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ABSTRACT
This article proposes a new concept of ‘contested multilateralism 2.0’ to describe the puzzling institutional building efforts by non-ASEAN members after the 2008 global financial crisis (GFC) in the Asia-Pacific. It suggests that different to ‘multilateralism 1.0’ of the 1990s, which was mainly led by ASEAN, this wave of multilateralism has been initiated by other powers, such as the United States, China, Japan, Australia and South Korea, either by forming new institutions or by reinvigorating existing ones. This article advances an institutional balancing argument. It suggests that ‘contested multilateralism 2.0’ is a result of institutional balancing among major states under the conditions of high strategic uncertainty and high economic interdependence after the GFC. One unintended consequence may be that it could well lead to a more peaceful transformation of the regional order in the Asia-Pacific if regional security hotspots, such as the Korean crisis and the South China Sea dispute, can be managed appropriately.
Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank the following scholars for their suggestions and advice on this project: Amitav Acharya, Victor Cha, Michael Green, Tsutomu Kikuchi, T.J. Pempel, Yoshihide Soeya, William Tow, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Stephen Walker as well as anonymous reviewer and the editors of the Pacific Review. In particular, the author thanks Hiro Katsumata and Jun Honna for their help in organizing two seminars in Japan in April 2017. The paper was also presented at a conference funded by the Korea Foundation entitled ‘Contested Multilateralism 2.0 and Asia Pacific Security’ in Brisbane in May 2017. The author is grateful for all the comments and suggestions from participants at the above seminars and conference. All errors and omissions are the author's own.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. For positive as well as negative evaluations on ASEAN and ASEAN-centred multilateralism, see Emmerson (Citation2007), Jones and Smith (Citation2007), Leifer (Citation1999), Ravenhill (Citation2009), Severino (Citation2007) and Smith (Citation2004).
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Kai He
Kai He is Professor of International Relations, Griffith Asia Institute and Center for Governance and Public Policy, Griffith University, Australia and visiting Chair Professor of International Relations at the Zhou Enlai School of Government, Nankai University, China. He is currently an Australian Research Council (ARC) Future Fellow (2017–2020). His recent books include China's Crisis Behavior: Political Survival and Foreign Policy (Cambridge, 2016) and US-China Competition and the South China Sea Disputes (co-edited with Huiyun Feng), (Routledge, 2018).