Social emergence in international relations

SOCIAL EMERGENCE IN
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
Institutional Dynamics in East Asia

Maren Wagner


Social Emergence in International Relations


Maren Wagner

Social Emergence
in International
Relations
Institutional Dynamics in East Asia


Maren Wagner
GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies
Hamburg, Germany

ISBN 978-3-319-33550-6
ISBN 978-3-319-33551-3
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-33551-3

(eBook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016946225
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the

Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the
publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to
the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made.
Cover illustration: © Maria Kazanova / Alamy Stock Vector
Printed on acid-free paper
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature
The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG Switzerland


ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The idea for this book evolved out of my research interest in institutional dynamics in East Asia—a region characterized by a fascinating and
ever-growing meshwork of regional institutions, entities that contribute
to integrative processes and that affect regional policies. I have always
wondered how such regional institutions emerge and acquire the distinct
characteristics that give them their own unique nature. Looking at existing
scholarly works, I found these issues to be mostly unresolved and indeed
contested in the field of International Relations (IR). I thus felt the need
to reconsider the emergence of regional institutions in such a way as to
incorporate into IR thinking the complex interplay between such emergent entities in the international system, and furthermore to clarify how
emergence works and how we can potentially trace it.

This book would not have been possible without the assistance and
support of the various individuals and institutions that have facilitated and
encouraged its creation. First, I want to thank both the GIGA German
Institute of Global and Area Studies and the University of Hamburg for
their financial support, which not only allowed me to hone my research at
several international workshops, conferences, and during a research stay in
Singapore but also to finish this book. Second, I want to specifically thank
Dirk Nabers, University of Kiel, and Patrick Köllner, GIGA Institute of
Asian Studies, for allowing me the space to develop my arguments and
for always being open to my requests and thoughts. At the GIGA, I also
want to thank all those colleagues who commented on my research at
its different stages, and who shared their perspectives on and discussed
the various issues related to current developments in world politics.
v


vi

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Many thanks especially to Nicola Nymalm and David Shim for reading
parts of this work and for providing me with helpful feedback. For his
excellent proofreading I thank James Powell—any remaining mistakes are
my own.
Third, I want to mention the kind hospitality of the Konrad Adenauer
Foundation (KAS) and its staff in Singapore, who took me in as a visiting research fellow and thus provided me with a well-suited base for my
research in the region. I am also grateful to all those academics, diplomats,
and other experts in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore who shared with
me their insights into institutional dynamics and developments in East
Asia. Furthermore, I want to acknowledge the useful observations provided especially by Amitav Acharya, Patrick T. Jackson, Jonathan Joseph,

Xia Liping, and Milja Kurki at the different stages of this work’s creation.
The most important encouragement to keep going with this work
came, ultimately, from my own family: My parents continue to be proof
of what is most important in life, and their love and understanding have
always been of great support to me. My husband, Volker, is not only my
greatest supporter, but also my greatest critic—thank you for your enduring faith in me and for always keeping my spirits up. I dedicate this book
to them, and in particular to my father—he was always the most loveable
and good-natured person in my life, and someone that I now miss every
day.


CONTENTS

Part I
1

2

3

4

The Issue of Institutional Emergence in East Asia:
An Introduction

3

A Critical Realist Approach to the Study
of World Politics

25

Emergence and Complexity in the International
System: Developing a Social Ontology of International
Relations

79

Emergence and the Complexity of Social Practices:
The Role of Discourse in Social Emergence

Part II
5

1

The Case of Institutional Emergence in East Asia:
Analyzing Regional Institutions as Emergent Entities

143

185

187

vii


viii

6

7

CONTENTS

Examining the Role of Discourse in Institutional
Emergence in East Asia: ASEAN Plus Three and 
the East Asia Summit

205

The Relevance of Social Emergence in World Politics:
Conclusion and Outlook

269

Index

287


ABBREVIATIONS

AMRO
APEC
APT
ASEAN
ASEM
CAQDAS

CDA
CEPEA
CMI
CMIM
EAEC
EAS
EASG
EAVG
FTA(s)
IO
IR
MoEAI
MoFAJ
MoFAPRC
PMoI
TAC

ASEAN Plus Three Macroeconomic Research Office
Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation
ASEAN Plus Three
Association of Southeast Asian Nations
Asia-Europe Meeting
Computer-Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis Software
Critical Discourse Analysis
Comprehensive Economic Partnership in East Asia
Chiang Mai Initiative
Chiang Mai Initiative Multilateralization
East Asian Economic Caucus
East Asia Summit
East Asia Study Group

East Asia Vision Group
Free Trade Agreement(s)
International Organization
International Relations
Ministry of External Affairs, India
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China
Prime Minister of India
Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia

ix


LIST

Table 3.1
Table 3.2
Table 3.3
Table 5.1
Table 6.1
Table 6.2
Table 6.3
Table 6.4
Table 6.5

OF

TABLES

Emergent properties of regional institutions

Emergent properties of regional institutions
and corresponding powers
Illustration of abduction
Three dimensions of analyzing institutional discourse
Word frequencies of complete corpus (top 20)
Word frequencies of APT and the EAS by
comparison (top 20)
Code co-occurrences: aims and challenges
Code co-occurrences: scope and aims/challenges
Code co-occurrences: ASEAN centrality

121
122
127
200
218
219
223
237
254

xi


PART I


CHAPTER 1

The Issue of Institutional Emergence in East

Asia: An Introduction

When we take a look at the institutional dynamics and transformations
unfolding in East Asia1 over the past 20  years, we can observe a great
many changes occurring within the regional institutional landscape. More
and more novel institutional arrangements have emerged that are contributing to integrative processes in the region and affecting regional policies, thereby constituting the regional order. In the academic discipline
of International Relations (IR),2 the creation of regional institutions is
commonly studied as being an integral part of regionalism in world politics (e.g. Fawcett and Hurrell 1995; Hurrell 1995). Herein, the regional
architecture of East Asia is often used as a salient case for investigating
the dynamic interplay of integrative processes (e.g. Rozman 2012; Stubbs
2002; Terada 2012; Webber 2001). Besides the questions of why and how
specific regional institutions are designed, another central research theme
is in what ways regional institutions matter and to what extent they have
an effect on regional and international relations.
Regional institutions are designed by individual actors, while at the
same time also having an effect on the latter’s actions and behavior.
Though institutions constrain their members to a certain extent, only
individuals can change them and it is they who are ultimately responsible
for the institution’s actions. These circumstances provoke certain questions relating to the ontological status of institutions: Do they have causal
effects independent of their member states? Are they real entities? Or, are
their members the only real entities? In my view, such ontological ques-

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016
M. Wagner, Social Emergence in International Relations,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-33551-3_1

3


4

M. WAGNER

tions about the nature of institutions need to be addressed first, in order
to understand how we can even begin to study them.
By drawing on critical realism (Bhaskar 1998, 2008)—a philosophy of
science3 that argues for a world existing independently of our conceptions or knowledge about it—this work aims to reconsider the emergence
of regional institutions in the international system by introducing the
concept of “emergence” (e.g. Bedau and Humphreys 2008; Greve and
Schnabel 2011) to IR theory.4 How we can best think of emergence in the
international system remains an underexplored yet highly relevant theme
in IR. First, in terms of theory, it addresses the question of how we can
most satisfactorily conceive of the ways in which forms of social order
emerge out of underlying social structures and relations, but at the same
time generate their own irreducible characteristics and abilities. Second, as
to empirical work, it is important to study how emergence works in particular settings and in what ways emergent entities within the international
system have a causal impact on their individual parts’ actions and behavior.
From this perspective, emergence is significant for understanding ontological questions in the social sciences (see Elder-Vass 2012). The concept is,
therefore, “critical to the examination of the most fundamental questions
of the origin and behaviour of modern states” (Root 2013, 32), and to the
scrutiny of other entities of the international system such as institutions.
In this book, I seek to introduce a conceptualization of social emergence
to IR theory, in order to rethink how novel structures or forms of order—
such as regional institutions in East Asia—emerge in the international system,
thereby developing their own causal effects. Rather than focusing only on
when and/or how particular regional institutions emerge, my main interest is
instead to consider in what ways regional institutions can be understood and
studied as emergent entities—and their creation as an emergent process in
the international system. This requires the following issues being addressed:
• First, identifying the novel or innovative properties of the emergent

structure. That is to say, the emergent properties that a regional institution possesses but none of its parts possess need to be detected.
• Second, the relationship between an institution and its parts. In this
regard, it is asked in what ways a regional institution depends on the
interactions of its parts but is not reducible to the latter at the same
time, so that it cannot be deduced from them alone. This is connected to the question of whether a regional institution has some
kind of downward causal effect on its parts.


THE ISSUE OF INSTITUTIONAL EMERGENCE IN EAST ASIA: AN INTRODUCTION

5

• Third, the underlying structures and mechanisms from which new
forms of order emerge. This means looking into how regional institutions emerge from the interactions among and between states, and
thus identifying the mechanisms of institutional emergence (while
taking into account that both the process of emergence and the specific form of an emergent institution cannot be foreseen).
Accordingly, the particular research problem that I am interested in here
is the nature of regional institutions and their emergence. The focus of
analysis is specifically on institutional dynamics, so that emphasis is put on
process. The critical realist approach advanced here conceives of the international system as a stratified and open one made up of emergent entities,
and starts from a different point of view when studying regional institutions
than most IR approaches do. It builds on the assumption that the complexity of the international system repeatedly displays new forms of social structure that arise from the continuous interactions of its components.
These new structures demonstrate properties that the parts themselves do
not possess. Regional institutions, according to the main argument of this
work, can be understood as such emergent entities of the international system, ones that arise out of underlying structures and relations but that are
not simply reducible to any of their constituent parts. I do not, then, aim to
lay out specific factors or events that have led to the emergence of regional
institutions, which means I do not intend to explain the individual causes of
particular instances of institution building. Rather, based on critical realist
ontology, I aim to examine the particular underlying structures, relations, and

processes that are at work in the emergence of regional institutions—and the
latter’s emergent properties and powers, which are implicated in the process.
Besides offering a novel perspective on how to understand regional
dynamics and institution building in East Asia, another aspiration of this
work is to illustrate how emergence works in this particular regional setting. For this purpose, it investigates in depth two regional institutions:
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Plus Three (APT) and
the East Asia Summit (EAS). The East Asian case is a particularly interesting one due to the distinct dynamic of a mixture of diverse bi-, tri-,
and multilateral groupings that partly overlap in their issues and tasks. In
this way, regionalism in East Asia is particularly pragmatic and flexible.
Definitions of what constitutes the East Asian region are determined by
the principle of “variable geometry” (Asian Development Bank 2008),
in that the structure of cooperation often adapts to the shifting priorities


6

M. WAGNER

of different groups and members. As such, there are multiple tracks and
speeds that mark the different parallel arrangements in the region.
Furthermore, integrative processes in East Asia are rather informal and
inclusive as compared to other regions. This shows up in the regional
institutions’ distinctive designs, which are characterized by an “Asian way”
of institution building that emphasizes decisions based on deliberation
and consensus (e.g. Kahler 2013). A further characteristic of the regionalism in East Asia is the central role that the ASEAN—rather than a single
regional power—plays within related institution-building processes.
With Russia and the USA having become recent members of the EAS, a
new dynamic in the regional integration process might now develop. The
growth of China and India into the main regional powers demonstrates
the importance of East Asia for the world economy and politics. ASEAN

economies are growing steadily in a relative stable political environment.
Both institutional processes, APT and the EAS, illustrate the awareness of
East Asian leaders of the need for further regional cooperation and integration. Besides, both groupings have served China by being a platform
through which to attain greater political and economic influence in the
region—something the USA is still concerned about (Chye 2012, 121).
With due regard to these current dynamics, institutional processes in
East Asia are thus exceptionally open and often unpredictable. For example,
the creation of new institutional arrangements often occurs in response to
external impetus—such as the establishment of APT after the Asian financial crisis of 1997. Sometimes, institutional membership is expanded—as
in the case of the EAS’s aforementioned recent membership enlargement
to now also include the USA and Russia. However it is also common to
establish a new institutional forum so as to include an enlarged number of
possible participants, as was the case with the EAS’s inception.
While most IR studies concerned with institutional developments in
East Asia focus on those incidents and events that we can tangibly observe,
this work seeks to shed light on the mechanisms within such institutional
dynamics that we cannot directly see but that still contribute to emergence. What is also striking is that although most of the contemporary
literature on East Asian regionalism commonly uses the term emergence
to describe the institutional dynamics in the region (e.g. Stubbs 2002;
Terada 2003), it is not further conceptualized or declared to be worthy of
consideration in itself. Some authors criticize, similarly, the fact that there
are too few systematic studies explaining the emergence of and change in
Asian regionalism (e.g. Yu 2003, 263).


THE ISSUE OF INSTITUTIONAL EMERGENCE IN EAST ASIA: AN INTRODUCTION

7

Much the same applies to the institutionalist literature (e.g. Hall and

Taylor 1996; March and Olsen 1989), which aims to explain institutional
changes and transformations but fails to adequately consider the process
of how institutions initially come into being (see Pierson 2000). In my
view, conceptualizing emergence in the international system is a crucial step
toward analyzing such processes and dynamics, and furthermore, it provides
an alternative perspective regarding how to best account for the ever-changing nature of diverse forms of social order. In this connection, it is crucial to
highlight how I start from a different point of view when I examine regional
institutions and their emergence than IR studies influenced by regionalism
and institutionalism commonly do. This does not mean, however, that the
latter are simply disregarded, but that they (as discussed in the following
two sections) serve rather as a starting point from which to develop a critical
realist view on social emergence in the international system.

1.1

REGIONALISM IN EAST ASIA: CHANGING
INSTITUTIONAL PATTERNS IN A COMPLEX REGION
In IR, the emergence of regional institutions has thus far been mainly considered in the context of regionalism in world politics (e.g. Fawcett and
Hurrell 1995; Haas 1958; Hurrell 1995; Väyrynen 2003). Regionalism
commonly implies “the deliberate act of forging a common platform,
including new intergovernmental organizations and transnational civil
society networks, to deal with common challenges, realize common
objectives, and articulate and advance common identity” (Acharya 2010,
1002). In this context, the evolution of regional cooperation in East Asia
has been remarkable, coming especially in response to the Asian financial
crisis of 1997. Despite different theoretical approaches, a great many studies have in common the interpretation of this crisis as an event that set new
forms of regionalism in East Asia in motion.
Various contributions have analyzed the crisis and its aftermath from
a political–economic perspective, in order to capture the interaction of
the diverse factors that caused it—as well as to evaluate its implications

(e.g. Henderson 1999; Prakash 2001; Sharma 2003). Others have focused
on power shifts in the global order and the role played by China’s rise
(Gill and Green 2009), some of them honing in specifically on recurring
Sino–Japanese rivalry for leadership in the region (e.g. Dent 2008; Nabers
2010). Yet others approach the issue from a constructivist angle, by pointing to the development of a shared sense of identity and the emergence of


8

M. WAGNER

an East Asian region after the crisis (e.g. Harris 2000; Higgott and Stubbs
1995; Terada 2003).
The crisis also illustrated the competing visions of Asian regional order
already in existence (Acharya 1999). While (IR) realist perspectives seem
to perform better in illuminating the insecurities generated by the crisis and in stressing the need for great power leadership and a balance of
power in the region, institutionalists allude to the general challenges of
globalization associated with the changes produced by the crisis. They
argue that the latter showed the need for more transparent, rule-based,
and inclusive regional institutions. Among East Asian countries, concerns
intensified after the crisis that reforms could be imposed from outside
the region—thereby lacking the knowledge and sensitivity for local conditions. That is why there was an increased interest in regional cooperation
and policy consultation, so as to discover regional solutions and generate effective local mechanisms for crisis prevention and management. The
Asian crisis thus worked as a “powerful motor” for regional institution
building, due to its strengthening of the perception of mutual economic
interdependence and fueling of growing resentment against the USA and
its reactions to the crisis (see Harris 2000; Webber 2001).
In response to pressing economic needs and challenges, as well as the
failure of already existing regional institutions such as ASEAN or the AsiaPacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) to effectively tackle the situation,
ASEAN finance ministers met with counterparts from China, Japan, and

South Korea in 1997 for the first time. With a joint statement made in
1999, the “10 + 3” countries established out of these meetings the first
exclusively East Asian cooperative framework, known as APT.  The idea
of such an East Asian grouping had already been put forward in 1990 by
the then Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir, in the form of an East Asian
Economic Caucus (EAEC). This was an alternative vision to regional
cooperation that proposed to exclude the Pacific powers and only consist
of the ASEAN countries plus China, Japan, and South Korea.5
Since its inception, APT showed in this spirit several successful East
Asian solutions to East Asian problems—most notably a network of
bilateral swap arrangements under the Chiang Mai Initiative (CMI) in
2000, followed by its later multilateralization (CMIM) in 2010. Scholars
acknowledge in this regard that the “APT process has developed an organizational momentum that few would have predicted at the first informal
summit in late 1997” (Stubbs 2002, 450), and further postulate that “it
looks as if the institutionalisation of the region [has] gained ground to an
extent that is irreversible for the foreseeable future” (Nabers 2010, 949).


THE ISSUE OF INSTITUTIONAL EMERGENCE IN EAST ASIA: AN INTRODUCTION

9

The Asian financial crisis has incontrovertibly been a major external impetus for institutional change in East Asia. Since that time, three major driving forces have continued to change the arrangements in the region: “the
level of American participation, the nature of China’s involvement, and the
strength of regionalism in Southeast Asia” (Emmers and Tan 2012, 194).
In respect thereof, Asian multilateralism reflects the history and traits of the
region, which have always been crucial for the development of cooperation
on a regional level (Harris 2000). A certain kind of regional “togetherness”
and a common sense of identity are in this connection important components in promoting regional cooperation and integration in East Asia.
Competing visions of regional order and corresponding concepts of East

Asia have been an ongoing point of struggle in the region since the end
of the Cold War, given the necessity that there should be at least a loose
consensus among members on the region’s makeup and its associated institutional arrangements (see Higgott and Stubbs 1995; Terada 2003). While
there is a mutual desire for Asian-led institutions, developments on the
ground have revealed “a far more dynamic, ongoing, and uncertain debate
about architecture in the region” (Gill and Green 2009, 12). Herein, ideas
as to what community building should actually look like as well as concrete
forms and functions of integration continue to be contested.
This also showed up in APT’s attempts to deepen regional integration
in the form of community building, which resulted in the establishment
of yet another regional institution: the EAS.  With its broader membership—including the Asia-Pacific region as represented by Australia, India,
and New Zealand, in addition to APT members—the EAS exemplifies the
ongoing struggle about the ideal organization of the regional architecture. This is not to mention the EAS’s recent membership enlargement to
include the USA and Russia, which was officially confirmed in 2010 with
the first extended format meeting taking place in 2011.
This aside, despite the general success of regional economic integration,
East Asian security cooperation has shaped up to be much more difficult to
achieve. Though the Six-Party Talks held in 2003 over how to deal with the
challenge of a North Korea in possession of nuclear weapons displayed a sense
of collective responsibility, no consensus could be found afterward on how
to manage this threat—resulting in talks breaking down after 2008. In 2010,
China declared the South China Sea to be a core interest and expanded its
military power accordingly. This situation turned out to be another turning
point in regional cooperation, putting US involvement back on the priority
list and thereby “raising the likelihood that an inclusive form of regionalism
would take precedence over any exclusive type” (Rozman 2012, 24).


10

M. WAGNER

What is noticeable is how many authors make use of the term emergence in explaining regionalism in East Asia. They ask, for instance, if
APT stands for “emerging East Asian regionalism” (Stubbs 2002, 440),
or talk about “the emergence and acclimation of the concept of East Asia”
and “the emergence of a sense of identity” (Terada 2003, 253) among
East Asian countries. While these examples aptly describe the institutional
dynamics in the region, it is striking that no further attention is paid to
the term emergence nor is it conceptualized in any way. There are, as
such, not enough systematic studies out there at present that analyze and
explain the emergence of and changes in Asian regionalism (see Yu 2003).
What is more, although a large number of studies refer to the creation of
regional order or discuss competing visions thereof (e.g. in the form of
different regional institutions), they barely account for the formation of
the innovative structures associated with it. Thus, regional institutions are
mainly treated as mere epiphenomena of regional integration processes.
Questions regarding why and how regional institutions emerge, or how
they affect regional architecture, are further addressed in IR theory only
by different versions of institutionalism.

1.2

INSTITUTIONALISMS AND THEIR SHORTCOMINGS:
CHALLENGING EPIPHENOMENAL VIEWS

Studies of regionalism in IR commonly include a focus on institutional
research. By reviewing the different theoretical perspectives on Asia’s IR,
Acharya (2008, 61) sets out the varying ideas about the role and impact
of regional institutions. While, according to classical (IR) realism, institutions are adjuncts to the balance of power, neorealists hold East Asian
regional institutions to be instruments of China’s sphere of influence.

Concerned with growing interdependence, both liberalism and neoliberalism perceive economic and security regimes to be a means by which
to promote free trade and manage any possible disputes. Constructivist
approaches emphasize the norm-setting and community-building functions of regional institutions, which evolve from already established patterns of dialogue and informal institutions.
In IR, one major focus of institutional research was first established in
the mid-1970s with the scrutiny of international regimes (see Keohane
and Nye 1977; Krasner 1982). This research strand is usually associated
with “institutionalism” in IR (Peters 2005, 142). The common and oftenquoted definition of international regimes articulated by Krasner (1982,


THE ISSUE OF INSTITUTIONAL EMERGENCE IN EAST ASIA: AN INTRODUCTION

11

185)—“principles, norms, rules, and decision-making procedures around
which actor expectations converge in a given issue-area”—aimed to
achieve balance between different research traditions, and consequently is
relatively open to interpretation. Following their different schools, several
diverse theoretical approaches found their way into the debate. All had
as their aim the study of international institutions, which stimulated an
ongoing methodological debate.
Keohane, who stressed that “[i]nstitutions do not merely reflect
the preferences and power of the units constituting them; the institutions themselves shape those preferences and that power” (1988, 382),
compared two of these different approaches as rationalist and reflective
theories. This form of differentiation shows similarities to three broader
prominent strands of the so-called new institutionalisms: rational-choice,
historical, and sociological institutionalism (see Hall and Taylor 1996;
Immergut 1998). These versions of new institutionalist thinking have primarily been applied in political science. But, inasmuch as a lot of the logics
behind approaches to international relations are compatible with these
institutional approaches in political science (Peters 2005, 140), the latter
also found their way into the IR discipline.

Rational-choice institutionalism is based on a set of behavioral assumptions: States, as the main actors of international relations, have a fixed set
of preferences and behave in a rational way, according to their self-interest,
in order to maximize gains. Institutions arise out of states’ strategic interactions that result from their interdependence and collective action dilemmas (Hall and Taylor 1996). The main function of institutions is thus to
reduce transaction costs. In IR, the notion of transaction costs has mainly
been spread by Keohane’s (1984) functional theory of international
regimes. However, as Keohane argues himself, rationalist approaches to
institutions “[fail] to account for the creation or demise of such institutions” (1988, 387). If anything, being restricted only to a situation of
strategic interaction and thus a very limited number of possible settings
means that a “rational choice version of change is good at identifying why
conscious change may occur in a world of stable preferences and institutional failures” (Peters 2005, 62). Relying on punctuated equilibrium
models, transformations can only have exogenous origins.
In contrast to this “calculus approach,” historical and sociological
institutionalists consider the question of how institutions evolve—therein
allowing for the possibility of changing preferences. Historical institutionalism (e.g. Fioretos 2011; Pierson 2004; Thelen 1999) focuses on


12

M. WAGNER

the timing and sequences of the historical processes in which institutions
emerge and are embedded, primarily by highlighting path dependency
but also by accounting for any unintended consequences. Proceeding on
the assumption of institutional persistence, enduring pathways are seen as
being cyclically punctuated by instances of abrupt institutional change in
the form of critical junctures. The latter are generated by the exogenous
factors—commonly, crises within society or in the international system
(e.g. revolutions, wars, or economic crises)—that provide moments in
which particular constraints might be eased, and thus also the opportunity
for institutional innovation (Capoccia and Kelemen 2007). Another argument emphasized is that behavior is not only strategic but also influenced

by the worldviews and familiar patterns or ideas that individuals establish
(Hall and Taylor 1996). In this way, the historical strand pays specific
attention to the particular situation and context of institutional processes
and their respective interpretations.
In a similar vein, the sociological perspective focuses on the processes
of creating and reproducing successful institutions—but it emphasizes the
specific role of values and norms therein. Institutions are defined more
broadly, also encompassing—alongside formal rules and procedures—
particular systems of symbolism and meaning that guide human behavior
(Peters 2005, 111). Sociological approaches thus “emphasize the highly
interactive and mutually constitutive character of the relationship between
institutions and individual action” (Hall and Taylor 1996, 948). In IR,
this understanding is commonly used in constructivist approaches. In their
analysis of government institutions, March and Olsen (1989) highlight
the role of the symbols and values that determine both a particular institution itself as well as its members’ behavior. DiMaggio and Powell (1983)
ask why relatively similar institutions arise in varied political and social settings (known as the question of “isomorphism”).
There are several shortcomings to IR approaches that rely on institutionalisms, specifically when it comes to questions regarding institutional change and the origin of institutions. These can be summarized as
follows: First, although historical and sociological approaches pay more
attention to institutional processes over time than the rational-choice literature does, the former tend to stress continuity over change just as much
(Mahoney and Thelen 2010b; Streeck and Thelen 2005a). By distinguishing between shocks or critical junctures on the one hand and long periods
of stasis characterized by continuity on the other, they rely on exogenous
sources of change. This leads to the conceptualization of institutions as


THE ISSUE OF INSTITUTIONAL EMERGENCE IN EAST ASIA: AN INTRODUCTION

13

relatively persistent and enduring features of political life, thus overlooking
the possibility of endogenous institutional change and evolutionary developments unfolding in an incremental manner (see Mahoney and Thelen

2010a; Streeck and Thelen 2005b). As illustrated in the previous section,
a great many of the studies on Asian regionalism follow this understanding
by interpreting the Asian financial crisis as an exogenous shock, as a trigger
or a critical juncture that first set the subsequent transformations in East
Asian regional architecture in motion (Beeson 2002).
Second, the process of how institutions come into being is not considered adequately or indeed even addressed at all, so that “the origins
of institutions, as well as the sources of institutional change, remain quite
opaque” (Pierson 2000, 475). This is related to the core problem that
the structure or design of institutions is predominantly defined in terms
of what they do instead of their composition, which means rather in functional terms than in those of their own nature. For example, IR realists
assume that institutions are created by powerful actors within the international system simply to serve their own interests—thus constituting just
another arena for the playing out of power politics as instruments or tools
of the state rather than of actors in their own right (Krasner 1978; Krasner
1991). Accordingly, institutions are epiphenomenal to state power and
interests and cannot independently constrain or influence state behavior (Stein 2010). Neoliberal institutionalists argue that institutions are
formed in order to resolve collective action problems, thereby facilitating cooperation through the reduction of transaction costs and provision
of information (e.g. Keohane 1984; Snidal 1985). But they also regard
institutions as the self-interested creations of states—in that the design is
closely related to the nature of the problem requiring resolution in the first
place (Stein 2010, 213). Institutional design is understood as a function of
the distribution of power between the actors of the international system,
and of related problems and uncertainties.
Third, these shortcomings are based upon ontological problems that
many regionalist or institutionalist IR studies have in common: They
not only lack a clear definition of the relationship between structure and
agency, but beyond that also neglect the emergent ontology of institutions or organizations in international relations. For example, Barnett and
Finnemore’s (1999) constructivist approach to the explanation of international organizations (IOs) that draws on Weberian arguments about
bureaucracy indeed ascribes independence to IOs. However, although
their considerations are akin to emergentist thinking, they fail to clarify

14

M. WAGNER

both the relationships between the IOs that “can be autonomous and
powerful actors in global politics” (1999, 700) and the interactions of
their constituent parts. As the critical realist approach presented here
argues, such shortcomings are connected to a general disregard for ontological and methodological concerns; these are, however, crucial to studying regional institutions in terms of their own nature.

1.3
INTRODUCING THE CONCEPT OF EMERGENCE
TO THE STUDY OF WORLD POLITICS: IMPLICATIONS
FOR STUDYING REGIONAL INSTITUTIONS
The critical realist approach to institutional dynamics in East Asia advanced
here seeks to provide a conceptualization of social emergence in the international system so as to study regional institutions and their emergence
from a truly novel perspective. Introducing the concept of emergence to
IR theory contributes to reflections on what regional institutions actually
are, in other words, to tackling the crucial question of “whether they have
an ontological status apart from the activity of those producing them”
(Trigg 1985, 50). This includes thinking about the relationship between
a collective and its individuals: Emergence implies that despite social phenomena being created by the collective actions of individuals, they are not
merely reducible to those actions (e.g. Archer 1995; Bhaskar 1998). The
controversy surrounding emergence is actually based on this very hallmark,
“for viewing macro phenomena as both dependent on and autonomous
from their micro bases seems metaphysically problematic: inconsistent or
illegitimate or unacceptably mysterious” (Bedau 2008, 156). This book
advances the debate by offering up a strong form of emergence that is
based on critical realist ontology, and that stresses causal emergence and
the relational organization of emergent phenomena.

By introducing this form of emergence to the study of world politics, I
expect to gain new insights into the changing patterns of East Asian institutional processes. More generally, I will also specify how forms of social
order emerge out of underlying relations—while at the same time developing their own irreducible characteristics. In this respect, the approach
developed here also seeks to enhance the application of the concept of
emergence in IR and thereby shows the benefits of studying the international system as a complex system of emergent entities.
With regard to the aforementioned shortcomings of traditional IR
approaches, a critical realist approach allows, first, for endogenously


THE ISSUE OF INSTITUTIONAL EMERGENCE IN EAST ASIA: AN INTRODUCTION

15

generated transformations and forms of incremental change. Critical realists emphasize that social structures cannot be regarded as fixed, but should
rather be seen as continuous processes of reproduction and/or transformation. Lawson, for instance, argues that “social items…must be understood as processes, as reproduced structures of interaction, with change
recognized not as (or not only as) an external happening, the result of an
external or exogenous shock, but as an integral part of what the system or
object in question is” (1997, 171). Given that the idea of an exclusively
East Asian grouping had already been formulated prior to the outbreak
of the Asian financial crisis in the terms set down in Mahathir’s EAEC
proposal, it is reasonable to not only consider that crisis as an external
trigger but also to account for the endogenous processes and incremental
developments that shaped the regional architecture in this specific context
(see Streeck and Thelen 2005b).
The approach advanced here points to the subtle but significant difference between change and emergence (see Lichtenstein 2014).
Institutional changes or transformations occur through significant external shifts or incremental adaptions, which means they modify certain elements of existing structure or design in order to work more effectively.
As in the case of Asian regionalism, the trigger for such modifications is
often described in terms of crises. Emergence, on the contrary, is not simply another way to characterize such changes or transformations. It refers
rather to the process of inventing something new, meaning the creation
of a distinct regional institution and the structures associated with it. The

emergence of APT as the first exclusively East Asian institution symbolizes
such innovation in regional architecture. The trigger for it is thus linked
to particular visions of and aspirations to a novel regional order. From this
it follows that regional institutions can be understood as arising from individual interactions between states that are aimed at fulfilling a common
purpose or that are associated with a shared vision.
For the second identified shortcoming, then, a critical realist approach
understands reality as a stratified and open system of emergent entities
and accounts for new, irreducible properties and mechanisms therein. This
means that, instead of adhering to a functionalist perspective, the structure
or design of a regional institution can be defined rather in terms of its own
nature. Consequently, the process by which regional institutions come
into being can be understood as regards their unique emergent properties and powers, which I aim to identify in this book. Alongside the core
purposes or goals of a regional institution that characterize it as a whole, I


16

M. WAGNER

argue that it is mainly due to its unique relational organization that it can
be regarded as an emergent entity. Institutional design is in this way reformulated from an emergentist perspective that accounts for the interplay of
intentional interactions and unintended consequences.
In this regard, this work also reconsiders the reflective capacities of
social actors and their ways of interacting that are unique to forms of
emergence in the social world. Although some authors in the emergence
debate do refer to the centrality of language and communication in social
interaction (e.g. Goldspink and Kay 2007; Sawyer 2005), the distinct role
of discourse has not been adequately considered yet. The critical realist
approach developed here specifies the ways of acting and interacting in
the international system in terms of social practices, and pays particular

attention to discourse by conceptualizing it as a core mechanism at work
in social emergence. In so doing, it contributes not only to the emergence
debate in the social sciences but also to a causal reading of discourse in IR
research as well (e.g. Banta 2012).
Considering the third shortcoming that IR studies based on regionalism or institutionalism share, a critical realist approach benefits from its
emergent ontology. It provides a means by which to theorize the complex
underlying structures and relations that bring about new forms of social
order, and furthermore acknowledges the irreducibility of the latter’s
emergent properties and powers. In this connection, it promotes a clear
definition of the relationship between structure and agency. According
to critical realists, “social structures, once produced, can endure and thus
be clearly distinct from and not just instantiated by the agents which may
encounter or inhabit them” (Rivas 2010, 219).
While social structures are thus irreducible to agents and their behavior,
they do not exist independently of those agents’ conceptions of what they
are doing and of the social actions that they govern—they can, in fact, be
reproduced or transformed by the latter. They are real, however, and can
thus be understood as an emergent level of reality (see Jessop 2005; Kurki
2008). In this regard, “emergence means that although the more complex
levels of reality, for example, societies, presuppose the more basic or less
complex levels, for example, people, explanations of them are not reducible to the other” (Wight 2006, 37). Such ontological issues are key to
understanding the emergence of regional institutions in the international
system, and should be addressed in advance of dealing with epistemological questions as to how we can best study them.
In the course of developing the critical realist approach running through
this book, I also aim to refine some of the critical realist arguments to further