Thursday, January 30, 2025 | 12:00PM-1:00PM | SOS B40 | RSVP

EASC Guest Speaker Series: Talk by Prof. Andrew F. Cooper (University of Waterloo) with Faculty Moderator Prof. Saori Katada (POIR 561: Japanese Foreign Policy and International Relations of East and Southeast Asia)
 

Based on Prof. Cooper's new book, The Concertation Impulse in World Politics: Contestation over Fundamental Institutions and the Constrictions of Institutionalist International Relations (Oxford University Press, 2024),  the talk unravels the centrality of contestation over international institutions under the shadow of crisis. Relying for conceptual guidance on the recovery of a valuable component in the intellectual contribution of Hedley Bull, a compelling case is made that informal concertation represents a fundamental institution as a peer competitor to formal multilateralism. Bull points to two scenarios around the concertation impulse. The first is based on pluralism, with a concertation impulse animated with respect to “unlike” countries, as featured in the G20. The second is based on an ethos of solidarity, based on some assumption of like-mindedness, as in both the G7 and the BRICS.  

Appreciation of such a dynamic has significant implications for East Asia as well as Asia more generally. From the 1970s, Japan has been positioned in a privileged position within the like-minded G7. However, since the 2008 global financial crisis, China has engaged in a dual strategy of concertation: with an ascendant positioning both as a system insider via the G20 and as an outsider via the BRICS. 

In effect, this recalibration of the debate over institutional design is recast towards a wider set of cardinal— and highly contested—questions with relevance to the nature of rules at the global level. Concerning practice, countries in East Asia and beyond are pushed towards unanticipated (informal) challenges around institutional choices: either moving to embrace the G20 (South Korea, Indonesia), the BRICS/BRICS plus (the application of Malaysia), or as in the case of India attempting to balance membership in both. 

This is a hybrid event. A Zoom meeting link will be emailed to those who RSVP. 

The event is co-sponsored by the USC Center for International Studies and Department of Political Science and International Relations.