This article aims to uncover the socially constructed normative foundation for the alternative East Asian economic development paradigm to neoliberalism in the context of civilisational politics. The question I seek to address is why East Asian states make value claims when promoting their alternative method of economic development. In addressing this question, I make two interrelated arguments. First, I argue that the politics of Asian values can be understood as another case of non-Western society's struggle to demonstrate multiple paths to modernity. Second, on a deeper level, I show that the discourse and narratives on Asian values is part of civilisation politics aimed to recalibrate the place of East Asia in a world consisting of the civilised and the uncivilised, a divide that still remains today in various forms following European expansion in the nineteenth century. In so doing, I shed light on the performative power of ‘the standard of civilisation’, which naturalises the temporal and sequential hierarchy of civilisational identities in world politics. On the basis of this article's findings, I draw out implications of a recalibrated East Asia for the ideas of hierarchy and progress in world politics.
In this article, I seek to demonstrate the analytical utility and value-added of ‘relational ontology’ for studying region-making and regional institutional developments. Relational ontology stands in sharp contrast to the dominant individualistic ontology found in mainstream theories of regionalism. I make the case theoretically and empirically that relational ontology offers a better analytical fit with the investigation of regionalism. Analytically, the crux of relational ontology is the notion that the structure of identity and interests emerges and develops relationally in the process of one’s making contact with and subsequently marking boundary with others in relevant contexts. More concretely, I develop a three-stage analytics of boundary-making. The analytical framework proposes three sequential stages of ‘proto-boundary’, ‘yoking’, and ‘rationalization’ towards the making of a boundary that creates ‘inside’ by defining ‘outside’. This boundary-making practice is empirically observable in the politics of membership when regional institutional buildings occur. I illustrate the validity of the relational analytical framework with a case of the exclusive East Asian financial regionalism. My empirical focus is on the institutional development of the Chiang Mai Initiative (the CMI/CMIM (Chiang Mai Initiative Multilateralization)) over the past 15 years, a regional financial safety net in East Asia. In terms of membership, the ASEAN plus Three (China, Japan, and Korea) developed it while excluding the United States from membership.
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