What is international regime?

What is a regime, what are its functions, and why would governments want to form and participate in them? According to Krasner (Reference Krasner and Krasner1983), regimes are sets of implicit or explicit principles (beliefs of fact, causation, and rectitude), norms (standards of behavior defined in terms of rights and obligations), rules (specific prescriptions or proscriptions for action), and decision-making procedures (prevailing practices for making and implementing collective choice) around which actor expectations converge. A more applied definition treats regimes as multilateral agreements among states that aim to regulate national actions within an issue area (Young, Reference Young1983: 196–8). This definition implies that regimes can define the range of permissible state actions by outlining explicit injunctions. This definition draws a clear line between the concept of regime as cooperation and that of regime as a subset of cooperative behavior and that facilitates it, but cooperation can exist without a regime.

Regimes are created to solve dilemmas of collective goods. The conflicts or problems of international collective goods – for instance, shared environment problems, conflicts of shared natural resources or collective security costs – can only be addressed if states eschew the independent decision making that would otherwise make them ‘free riders’, Two different bases of regime formation are the dilemmas of common interest and common aversion (Stein, Reference Stein and Baldwin1993: 309–11). According to Stein, regimes established to deal with the dilemma of common interests require collaboration while those created to solve the dilemma of common aversion require coordination (1993: 309–11). In terms of the necessity for international regimes, a major function of international regimes is to facilitate the making of mutually beneficial agreements among governments and thus to avoid structural anarchy and the situation of ‘each against all’ (Stein, Reference Stein and Baldwin1993).

In general, regimes fill one or more of three critical needs: (1) they establish a clear legal framework with liability for actions, (2) they improve the quality and quantity of information available to states, and (3) they reduce transaction costs. They also provide a valuable mechanism for formulating and presenting a united stand on issues for outside actors. Regimes thus create the conditions for orderly multilateral negotiations, legitimate and de-legitimate different types of state action and facilitate linkage among issues. By clustering issues together over a period of time they foster continuous interaction between governments, thus reducing incentives to cheat, raising the costs of defection, and enhancing the value of reputation. And the marginal cost of dealing with an additional issue is less with a regime, which is one reason why regimes often expand in scope (Keohane, Reference Keohane1984: 103–6).

Indeed, regimes alter the international environment so that cooperation is more likely. By establishing mutually acceptable standards of behavior for states to follow and by providing ways to monitor compliance, regimes create the basis for decentralized enforcement based on the principle of reciprocity (Jervis, Reference Jervis and Krasner1983). ‘Reciprocation’ is the golden rule, with a reward. It is the belief that if one helps others, or at least fails to hurt them, they will reciprocate when the tables are turned. In this formation, states should avoid maximizing their interests in short-term for the sake of expected long-term (Valencia, Reference Valencia2000). In this paper, regimes are defined by multilateral agreement among states that aims to regulate national actions within an issue area.

Systemic theories of international regime

In terms of the origins of international (or regional) regimes, there are two central questions. First, why do governments choose to form regional regimes? Second, why do they choose the specific institutional forms that they do? Given the context of these two questions, systemic theories have highlighted the systemic conditions that facilitate regime formation. Systemic theories – neorealism, hegemonic stability theory, and neoliberal institutionalism – about regime formations tend to regard regimes as the product of interactions among rational, unitary, sovereign states (Gilpin, Reference Gilpin1971, Gowa, Reference Gowa1994, Keohane, Reference Keohane1984). However, in order to answer a fundamental question – why regimes develop and how they change – each theoretical tradition tends to use different assumptions about international relations and prescribes different solutions to promote cooperation among states.

First, neorealists view competition among states as intrinsic to international relations. In order to survive in a self-help system, states must constantly strive to maximize their power against other states. Thus, they are not concerned about cooperation in international relations that produces asymmetric relative gains even if such cooperation produces absolute gains for all. Neorealists are thus pessimistic regarding the possibility for cooperation (Gowa, Reference Gowa1989). The neorealist position provides potentially useful insights into regime formation. For instance, it implies that cooperation should be more likely among allies than among adversaries, and more likely when alliance patterns are rigid (under bipolarity) than when they are flexible (under multi-polarity) (Gowa, Reference Gowa1994). However, neorealism's shortcomings become clear when we move from the general issue of cooperation to regional integration more specifically. If states are motivated primarily by security concerns, it is not clear why they should choose to organize their trade relations regionally, when it is obviously their neighbors who are most likely to present a security threat. Moreover, neorealism has little to say about the institutional form of whatever cooperation does emerge, which implies that neorealism is better able to explain the failure of regional regimes than their emergence and institutional form.

Second, hegemonic stability theory uses public-goods theory in the field of international politics. It maintains that the free-rider problem will lead to the under supply of international public goods ‘unless the group is privileged so that a single state has sufficient interest in the good to be willing to bear the full costs of its provision’ (Snidal, Reference Snidal1985: 581). With respect to regional regimes, the theory implies that a regional hegemon is a necessary condition for regime formation. Although some authors have tried to use this theory to explain regional regimes (McKeown, Reference McKeown1983), hegemonic stability theory is not well-suited to explain the formation and change in regional regime. For instance, theoretically, it assumes that hegemons are necessary for regime formation when two pre-requisites are fully met: first, regimes must support the provision of public goods; second, collective action must be impossible (Snidal, Reference Snidal1985). These two assumptions are not met in practice: most regimes (trade regimes in particular) are characterized by excludability are not designed to support the provision of public goods; and as many authors have observed (Lake, Reference Lake1993, Kahler, Reference Kahler1992), collective action among varying numbers of states is possible in the absence of hegemon. Since regional trade regimes generally involve excludable goods and relatively small numbers of states, there is no reason to assume that a hegemon is necessary for regional regime formation. In short, this theory is only a theory about necessary conditions because it can tell us when governments will be able to form regional regimes but not why they would choose to do so.

Third, neoliberal institutionalism (NLI hereafter) is more optimistic regarding the prospects for cooperation than are the neorealism or hegemonic stability theories. Unlike neorealists’ emphasis on relative gains, NLI emphasizes absolute gains and thus the possibility for mutual benefits from cooperation. Unlike hegemonic stability theory, NLI emphasizes the possibility of institutional solutions to collective action problems. These institutional solutions to collective action problems are the heart of NLI theories of regime formation (Keohane, Reference Keohane1984). According to Keohane, there are two aspects of international regimes: ‘functionalism and contractualism’ (Keohane et al., Reference Keohane, Nye and Hoffmann1993). With respect to functionalism, NLI explains regimes in terms of the functions they serve: for instance, enabling states to overcome market failures and capture cooperative gains by providing rules around which actors increase the provision of information, monitoring, and enforcement. NLI is contractual in that it tends to portray regimes as cooperative, and arrangements are voluntary. In this context, NLI tends to regard regimes as welfare-improving institutions. In other words, NLI implies that regimes are Pareto-improvingFootnote ² – if they were not, states that could simply refuse to join. What Pareto improvement of any regime implies is that there should be absolute gains from a situation of cooperation among states.

However, by emphasizing absolute gains and institutional solutions in explaining international regime formations, NLI takes a middle position on regime theories, between neorealism and hegemonic stability theory. Although NLI has some advantages in explaining international regimes compared to the other two theories, it has also limits when looking into such a complex phenomena: international or regional regime formations and changes. For instance, NLI's assumptions of Pareto improvement and joint gains are not quite appropriate in explaining regimes formations because regimes may become exploitative (Snidal, Reference Snidal1991). Moreover, regimes may not only be exploitative but also be welfare harming rather than welfare enhancing. According to Viner (Reference Viner1950), customs unions can be either welfare enhancing or harming – for their own members as well as the world as a whole – depending on the balance of trade creation and trade diversion. NLI cannot explain the choice of particular institutional forms; according to Martin (Reference Martin1992), there exists a wide range of potentially Pareto-improving institutions. However, if none of the theories has strength in explaining regional regimes, both at the beginning and the end, what other theories could be appropriate to look into the possibility of developing a regional regime in the ESR/SOJ region.

Beyond the limits of systemic theories: constructivism

Like other systemic theories of regional regimes, constructivists believe that an objective world can be studied systematically. Unlike neorealism, but like some neoliberal institutionalists, constructivists believe that ideas affect choice. But, they differ from neoliberal institutionalists in two ways: (1) while NLI argues that interests are structurally given, constructivism claims that interests are constituted through communication, interaction, and persuasion, and (2) while NLI takes a position of methodological individualism, constructivism seeks to specify the dynamic relationship between agents and structure. Hence, while for neoliberal institutionalists ideas are a given property of individuals that may influence individual choice, constructivists believe that ideas have structural characteristics (Zehfuss, Reference Zehfuss2002). According to Adler (Reference Adler1997), ideas – understood more generally as collective knowledge institutionalized in practices – define what is cognitively possible for individuals. Identities and interests of political agents are socially constructed by collective interpretations about the world. These collective understandings are in turn the outcome of interacting individuals who act purposively on the basis of their personal beliefs.

With respect to the study of regional regimes, constructivism contests the neorealist/neoliberal assumptions of a fixed international system based on sovereign territorial states. According to Ruggie (Reference Ruggie1992), state territoriality has become ‘unbundled’ as a result of the diffusion of understandings across national boundaries, high levels of communication, economic interdependence, and cooperative practices. Moreover, constructivism emphasizes the need to analyze norms and understandings underlying particular regimes and to identify the actors who dominate the definition of these collective understandings (Snidal, Reference Snidal1991). Rather than considering regimes as rational responses to market failure or particular constellations of interests, constructivism views regimes as subject to interpretation and persuasion. For constructivists, not only do they acknowledge the importance of the system – in this paper, the regional regime – but also try to catch the importance of agents – for instance, state government, NGOs, and the ordinary people – in their understanding of regional regimes.

In terms of constructivists’ emphasis on understanding the active role of agents in constructing regional regimes, it is usually not possible to formulate systematic predictions about who are the key agents: for instance, government leaders negotiating the deal, global and regional networks, epistemic communities, mobile capital, bureaucracies, or interest groups? In addition, constructivists have done little systematic empirical research in order to map prevalent collective understandings, to compare regionally delineated collective understandings, and to specify the interaction between global and regional societies.

Unlike from the other systemic theories, constructivists tend to speculate political and social reality as some combined material world, with normative-representational fields (Wendt, 1999: 170–171). For constructivists, although the material world exists, it has a meaning. This meaning is socially constructed, develops through social interaction and may be different for each observer (Zehfuss, Reference Zehfuss2002). Social interaction generates structures of collective meaning. Through such structures, actors acquire identity, which is the basis for interest formation, which, in turn, is the basis for action. In the process of establishing a regional regime, identity, for constructivists, is regarded as regional identity which is the cornerstone for building regional regime. Regional identity is a characteristic of an area that is differentiated from the neighboring space. Therefore, regional identity is a normative-representational element of regionality. Regional identity thus generates regionality, and through awareness or political projections, it gets more regionizing. This repeated process may enhance the sense of difference from the rest of the world, which in turn sharpens the sense of regional identity and strengthens a specific regionality.

After a specific regionality is fully represented within a certain region, the necessity of regional regime formation increases, and the process of institutionalization would begin with multilateral negotiations at the citizen's level (for instance, NGOs) to the government's level. Once a certain type of regional regime is established, it begins to influence the policy-making process within its jurisdiction area. All four processes in the cycle of establishing a regional regime include multilateral negotiations which consist of agents’ tugs-of-war to produce a cohesive idea. As the cohesiveness of a certain idea increases from the level of the individual to the level of collective meaning, such an idea would become regional identity.

Hence, this paper tries to shed some light on what factors of ordinary citizen's attributes influence his/her perception about establishing a regional regime in the ESR/SOJ by analyzing two countries, Japan and South Korea. In this paper, the author categorizes individual attributes into three groups of variables: (1) social position (age, gender, levels of education, and income), (2) patriotic level (so-called national pride), and (3) the level of tolerance toward other cultures (called multiculturalism). Which factor plays the role of catalyst in the process of regional regime formation?

ESR/SOJ region: many problems with no solution

The East Sea Rim/(Sea of Japan) region has long been an unstable and complicated region in which each country tends to have very different conflicting interests, and, due to more than a couple of thousand years of history, conflicts or wars took place more frequently than cooperation or peaceful resolutions. During the Cold War, international relations in the region were heavily influenced by the bipolar system. With the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s, relations among five regional states – Japan, China, Russia, and North and South Korea – have tended towards a unique style, which shows a cycle of enmity and amity. For instance, in the East Sea (Sea of Japan), South Korea and Japan have claimed territorial ownership since World War Two over an island called Tokdo (in Korean) or Takeshima (in Japanese). In 1996, controversy over ownership raised extreme tension between the two Koreas and Japan,Footnote ³ and South Korea conducted air and naval exercises around the disputed rocks in a clear attempt to warn Japan to drop its claim.Footnote ⁴

The dispute over ownership of the rocks led both countries to formally declare an exclusive economic zone of 200 nautical miles. Both Japan and South Korea have included the rocks within their exclusive economic zones. The problem was further complicated by nationalism and Japan's colonial occupation of Korea, as well as by fish and possible mineral and petroleum wealth in the waters and seabed surrounding the rocks. In 1998, with the failure of negotiations between the two countries, Japan terminated its fisheries agreement with South Korea. South Korea then removed all restrictions on South Korean fishing boats operating in Japan's claimed waters. In response, Japan began intercepting South Korean boats fishing within its territorial seas. This incidence in turn sparked the South Korean public, resulting in anti-Japanese demonstrations and the recall of the Japanese ambassador to Tokyo (1999).

Not only has the ESR/SOJ region suffered from territorial conflicts for a long time, but also, recently, a high level of political instability rooted in North Korea's development of weapons of mass distruction, including long-range missiles. With respect to North Korea's nuclear weapons program, even though this problem cannot be limited to the ESR/SOJ region – the US recognizes it as global risk and is actively involved – it has been one of two main obstacles to developing regional regime.Footnote ⁵

However, the ESR/SOJ region has experienced large scale economic development in just one generation, and the economic capability of the region cannot be disregarded in the international economy. In particular, East Asia's three dragons expanded their trade size by over 25% on average for a decade. Yet, Japan has been facing economic recession since 1991 to 2009. It seems to imply that each country has common economic interests, which would lead them to build a regional regime. Yet, when they put some political issues on the table, formation of a regional regime would face to serious obstacles.

There is no doubt that the ESR/SOJ region is now experiencing large-scale transformation of the political systems. As survival is not a prime concern of the powerful states any more, their quest for relative gains has become less consistent. Most governments within the region now prefer maximizing their states’ own wealth than to claiming their territorial sovereignty. Emphasis on increasing economic interdependence within the region makes inappropriate conflicts too costly. This change leads all related countries within the region to agree on the necessity of building a regional regime which may alleviate tension provoked by their territorial claims and different ideas about other political issues.

What factor does influence public opinion about regional regime formation?

Based on the theoretical assumptions of constructivism illustrated in Figure 1, the first base camp for regional regime formation seems to be that the majority of ordinary citizens within a region recognize the necessity of establishing a regional regime, so they can share the collective meaning of region (i.e. regional identity). The degree of feeling of necessity represents people's level of support. However, in order to investigate into public opinion in Japan and South Korea about a regional regime, the level of support for establishing a regional regime is operationalized and used as a dependent variable in this paper. The survey dataset used in this paper is the ‘2007 Soft Power in Asia’ dataset, which is a multi-country public opinion survey, conducted by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs in collaboration with the East Asia Institute (South Korea). The survey examines the current and potential use of soft power in East Asia. The total sample size of the Korean survey is 1,029 respondents who are over 18 years old, and for Japan, 1,000 respondents were asked in December 12, 2006.

Figure 1. The process of establishing a regional regime

Figure 2. East Sea Rim (Sea of Japan) map

First, in terms of measuring the level of public support for regional regime formation in the ESR/SOJ region, survey respondents in Japan and South Korea were asked two questions: (1) ‘Do you think East Asian countries, including South Korea, China, and Japan, should or should not integrate into a regional community, similar to the European Union?’ and (2) ‘Should or should not there be an East Asia free trade area including China, Japan and South Korea?’ The first question is designed to ask respondents’ opinion about establishing a regional regime which has the political/legal authority to control/manage its member-states and the second question is all about establishing a collaborating economic zone which is not related to any political issues. Since the European Union was created from sharing collective economic interests first and then moved on to the political issues, these two questions are used as a dependent variable by making two variables into one.Footnote ⁶

Table 1 shows, in South Korea, that over 71% of respondents support establishing a regional regime, not only in the political arena but also in the economic arena. Table 2 shows that, in Japan, only 35% of respondents are likely to support establishing a regional regime in both the political and economic arena. Interestingly, while Koreans are willing to establish a regional regime like the EU style of institution, the Japanese are more likely to support establishing a regional regime such as a free trade zone. In other words, the Japanese are more likely to establish a regional regime dealing with only economic issues, but, for Koreans, a regional regime must have authority to deal with both political and economic issues. The Japanese do not like to get any interference from a superimposed institution.

It seems to be appropriate for the Japanese not to support establishing a regional regime in the ESR/SOJ region because they hate to recall their unsuccessful experience in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when they fought against Asian countries with a dream of making Asia as a single jurisdiction country. After winning the Sino-Japanese War in 1895 and the Russo-Japanese War in 1905, Japan's newly risen self-confidence came with growing resentment against purported denial of the fruits of its victories. In this unsettled mindset, the Japanese have a sort of skepticism about international politics in which unfair and cutthroat global order exist (Calichman, Reference Calichman2008). Thus, the Japanese do not believe that a regional regime can resolve political problems within the ESR/SOJ region.

In contrast, most Korean respondents want to a build regional regime in the ESR/SOJ region, although they had historically uncomfortable memories about the Japanese colonial occupation period and Japanese efforts to build an Asian empire under the rule of a Japanese emperor. South Korean grievances against Japan make them more active and positive characters in international relations. Since South Koreans now have self-confidence in the state's economic development and democratization process, they think, once the process of a regional regime formation begins, South Korea is able to play an important role on the same footing as Japan and China. South Koreans tend to think that it will not take long before the two Koreas are unified into one, because people from both Koreas regard themselves as Hanminjok, a homogenous nation. Koreans have a strong and active image of the unified Korea which will have more territory, a larger population, and more natural resources than a divided Korea.

To investigate the statistical significance of the three sets of independent variables – social position (age, gender, levels of education, and income), patriotic level (so-called national pride), the level of tolerance towards other cultures (called multiculturalism) – this research uses a Nested Regression Model which is designed for conduct F-test of a restricted model compared to a full model (Allen, Reference Allen1997). Thus, one full model and two restricted models are examined by F-test.Footnote ⁷

In terms of age factor, it is expected that there is a different pattern between the young and the old within each country. The young have become the dominant group in society, and they do not have any experience or memory of the war. Since the late 1990s, severe economic recession has tended to force the young to focus on securing their economic welfare first, which moves any interest in politics to the economy. Moreover, because of the historical legacy of the Cold War between 1950s and 1990s, the old tend to regard their own state's authority as the most important value to preserve, with more extreme loyalty than those born after the 1990s. The old have strong patriotism which was inculculated through the public school system controlled by the authoritarian government in South Korea and strong bureaucracy in Japan.

In terms of gender, most males in Asian countries of Confucian culture are taught social responsibility, to protect their country and their home – this is recognized as a social duty for men in both countries.Footnote ⁸ It is a pre-requisite process for leaders and citizens of potential member-states of a regional regime to bear in mind the autonomous status of the other countries. In the context of the patriotic feelings and experiences of a strong state-centered society in South Korea and Japan during the Cold War era, it is expected that the old and male will tend to be more likely to support the establishment of a regional regime than are females and the young.

With respect to social position variables, the author has the simple expectation: reducing trade barriers by economic collaboration among member-states favors citizens with relatively high incomes and education (Gabel, Reference Gabel1998). Like the neoliberal institutionalism's assumption, people and governments are expecting either absolute or relative economic gains from member-states’ efforts to protect their markets and open their market to each other exclusively. Yet, there would be some variation between two countries. For South Korea, although the Korean government has followed the way of Japanese economic development and policy orientation, South Koreans seem to have a higher level of belief in revitalizing the national economy than do the Japanese. Since the economic structure of Japan is more stabilized and too large to make a quick turn compared to the Korean economy, the Japanese people regard any potential economic benefits from a regional regime to be small. This implies that at no matter what level of income people are in Japan, they won't think that a regional regime would improve or invigorate the national economy. It is expected that only in South Korea will the rich be more likely than the poor to support the establishment of a regional regime.

In terms of education, people with a high level of education are more likely to understand or tend to acknowledged the globalization (or glocalization) phenomena in the current world, which implies that they tend to support establishing (in particular, economic) a regional regime, which might protect internal markets and lift other regional market barriers easing export of their products. Moreover, international economic openness (controlled by a regional regime) rewards those with high levels of human capital. It increases the international substitutability of labor as firms are more able to shift production across borders, and this intensifies job security, particularly for less skilled workers. This implies that possibly positive impact on less skilled workers (in poor and low level of education) and that it will be good for more educated and better-off workers.

However, although the economic structure of Japan is too stable to change, there are some variations in job security among different industrial sectors. For instance, because of the long-term and national wide-scale economic recession, people working in the first industrial sector (agriculture, fishing industry, and so on) and the third sector (sales, small size business owners, or related jobs) have found it harder to survive economically. In contrast, people working in the second industrial sector, in particular, in IT, the financial market, or working at Multi-Nationality Corporations, tend to have better and securer economic positions. Therefore, in Japan and South Korea, people with a high level of education are more likely to support establishing a regional regime. Also, people with a high level of education have the tendency to think more broadly, for instance, about global environmental problems, North Korea's development of WMDs, and so on. There seems to be a positive correlation between level of education and level of support for a regional regime which is expected to contribute to communal benefits within the region.

Second, in terms of national pride as an explanatory factor for the level of public support for a regional regime, it is necessary to understand that national pride has both a positive and negative impact on the level of public support. National pride was generally defined as ‘individuals’ feelings of pride directed towards the nation-state based on their national identity’ (Smith, Reference Smith1994). However, national pride is different from nationalism. The difference is that national pride is mainly about individual attitudes towards the nation-state, while nationalism contains not only individual attitudes but also an ideology which is about unity among members of a society (Billig, Reference Billig1995). In the similar context, Hjerm suggests that nationalism and national pride operate at different levels: national pride at an individual level and nationalism at the whole society level (Hjerm, Reference Hjerm1998). In order to measure an individual's national pride, survey respondents were asked to answer a question, ‘In terms of your identity, how much do you think of yourself as (nationality)?’

Generally speaking, an individual's level of national pride has a negative relationship with the level of regionalism (McLaren, Reference McLaren2006; Fort and Webber, Reference Fort and Webber2006). Thus, Japanese people with a high level of national identity are expected to be less likely to support regional regime formation in the ESR/SOJ region simply because they don't need any upper level of regional authority over state authority in Japan. In contrast, People with high level of national pride in South Korea are more likely to support regional regime formation because a regional regime can be operated as a transnational government which has the authority to resolve any conflicts within its jurisdiction territory. In addition to common benefits from a regional regime, South Korean people, especially the younger generation, tend to have active and positive characteristics in dealing with international issues. In other words, they have much confidence in their own personality and are more likely to be involved in the international arena without any timidity.

Another reason is that Korean people have uncomfortable memories of colonial occupation by Japan in the nineteenth century. Most Koreans think that the policy of seclusion by Ha Eung Lee who was father of Go-jong (the 26th King of Cho Sun dynasty, 1863–1907) made their country undeveloped, and stopped it being prepared for foreign country invasions. Such an uncomfortable history leads the Korean people to be proactive – and, sometimes if thought necessary, aggressive – in international arena.

Finally, in terms of relationship between individual's acceptance of multiculturalism and support for regional regime formation in the two countries, multiculturalism is defined as the state of both cultural and ethnic diversity within the demographics of a particular social space, in which all cultures and sub-cultures are equally respected without a particular culture or religion as the predominant one (Acharya, 2009). In order to measure the level of acceptability, survey respondents were asked to indicate whether he/she favored or opposed each of the following: (a) More student exchanges between Asian countries, (b) Large numbers of people from other Asian countries living and working in Japan/South Korea, and (c) Greater emphasis on studying other Asian languages in Japanese/Korean schools. With respect to people's preference for multiculturalism, the author expects a positive relationship between people's acceptability of multiculturalism and their support for regional regime formation. It is a logical inference to say that a regional or international regime would always tends to approve cultural relativism, otherwise, no regime would be formed.