Abstract
The East Asian G20 members – China, Japan and Korea – are playing an increasingly important role in governing the global economy. Their global political rise is frequently discussed in binary terms in which the ‘realist’ assumption of inevitable conflict between rising and declining powers is contrasted with the ‘liberal’ assumption of the region’s growing integration into international institutions. This article offers an alternative explanation for East Asia’s global political role by shifting attention to the internal dynamics of the East Asian development model. This ‘second image’ interpretation of international political economy focuses on the ways in which domestic political economies influence international negotiations and institutions. Furthermore, this article departs from a focus on national political economies and considers the global role of the East Asian model of capitalism as such. At the empirical level, this article investigates the role of East Asian G20 members in international macroeconomic coordination and in reducing global economic imbalances.
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Notes
Admittedly, several European countries, including Germany and the Netherlands, also implemented supply-side stimulus packages, although their size was smaller and the supply-side bias was much less pronounced. When automatic stabilizers such as unemployment payments are taken into account, this bias disappears completely.
Admittedly, some of the projected increase in the US deficit is the result of the European Union’s emergence as a region with a current account surplus.
The most recent data for OECD countries are taken from OECD (2013b). The 2006 data for China are taken from World Bank (2013).
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Kalinowski, T. Second image IPE: Global economic imbalances and the ‘defects’ of the East Asian development model. Int Polit 52, 760–778 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1057/ip.2015.18
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/ip.2015.18