APEC's Dilemmas: Institution-Building Around the Pacific Rim

Abstract

THE ASIA PACIFIC ECONOMIC COOPERATION (APEC) forum has made considerable progress since it was formed at a ministerial meeting in Canberra, Australia, in 1989. Indeed, it has chalked up more successes in its first few years than even its founders and most ardent proponents had anticipated. For example, APEC combines in one organization a diverse group of economies including the biggest, and some of the most dynamic, in the world; it brings together, at its annual summit meetings, an impressive array of the world's leaders; and it has established the ambitious, if distant, goal of open economies for all its developed members by 2010 and its developing members by 2020. As a result the APEC process has garnered a good deal of public attention and engendered a momentum for establishing greater economic cooperation around the Pacific Rim. Yet the more successful APEC has become and the more progress it makes in moving the region down the road towards greater economic liberalization and cooperation, the more dilemmas it seems to face. These dilemmas are essentially caused by different and often competing conceptions of regionalism and regionalization around the Pacific Rim and are rooted in the different cultures, historical experiences and forms of capitalism of the various APEC member economies. At one time it appeared as if these competing views of economic regionalization were represented by APEC on the one hand and by Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad's proposal for an East Asian Economic Caucus (EAEC) on the other.2 However, it is now increasingly apparent that the competing conceptions of the region and how regional relations should evolve are to be found