Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013. x, 320 pp. (Tables.) US$65.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-8047-8364-4.
Continuing globalization has not resulted in a declining interest in regional integration. Quite the opposite: regional integration is analyzed and discussed in a number of regions. Europe and Asia are two large regions that attract the attention of both scholars and policy makers. Miles Kahler’s edited volume examines regional integration processes in Asia, but the book’s chapters also provide a comparative perspective and consider developments in Europe and Latin America.
The book is organized into five parts and ten chapters. After Kahler’s introductory chapter, in part 2, the authors look at the design of regional institutions. The third part is devoted to a comparison of Latin American and European integration, whilst part 4 deals with Asian regional institutions and their potential future convergence. Andrew MacIntyre and John Ravenhill have contributed the concluding chapter, which evaluates the future of Asian regional institutions.
In the introduction, Miles Kahler argues that some frequently made assumptions about regional integration fail to convince. He suggests that there is no fixed sequencing starting with a free trade area and being completed with a political union as suggested by Bela Balassa more than 50 years ago (13). Sovereign states are exploring the utility of regional integration, but neither is regional integration a process without side-effects, nor is deeper integration in Asia a given development. This caution reflects the difficulties that integration projects all over the world have been experiencing in recent years. Consequently, none of the authors in the edited volume is overly optimistic on the prospects for regionalism in Asia. Advocates of regional integration have discarded grand designs and potent declarations, which have been replaced by incrementalism and a search for a (small) common denominator.
Simon Hix is analyzes the institutional design of integration processes, but his analysis is somewhat dated. His suggestion that European “citizens and state officials share a post-national concept of sovereignty” (31) certainly is not an accurate description of the EU in 2014. Furthermore, the assumption that Europe has been able to “progress so far with such a high level of national and political consensus” (37) shows that the text was written before European societies—from Finland to Italy—have been re-discovering their nation-states.
Judith G. Kelly’s piece is looking at regional integration from a different angle. She argues that the challenge for regional integration is to accommodate “heterogeneous preferences, capacities, and beliefs” (79). Indeed, this is a matter that all projects of regional integration are struggling with. Amitav Acharya, by contrast, provides a more optimistic assessment of regional integration processes and argues that institutions in Asia can contribute to the development of common preferences in Asia. He uses a constructivist approach and argues that socialization can lead to a region-wide “taken-for-grantedness” (226). Without the use of force or coercion, new actors are supposed to adopt “the rules and norms of a community on a long-term basis” (225). However, Kelly has pointed out the failure of that approach in Europe, where the Greek crisis from 2010 has not shown a successful enforcement of the existing rules, but has resulted in the socialization of risk and financial losses (90).
Kevin H. O’Rourke, whose institutional affiliation is not mentioned in the list of contributors, regards the European Union with sympathy and evaluates the integration process positively. However, some of his judgments are not sufficiently clear. He identifies Asia as a single player and suggests that “Asia is not a declining, but a rising power” (146). The decision of the member countries of the European Economic Community to establish a broad integration scheme covering both agriculture and industry reflected the specific regulations of Art. 24 of the GATT (149). In Asia, the interest of Asian states in monetary integration is not caused by their ability to export worldwide without facing restrictions (150), but rather because the countries in the region experienced a devastating financial crisis in 1997–98.
C. Randall Henning discusses economic crises and regional institutions, which is a very interesting debate. However, some of his assessments are not convincing. He suggests that Germany had greater influence than France over the construction of the monetary union in Europe (189). In reality, France had successfully pushed for monetary union, and subsequently Germany contributed to the shaping of the rules in the eurozone. To suggest that the German government or German citizens were eager to give up their currency is a misreading of history. Of course, the principle of the decision for monetary union matters more than the details.
More generally, the edited volume has two weaknesses. The first is that the contributions are not critically evaluating the consequences of the crisis in Europe for the concept of regional integration. Prior to that crisis, regional integration was often understood as a mechanism “to safeguard against future shocks from the global economy” (Kahler, 4). But in Europe, the very process of regional monetary integration has been the source of the crisis. The negative shock came from within, not from abroad. Thus, many observers in Europe have been suggesting that regional integration is not part of the solution, but instead part of the problem.
The second weak point is that the effects of the new mega project in Asia, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), are not discussed in an individual chapter. TPP, in conjunction with the Transatlantic Trade and Investment partnership TTIP, has the potential to reshape international economic relations. Simultaneously, TPP and TTIP weaken the multilateral trade regime and exclude China. These two projects constitute a systemic threat to the WTO and cast a long shadow over all existing preferential trade agreements in Asia and elsewhere. Despite these limitations, the edited volume of Miles Kahler and Andrew MacIntyre makes an important contribution to the already significant literature on regional integration in Asia. The diversity of approaches makes the book beneficial for both students and scholars.
Heribert Dieter
German Institute for International and Security Affairs, Berlin, Germany
pp. 832-834