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1. The evolution of China’s Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank: from a revisionist to status-seeking agenda

Author:
Jeffrey D. Wilson
Publication Date:
01-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Relations of the Asia-Pacific
Institution:
Japan Association of International Relations
Abstract:
China’s Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) is a controversial addition to both the global and Asian economic architectures. Western critics have alleged it is a vehicle designed to achieve China’s geostrategic goals, while scholars have argued it marks China’s adoption of a ‘revisionist’ foreign policy strategy. This article argues that such interpretations are incorrect, as they fail to account for the evolution of China’s AIIB agenda. To secure a broad membership and international legitimacy for the AIIB, China compromised with partners during governance negotiations in 2015. Western country demands saw several controversial initial proposals dropped, the governance practices of existing multilateral development banks were adopted, and cooperative partnerships were developed with the World Bank and Asian Development Bank. This transition from a revisionist to status-seeking AIIB agenda reveals the flexibility of Chinese economic statecraft, and its willingness to compromise strategic goals to boost the legitimacy of its international leadership claims.
Topic:
International Relations, Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, and Banks
Political Geography:
China and Asia

2. The concept of hedging and its application to Southeast Asia: a critique and a proposal for a modified conceptual and methodological framework

Author:
Jürgen Haacke
Publication Date:
06-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Japan Association of International Relations
Abstract:
In the context of the complex unipolar post-Cold War period that has witnessed China’s reemergence as an economic and military power, small and middle powers are increasingly considered to be hedging. This analysis is especially prevalent in relation to Southeast Asian countries, many of which face security challenges posed by China. However, as the literature on hedging has expanded, the concept’s analytical value is no longer obvious. Different understandings of hedging compete within the literature, and there are many criteria by which hedging is empirically ascertained, leading to confusion even over the basic question of which countries are hedging. In response, this article presents a modified conceptual and methodological framework that clearly delineates hedging from other security strategies and identifies key criteria to evaluate whether smaller powers are hedging when confronting a serious security challenge by one of the major powers. This framework is then applied to Malaysia and Singapore.
Topic:
International Relations, Security, and Post Cold War
Political Geography:
China, Malaysia, Asia, Singapore, and Southeast Asia

3. Peace-building and State-building from the Perspective of the Historical Development of International Society

Author:
Hideaki Shinoda
Publication Date:
01-2018
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Relations of the Asia-Pacific
Institution:
Japan Association of International Relations
Abstract:
This article examines the relationship between post-conflict peace-building and state-building. In so doing, the article illustrates the process of the expansion and transformation of “world international society”. By comparing the process of the formation of sovereign states in modern Europe and state-building activities in post-conflict societies in the contemporary world, the article seeks to identify dilemmas of peace-building through state-building. First, it describes the dilemma at the level of overall international order concerning world international society and regional discrepancies of peace-building through state-building. Second, it also highlights the dilemma at the level of state-building policies concerning the concentration of power and the limitation of concentrated power. Third, it illustrates the dilemma concerning liberal peace-building and local ownership. Then, the article argues that post-conflict state-building needs to be understood in the context of the long-term state-building process.
Topic:
International Relations, Peace, and State Building
Political Geography:
Asia-Pacific and Global Focus

4. Global Issues and Business in International Relations: Intellectual Property Rights and Access to Medicines

Author:
Yoshiko Kojo
Publication Date:
01-2018
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Relations of the Asia-Pacific
Institution:
Japan Association of International Relations
Abstract:
In international relations, globalization transfers the location of governance from nation-states laterally to such private actors as nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and multinational firms, as well as vertically to local governments and supranational organizations. The purpose of this article is to clarify how the competitions among firms affect the problem of global issues by examining the case of the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) and public health. This study shows why most of least developed countries implemented the TRIPS despite the warning of NGOs not to implement earlier for the sake of access to medicines. In order to understand the positive attitude of least developed countries toward the TRIPS, we have to examine how the distribution of pharmaceutical firms capacities in developing countries affect the implementation of the TRIPS Agreement. The existence and different capacities of generic pharmaceutical companies in developing companies are important elements of state policy toward the TRIPS.
Topic:
International Relations, Globalization, International Trade and Finance, Intellectual Property/Copyright, Business, and Medicine
Political Geography:
Global Focus

5. Japan’s new assertiveness: institutional change and Japan’s securitization of China

Author:
Kai Schulze
Publication Date:
05-2018
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Relations of the Asia-Pacific
Institution:
Japan Association of International Relations
Abstract:
In recent years, Japan's foreign policy elite has started to increasingly securitize China in their security discourse. The harsher tone from Tokyo is widely evaluated as a direct reaction to China’s own assertive behavior since 2009/2010. Yet, the change in the Japanese government’s rhetoric had started changing before 2010. In order to close this gap, the present article sheds light on an alternative causal variable that has been overlooked in the literature: a change in Japan’s security institutions, more specifically, the upgrade of the Defense Agency to the Ministry of Defense, in 2007. While utilizing discursive institutionalism and securitization-approaches, the present article demonstrates that a strong correlation indeed exists between the institutional shift and the change in Japan’s defense whitepapers in the 2007–10 period. It thus opens up a research avenue for the further scrutiny of the hitherto understudied but significant causal linkage in the study of contemporary Japanese security policy toward China
Topic:
International Relations, Security, Foreign Policy, and Government
Political Geography:
Japan, China, and Asia-Pacific

6. China’s rise in English school perspective

Author:
Barry Buzan
Publication Date:
09-2018
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Relations of the Asia-Pacific
Institution:
Japan Association of International Relations
Abstract:
This chapter looks at English School (ES) theory as a way of understanding China and its rise. It focuses both on where ES theory fits well enough with China to provide an interesting perspective, and on where ‘Chinese characteristics’ put China outside the standard ES framing and raise theoretical challenges to it. The first section briefly reviews the ES literature on China. The second section places China within the normative structure of contemporary global international society by looking at how China relates to the primary institutions that define that society. The third section explores two challenges that ‘Chinese characteristics’ pose for how the ES thinks about international society: hierarchy and ‘face’. The Conclusions assess the strengths and weaknesses of ES theory in relation to understanding the rise of China.
Topic:
International Relations, Education, and International Security
Political Geography:
China and Asia

7. Reintroducing friendship to international relations: relational ontologies from China to the West

Author:
Astrid H. M. Nordin and Graham M. Smith
Publication Date:
09-2018
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Relations of the Asia-Pacific
Institution:
Japan Association of International Relations
Abstract:
Chinese government representatives and scholars have attempted to ameliorate fears about China’s rise by portraying China as a new and friendlier kind of great power. It is claimed that this represents a new way of relating which transcends problematic Western understandings of Self–Other relations and their tendency to slip into domination and enmity. This article takes such claims as a point of departure, and analyses them with focus on the explicit discussions of friendship in international relations theory. Paying attention to current Chinese thinking which emphasizes guanxi relationships, friendship can contribute to the development of genuinely relational international relations thinking and move beyond a focus on ossified forms of friendship and enmity centred on the anxious self. The vantage point of friendship suggests a way out of the dangers of theorizing Self in contrast to Other, and reopens the possibility to conceptualize Self with Other.
Topic:
International Relations, Foreign Policy, Power Politics, and Geopolitics
Political Geography:
China and Asia

8. Explaining India’s Foreign Policy: From Dream to Realization of Major Power

Author:
Takenori Horimoto
Publication Date:
09-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Relations of the Asia-Pacific
Institution:
Japan Association of International Relations
Abstract:
A power transformation appears to be taking place in Asia, brought about by the rapid emergence of China and the relative decline of US influence. India has sought a way to cope with this new situation. India itself has been rising to prominence since the 1990s, particularly its nuclear weapon tests in 1998 onward. Since the start of the twenty-first century, India has been perceived as the next country to follow China in seeking a major power status. Although India has previously tended to conceal its power aspirations, in 2015 it declared its intention to be a leading power. This article elucidates this transformation through India's policy orientation on a local, regional, and global level and its key partnerships with Russia and Japan. India’s metamorphosis holds great implications for the transformation of power in Asia.
Topic:
International Relations, Foreign Policy, and Power Politics
Political Geography:
Russia, Japan, India, Asia, and Asia-Pacific

9. Migration governance and the migration industry in Asia: moving domestic workers from Indonesia to Singapore

Author:
Charmian Goh, Kellynn Wee, and Brenda S. A. Yeoh
Publication Date:
09-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Relations of the Asia-Pacific
Institution:
Japan Association of International Relations
Abstract:
In the context of Asia, understanding migration governance needs to transcend statism to encompass the ‘middle space’ of migration. Unlike migration linked to settlement in liberal democratic states of the West, a large part of low-skilled migration in Asia – predominantly circular, feminized, and contractual—is brokered by private recruitment agencies. In adopting migration brokers as a methodological starting point, we make the case for bringing the migration industry into the fold of global migration governance analysis. Based on interviews with employment agencies deploying Indonesian domestic workers to Singapore from 2015 to 2016, we argue that migrant-destination states in Asia devolve responsibility for workers to the migration industry to order migration flows and circumvent formal cooperation with origin countries. Comprehending migration governance in Asia requires grappling with the co-constitutive governance of the state and migration industry and its interdependent dynamics, which we illuminate through the theory of strategic action fields.
Topic:
International Relations, Migration, Governance, Political Science, and State
Political Geography:
Indonesia, Asia, Singapore, and Southeast Asia

10. Why is there no Non-Western International Relations Theory? Ten years on

Author:
Amitav Acharya and Barry Buzan
Publication Date:
09-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Relations of the Asia-Pacific
Institution:
Japan Association of International Relations
Abstract:
A decade ago in 2007 we published a forum in International Relations of the Asia-Pacific (IRAP) on ‘Why there is no non-Western IR theory?’. Now we revisit this project ten years on, and assess the current state of play. What we do in this article is first, to survey and assess the relevant literature that has come out since then; second, to set out four ways in which our own understanding of this issue has evolved since 2007; third to reflect on some ways in which Asian IR might contribute to the emergence of what we call ‘Global IR’; and fourth to look specifically at hierarchy as an issue on which East Asian IR scholars might have a comparative advantage. Our aim is to renew, and perhaps refocus, the challenge to Asian IR scholars, and our hope is that this will contribute to the building of Global IR.
Topic:
International Relations and Academia
Political Geography:
Asia and Asia-Pacific