Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Among the different topics being negotiated by the partners of the American hemisphere, few stir up controversy as much as the issue of investments in the would-be free trade zone of the Americas. For those not directly implicated in the process, it seems, as in the case of the dispute settlement mechanisms, that there is an asymmetric distribution of resources. When referring to resources, we mean the opportunities to defend one's democratic rights inside a given society, in a state where the rule of law prevails. This issue seems to be at the source of much of the grievances expressed by civil society and even by newly-elected administrations. Since the blueprint of this MAI for the FTAA would be more or less the same as the one regulating investments in NAFTA, one has to acknowledge the potentiality for tensions between partners, and between states and individual investors, specifically multinational corporations. Hence, this presentation will focus on the current debates pertaining to the investment issue of the FTAA.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: On May 5th, 2007, finance ministers of ASEAN plus Three (China, Japan, and Korea) historically and unanimously agreed to establish an Asian Monetary Fund in Kyoto, Japan. This multilateral currency swap scheme is to materialize by multilateralizing the Chiang Mai Initiative, a network of bilateral currency swaps in the region that was launched and developed since 2000. At the Kyoto meeting, Asian finance ministers did not shy away from saying that the envisioned multilateral institution would be an “Asian version of the IMF,” which was first proposed by Japan in 1997 at the Annual Meeting of the IMF and the World Bank in Hong Kong. What explains the emergence and deepening of East Asian exclusionary monetary cooperation in the wake of the Asian financial crisis? Building on previous constructivist theorizations of regional integration, I account for the development of the exclusionary monetary cooperation by demonstrating the linkage between the particular forms of regional institutional development and the collectively shared “economic policy paradigms” among Asian states (or Asian states’ collective understanding of the legitimate role of the state for economic development and stability). I will compare this argument to alternative explanations drawn from realism and neoliberalism. Analytically, I will take a meso-level approach at the intersection of the international and the domestic. I will demonstrate how this mid-range approach provides a better temporal and spatial understanding of the emergence and deepening of East Asian exclusionary monetary cooperation and its relationship to U.S.-led neoliberal global economic order.