The emergence of post-crisis regional financial institutions in Asia—with a little help from Europe

Abstract

Faced with the negative impact of regional and global financial crises, Asian countries have established joint-solution mechanisms over the last two decades in order to better protect themselves from short-term outflows of capital and from currency speculation. Despite some progress being made in regional financial cooperation, especially by the countries of the ASEAN+3 grouping, the overall degree of financial integration within the region remains surprisingly low, however. This contrasts sharply with the keen interest of many Asian countries in gaining a stronger voice within the multinational finance institutions (MFIs), and especially within the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Unable to initiate major governance reforms of the MFIs, Asian countries have not only set up regional support liquidity arrangements but also their own multilateral development banks (MDBs). While the USA and to some extent Japan have tried to prevent a rebalancing of power within the global financial architecture, major European countries have actively supported these changes by becoming founding members of the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). Taking a New Institutional Economics (NIE) perspective, the paper aims to explain why some regional financial institutions are more attractive for Asian countries than others and why European countries are supporting Asia’s attempt to gain more weight in global financial governance (GFG)—and, thus, contribute to the acceleration of the power shift away from the USA toward emerging Asian economies in general and China in particular.