M. Beeson et K. Jayasuriya, THE POLITICAL RATIONALITIES OF REGIONALISM - APEC AND THE EU IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE, Pacific review, 11(3), 1998, pp. 311-336
The essay is a comparative analysis of APEC and the EU, which looks at
the particular sorts of economic orders these institutions are helpin
g to create. It is argued that the two regions display some noteworthy
differences that result from different approaches to the problem of e
conomic governance. These differences reflect much more than the relat
ive degree and level of regional institutionalization; they flow from
different 'political rationalities' that are themselves a function of
the very different liberal and illiberal polities in Europe and East A
sia. Our key theoretical innovation is to use the framework of politic
al rationality to explain different regional approaches to economic go
vernance; more specifically we argue that the EU and the East Asian me
mbers of APEC may be understood as respectively subscribing to broadly
conceived liberal and cameralist approaches to economic governance wh
ich are in turn reflected in the design of regional institutions.