This article examines the impact of regional financial arrangements (RFAs) on the global liquidity regime. It argues that the design of RFAs could potentially alter the global regime, whether by strengthening it and making it more coherent or by decentring the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and destabilizing it. To determine possible outcomes, this analysis deploys a ‘middle‐up’ approach that focuses on the institutional design of these RFAs. It first draws on the rational design of institutions framework to identify the internal characteristics of RFAs that are most relevant to their capabilities and capacities. It then applies these insights to the interactions of RFAs with the IMF, building on Aggarwal's (1998) concept of ‘nested’ versus ‘parallel’ institutions, to create an analytical lens through which to assess the nature and sustainability of nested linkages. Through an analysis of the Chiang Mai Initiative Multilateralization (CMIM) and the Latin American Reserve Fund (FLAR), the article demonstrates the usefulness of this lens. It concludes by considering three circumstances in which fault lines created by these RFAs’ institutional design could be activated, permitting an institution to ‘leave the nest’, including changing intentions of principals, creation of parallel capabilities and facilities, and failure of the global regime to address regional needs in a crisis.

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East Asian financial regionalism was born in response to the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997-1998. The centrepiece of financial regionalism was the Chiang Mai Initiative (CMI), an emergency liquidity mechanism created by the ASEAN+3. It embodied both a clear interpretation of what had gone wrong in 1997-1998 and an understanding of the need for institutions that would be politically viable despite Sino-Japanese rivalry. Enforcement under CMI relied on the 'IMF link' -release of funds would be predicated on crisis countries' initiating negotiations with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), as a means of reducing moral hazard, enforcing conditionality and diverting blame from the leading creditors, Japan and China. The global financial crisis of 2008-2010 and the eurozone crisis that followed have inspired important changes meant to address CMI's economic gaps, including accelerated adoption of 'CMI Multilateralization' (CMIM), the creation of a new surveillance unit (ASEAN+3 Macroeconomic Research Organization, or AMRO), and the establishment of a new precautionary line. Many observers have remarked that these developments weaken the IMF link, which had effectively subordinated CMI to the IMF. While the moves appear to demonstrate a more confident, autonomous regionalism and a relative devaluation of the US-dominated global financial institutions, this paper argues that in fact, the ASEAN+3 states have again unearthed the underlying politics of divided leadership and mutual suspicion. CMIM is now threatened by the renewed potential for internal divisions. Further complicating the picture, both China and Japan have recently established large bilateral swap lines outside of the CMIM framework with several of their ASEAN+3 partners, raising the question of whether CMIM is moving towards political irrelevance even as it has arrived at a high water mark in its institutional development.

East Asian financial regionalism has advanced significantly since the rejection of Japan's Asian Monetary Fund proposal in 1997. Key ASEAN+3 initiatives include the Chiang Mai Initiative, which is designed to provide emergency liquidity to economies experiencing currency crisis, and the Asian Bond Market Initiative, which seeks to develop regional bond markets. Surprisingly, these initiatives—despite the assertive “regionalist” rhetoric that has surrounded them and their intellectual origins in the analysis of the 1997–1998 Asian financial crisis—are explicitly designed to complement existing features of the global financial architecture, including IMF conditionality and global financial standards. The nesting of East Asian financial regionalism within the global financial architecture results from the political-economic interests of the leading economies of the region. In the absence of a major change in the political-economic environment, nesting is a stable equilibrium and is unlikely to change.

Since new distributed ledger technologies hold out a promise to restructure cross‐border flows of people and material resources, they affect globalization and alter transnational spaces. Their capacity to facilitate secure and disintermediated value transfer through crypto‐code and smart contracts enables novel forms of remittance transfer, resource management and digital identity verification – and may also generate new vulnerabilities. In this article, we examine the use of emerging blockchain applications in various migration and diaspora related initiatives in the emerging economies of Africa, Asia and Europe. By building on existing social networks of mutual obligation and quasi‐ethnic affinities, blockchain technologies may facilitate the ability to enlarge the scope of diasporas and change the nature of belonging, sovereignty, migration and statehood. Through exploring the selective foregrounding of mutuality and materiality in such alternative value transfer systems, we seek to explain the dynamics of trust and agency that these networks generate to extend commitments and loyalties in the transnational space.

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The Global Financial Crisis has severely weakened the legitimacy of the US-led global financial system. This has not only led to efforts to remake the global system through the G20 and related process but has also aroused interest in regional alternatives to the global architecture. Considerable attention has understandably been focused on Europe, but the global crisis also has profound implications for East Asia. Clichés about the ‘rise of East Asia’ obscure the very real contest now being fought over the shape of regional financial cooperation in East Asia, particularly through the ASEAN + 3. This chapter investigates the impact of two variables that theories predict will be of particular importance going forward: (a) the increasing desire of East Asian neighbors to contain Chinese influence in the region and (b) the increased number of ASEAN + 3 participants that have also become official participants in the global-level discussions due to the formation of the G20. The chapter concludes that these changes are likely to increase the tensions inside ASEAN + 3, even as the demand for regionalist solutions increases.

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