THE POLITICAL RATIONALITIES OF REGIONALISM - APEC AND THE EU IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE

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.