Asymmetry and Authority: Theorizing Southeast Asian Responses to China’s Belt and Road Initiative

Abstract

[...]our model hypothesizes, if and when forging closer cooperation with an external power—in our case, connectivity cooperation with China—boosts the ruling elites’ major pathways of legitimation (and enhances their cooptation and/or coercive capacity), then the state is likely to downplay apprehensions and embrace such big power-backed ventures as the BRI. [...]if a close partnership would undermine the elites’ principal pathway(s) of inner justification, then the state is likely to foreground perceived risks, discount potential benefits, and respond indifferently to the BRI. [...]the AA framework bridges structural and domestic variables (Kuik 2013, 2017).3 It shows that a structural variable like power asymmetry has no inherent logic. Asymmetry Effects: Ambivalent, Uneven, and Dynamic Smaller states view China’s BRI through the prism of power asymmetry. Because of the vast disparities between Southeast Asian states and China, the smaller states have always viewed China with ambivalence, seeing China as a source of both apprehensions and attractions (Ba and Kuik 2018).