Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2brh9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T18:37:42.964Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Legalization as Strategy: The Asia-Pacific Case

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 July 2003

Miles Kahler
Get access

Abstract

The Asia-Pacific region offers an example of low legalization of regional institutions and perhaps an explicit aversion to legalization. An examination of three key regional institutions—ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations), APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation), and the ARF (ASEAN Regional Forum)—confirms a regional process of institution building without legalization. Recent developments in these institutions permit some discrimination among competing explanations for low legalization. On the one hand, ASEAN has embraced a legalized dispute-settlement mechanism; Asian governments have also employed legalized global institutions. On the other hand, the ARF and APEC continue to resist clear-cut legal obligations and third-party dispute resolution. This pattern suggests that legalization is best viewed as driven by the demands of economic integration and as a strategic response by governments in particular institutional settings. These explanations undermine alternatives based on domestic legal culture and uniformly high sovereignty costs. The Asian economic crisis has reopened a debate over regional institutions, which may fix on legalization as part of a new regional institutional design.

Type
Law and Economic Integration
Information
International Organization , Volume 54 , Issue 3 , Summer 2000 , pp. 549 - 571
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 2000

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

I wish to thank Robert O. Keohane, Andrew MacIntyre, Richard Steinberg, the editors of International Organization, the participants in the June 1997 conference “Domestic Politics and International Law” and an anonymous reviewer for their comments on previous drafts of this article. Hilary Hicks, Cory Fire-stone, and Pablo Pinto provided valuable research assistance.

1. Kahler 1988.

2. The original members of ASEAN, founded in 1967, were Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Singapore. Brunei became a member in 1984; Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar were admitted to membership in the 1990s.

3. Leifer 1989.

4. Ibid., 25.

5. Hoang 1996, 63–71.

6. Chia 1996, 59.

7. Thambipillai and Saravanamuttu 1985, 11–13.

8. See Acharya 1998; and Khong 1998.

9. Excluding Singapore, a crucial entrepot, intra-ASEAN trade was less than 5 percent of total trade. Chia 1996, 63.

10. See Chia 1996; and Ravenhill 1995.

11. Ravenhill 1995.

12. Cooke, Kieran and Montagnon, Peter. A Liberal Pinch of Eastern Spice, Financial Times, 18 October 1995, 12Google Scholar.

13. ASEAN Secretariat 1997, 15–36.

14. See Ravenhill 1995; and Chia 1996.

15. In addition to ASEAN members, the membership of the ARF includes Australia, Canada, China, the European Union (presidency), India, Japan, Mongolia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Republic of Korea, Russia, and the United States.

16. Johnston 1999, 287.

17. Ibid.

18. Garofano 1999, 76–77.

19. Leifer 1996, 35.

20. Khong 1997.

21. See Johnston 1999; and Foot 1998.

22. Garofano 1999, 87.

23. Funabashi 1995, 52–53.

24. Ibid., 64.

25. Krause 1994.

26. Yamazawa 1992.

27. Ravenhill 1998, 159.

28. See Soesastro 1994, 47; and Plummer 1998.

29. Zhang 1998, 222.

30. Soesastro 1994, 50.

31. Bergsten 1994.

32. Ravenhill 1998, 159.

33. Yamakage 1997, 293.

34. Ostry 1998.

35. Janow 1996/97, 948.

36. Petri 1997, 41.

37. Urata 1998, 108.

38. APEC Eminent Persons Group 1993, 40.

39. APEC Eminent Persons Group 1994, 23–24.

40. Ibid., 23.

41. Models of this kind are elaborated by Kenneth W. Abbott and Duncan Snidal in this issue.

42. Yarbrough and Yarbrough 1992.

43. Green 1995, 730–31.

44. Hooker 1978.

45. Lev 1972, 5–6.

46. Fasseur 1992, 256.

47. Upham 1987.

48. Abbott and Snidal, this issue.

49. Keohane, Moravcsik, and Slaughter, this issue.

50. Katzenstein 1997, 28.

51. Croome 1995, 149.

52. Funabashi 1995, 196–97.

53. McGivern 1996, 101.

54. Under GATT only nine complaints were brought by Asian governments (4.35 percent of the total). Three of these were brought by Hong Kong. In the short time that the WTO procedure has been operational, 10.63 percent of the complaints have been brought by Asian states. The proportion of complaints made against Asian countries has remained roughly the same.

55. Hoang 1996, 69–70.

56. Ching, Frank, Resolving ASEAN's Problems, Far Eastern Economic Review, 23 January 1997, 28Google Scholar.

57. Al Labita, Push for More Transparency in Free Trade, Business Times (Singapore), 7 October 1998, 6Google ScholarPubMed; and ASEAN to Use Anti-dumping Mechanism Soon, Businessworld (Philippines), 6 February 1998Google Scholar.

58. APEC Eminent Persons Group 1995, 12. See also Krause 1997, 245.

59. McGivern 1996, 104.

60. Luce, Edward, APEC Rejects Rigid Disputes Mechanism, Financial Times, 25/26 May 1996, 3Google Scholar.

61. APEC 1998.

62. ASEAN Regional Forum 1999.

63. Nayam Chand with Islam, Shada, In the Bunker, Far Eastern Economic Review, 6 August 1998, 24–28Google Scholar.

64. Gong 1984, 181.

65. Brownlie 1984, 365.

66. Harris 1999.

67. The Limits of Politeness, The Economist, 28 February 1998, 43–44Google ScholarPubMed. For other critical reviews of APEC, the ARF, and ASEAN, see Cheng 1998; Acharya 1999; and Wesley 1999.

68. See Doner 1997, 201; and Petri 1997, 43.

69. Simmons, this issue.