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This article studies East Asian political economy from a regional perspective. The Asian financial crisis showed that East Asian economies are highly regionalized. However, the linkages among Asian economies, mostly informal in nature, often appear “invisible” to many in the West, who focus more on the states and formal institutions. Drawing on a broad set of literature mostly in Asian languages, this paper provides a systematic study of informal integration in East Asia, which consists of not only regional production networks, but also ethnic Chinese business networks and subregional economic zones. It finds that the three informal mechanisms have formed an interrelated pattern of regional integration in East Asia. The nature of the economic networks is very useful in explaining the Asian crisis and the different performances of East Asian economies in the crisis. The crisis has also resulted in profound changes in informal integration. While the Japanese–led production networks have been greatly weakened, the Chinese Economic Area is rising, driven by the ethnic Chinese business networks and subregional economic zones. As a result, the Japan–dominated “flying geese pattern” has been broken. The connections between Greater China and the United States have also been enhanced and are out–competing the Japanese production networks. Many of the new developments have been ignored in the West but they are key factors that will shape the future of Asian and World political economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How much war was there in early modern East Asia? This article empirically corroborates characterizations of relations between Sinic East Asian polities as being unusually peaceful and stable, which we attribute to the participants' shared subscription to a common and accepted hierarchy framed by a Confucian worldview. More broadly, we provide direct empirical evidence that international hierarchies derive their stability from cultural consensus rather than simply asymmetries in material power. We make these claims by addressing the extent, range, and patterns of war in early modern East Asia by introducing and describing an extensive dataset of over 1,100 entries that measures war and other violence in early modern East Asia from 1368 to 1841 and relies principally on both Chinese and Korean language sources. The combination of these two Asian language sources forms the basis of a unique dataset that will substantially widen and complement the largely Chinese or English language sources that are generally used in debating war in early modern East Asia. Asia was composed of much more than simply China, and bringing in scholarship from other areas of early modern East Asia reflects a trend of moving past national studies to research the region more holistically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anticipating future political transitions in East Asia, many scholars worry that Chinese democratization and Korean unification will fuel regional instability. To inform this debate, this article examines theories that make competing claims about the stability of these potential transitions: theories within the 'democratization and war' school and economic interdependence theory. I compare the predictions of these theories in the cases of previous East Asian transitions in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. Process-tracing evidence shows that (i) xenophobic nationalism or logrolling by political coalitions were not present and that none of these countries pursued bellicose foreign policies during their democratic transitions. Evidence from these cases undermines the broad formulation of democratization and war theory and is consistent with a more recent, narrower version of this theory. Second, (ii) process tracing reveals the stabilizing processes of economic interdependence in all of these cases. Third and finally, contrary to prevailing views that warn of instability during future transitions, (iii) both the narrow version of democratization and war theory and economic interdependence theory forecast stability during the upcoming political transitions in China and Korea. These findings support foreign policy strategies of economic and institutional engagement toward China and the Korean peninsula. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the critical role played by history and culture in Japan and South Korea's relations with the United States. Role of historical antagonism in the relations of Japan and South Korea to the US; Effect of the Japanese and Korean perceptions of their common great power patron's security commitment on the level of military cooperation between the two quasi-allied states.