Japanese and
Chinese leadership of East Asian cooperation.
The ambition of the book — five cases and a theoretical
discussion — and its brevity — less than 200 pages — are
admirable but also pose shortcomings. First, all five cases are in the
International Relations realm of low politics. This dulls the book’s
attack on the monocausal limits of Realism and its focus on power
politics. Both classical and structural Realism concentrate on the
high politics of interstate interaction and competition in traditional
security. Whether or not strategic rivals such as Japan and China
cooperate on issues such as regional rice reserves or the monitoring
of acid rain is of little concern to Realists. The inclusion of cases
such as the formation of the ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting
Plus (ADMM-Plus) process even at the cost of one of the five
chosen cases would have expanded and deepened the book’s
contribution. As with the five case studies, Japan took an early
leadership role in regional security cooperation that has led to
the establishment of the ADMM-Plus process in 2010 and
ADMM-Plus has followed a similar two-stage trajectory of
institutionalization. The fact that it has included the United States
and is hence broader than East Asia reduces its comparability.
Yet, the very fact that the United States is included in the
ADMM-Plus and excluded from the five case studies highlights the
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Book Reviews 485
power political differences between the realms of high and low
politics in East Asia.
Second, there is one significant variance among the five cases
that the author does develop enough and that an alternate approach
to case-study selection could have moderated. Among the five cases,
only the second, exchange rate cooperation through the Chiang Mai
Initiative Multilateralization (CMIM), has shown any real progress
in the second stage of institution-building. As the author correctly
notes, the East Asia Emergency Rice Reserve, the Acid Deposition
Monitoring Network in East Asia (EANET), and the ASEAN Plus
Three process on energy security are still lightly institutionalized,
poorly funded cooperation efforts of limited import. It is too early to
tell whether the RCEP negotiations will lead to any greater market
access or institution-building gains than the five ASEAN+1 free trade
agreements that are at its core and are the outcome of the first stage
of East Asian regional trade cooperation.
Including the Japanese-led, Singapore-based Regional Cooperation
Agreement on Combating Piracy and Armed Robbery against Ships
in Asia (ReCAAP) would have strengthened the book’s analytical
contribution. This would have precluded the chance that CMIM
will prove to be a methodology challenging outlier of institution-
building success among the five chosen cases. ReCAAP is a recent
institutional development, Japan is its protagonist, it has followed
the same two-stage process of institution-building and, like CMIM,
it has delivered on this second stage.
Overall, however, the strengths of Comparing Institution-Building
in East Asia outweigh its shortcomings. It makes a worthy contribution
to the study of East Asian cooperation and is a good example of
the benefits of historical institutionalism and careful process tracing.
MalcolM cook is a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian
Studies (ISEAS), 30 Heng Mui Keng Terrace, Singapore 119614; email:
malcolm_cook@iseas.edu.sg.
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