Premium
Mega‐Regional Agreements and the Struggle for Economic Order in the Asia‐Pacific Region
Author(s) -
Novikov Dmitry,
Shumkova Veronika
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
asian politics and policy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.193
H-Index - 12
eISSN - 1943-0787
pISSN - 1943-0779
DOI - 10.1111/aspp.12429
Subject(s) - general partnership , competition (biology) , political science , politics , autonomy , administration (probate law) , order (exchange) , china , element (criminal law) , international trade , economic growth , economy , business , economics , finance , ecology , law , biology
The U.S. withdrawal from the Trans‐Pacific Partnership (TPP) project in January 2017 effectively marked the end (at least—for some time) of the period of active competition between so‐called “mega‐regional agreements” in the Asia‐Pacific region. A flagship of the Obama administration’s initiatives in Asia, the TPP spurred China to intensify work on an alternative project—its Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP)—and sparked an unusual wave of competition among APR institutions. Significantly, Russia joined this “partnership race” in 2016, putting forward an initiative to build a Greater Eurasian Partnership. It became something of a given that any power aspiring to regional leadership must have its own “partnership plan” to promote. At the same time, the formation and development of mega‐regional partnerships is an important stage in the regionalization of the world economy and global politics and a key element of the new phenomenon of regionalization. This article examines the TPP and RCEP initiatives as attempts to form a regional international order holding some degree of autonomy from the global set of rules for the functioning of regional international systems—in this case, that of the APR.