► Regional cooperation in East Asia has become a challenge due to democratic backsliding, eventually undermining the regional efforts to advance institutional mechanisms for cooperation among states.

► As the institutional foundation for regional cooperation draw on various internal and external factors, any significant change in these factors easily leads to fatal effects in East Asia by altering relations abruptly.

► While democratic backsliding is on the rise worldwide, the East Asia region has witnessed an unambiguous retreat of democratic norms and practices in the past decade. Such democracy retreats made a regional political landscape less amenable to cooperation. 

► Innovative institutional frameworks and redefinition of the roles of both internal-external actors would warrant the improvement of regional cooperation in East Asia.

Introduction

Regional cooperation in Northeast and Southeast Asia (East Asia, henceforth) is widely recognized as a challenging endeavor. Not only is there an abundance of anecdotes showing regional initiatives thwarted by interstate political tensions, but an extensive body of research convincingly identifies various reasons why cooperative efforts are vulnerable to factors within and outside of the region. I argue that this vulnerability has been exacerbated by democratic backsliding that has unfolded in the region in recent years. Backsliding enables status quo-altering foreign policies and, therefore, undermines the delicate relations between states in and outside of the region. Advancing institutional mechanisms for cooperation is rendered untenable and/or unsustainable as a consequence.

Existing Challenges

Regional cooperation in Asia is a politically laden concept that has been purposefully bolstered by security and economic needs. Unlike Western Europe or Sub-Saharan Africa, there does not exist a sociocultural identity that encompasses the extremely diverse societies in the region, which would have been a natural impetus for cooperation. Nor has there been a region-wide memory of modern history that could offer the basic architecture for an institutionalized cooperative framework. Not surprisingly, an institutional arrangement for inter-state cooperation that bears any resemblance with the European Union or African Union is hard to come by.

Region-wide multilateral arrangements that do exist in an attempt to provide a bedrock for cooperation usually fall short of serving such purposes. They instead are confined to specific policy realms with fairly limited coordination efforts. For instance, the Chiang Mai Initiative was meant to offer a broad umbrella for financial liquidity and stability in the region, galvanizing the existing bilateral swap lines into a much more intricate web of policy coordination. Despite earlier hype and subsequent calls for transforming it into the Asian Monetary Fund as a crucial step to achieve this goal, the intended upgrade did not come through. Likewise, while ASEAN + 3 might be the only institutional space for comprehensive policy coordination, if not integration, in the region, there seems to be much to be desired in its functionalities, with the ‘+3’ taking on only marginal roles being one of the apparent deficiencies.

Other attempts at multilateralism in the region, though comprehensive in scope, often involve external actors as an organizational lynchpin or operational reinforcement, embedding limitations on regional cooperation in the very institutional structures. Whether it is the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), the Asia-Europe Meeting (AEM), or the Asian Infrastructural Investment Bank (AIIB), Asian multiculturalism seems to exist more as a vehicle for extra-regional cooperation than as a consequence of enhancing internal cohesion and interconnectedness. The inter-regional elements in Asian multilateralism also highlight that the region is the space where bilateral ‘hard’ security ties with external actors are interwoven with the ‘soft’ regional arrangements,  as reflected in the multidimensional political tensions in the South China Sea.

These challenges reveal that the (potential) frameworks of regional cooperation in East Asia, if any, draw on a multitude of internal and external factors. Since the institutional foundation for such frameworks is inherently fragile, any significant change in these important factors can easily generate fatal effects. In particular, democratic backsliding can deliver such a critical blow by abruptly altering or straining relations with internal and external actors.

Democratic Backsliding in East Asia

Democratic backsliding (or further autocratic consolidation of non-democratic regimes) is on the rise around the world. While scholars debate whether the contemporary decline in democracy is severe enough to warrant labels such as the ‘Global Democratic Recession,’ the East Asia region in the past decade has witnessed an unambiguous retreat of democratic norms and practices. In South Korea (2008-2017), the Philippines (2016-2022), Thailand (2001-2006), and Malaysia (2020-2021), executive aggrandizement threatened the basic underpinnings of democratic political processes such as inter-institutional checks-and-balances and protection of freedom of speech, though to varying degrees. Likewise, further consolidation of autocratic rule and the removal of any electoral competition were observed in Cambodia (2018-2022) and Myanmar (2020-), respectively.

This pan-Asian erosion of democracy means the unraveling of the institutional and social guardrails against traditional foreign policy positions. Usually, foreign policies tend to stabilize around traditional positions--more so in East Asia where states have had to thread a thin line in safeguarding their national interests against superpower politics. This stable policy equilibrium was abruptly altered amid democratic backsliding, resulting in a regional political landscape much less amenable to cooperation than before.

In South Korea, the backsliding Park Geun-hye government departed from the traditional policy position and a ‘final and irreversible’ agreement with Japan on the ‘Comfort Women’ issues in 2015. This eccentric policy choice was rendered possible by ignoring legislative constraints and popular resistance and was destined short-lived when the guardrails were restored after the presidential impeachment. The back-and-forth policy switch destabilized the Korea-Japan relationship, leading to heightened tensions and disputes, including a Japanese export embargo in 2021.

Likewise, in the Philippines, the early years of the Duterte presidency saw a drastic shift away from the traditional policy in response to the Chinese assertiveness in the South China Sea, a move that would not have been possible had it not been for the backsliding populist regime. This policy shift undermined the potential for a unified and institutional solution for the disputed maritime territory and brought to light the ASEAN’s powerlessness as a comprehensive regional cooperation framework.

More egregious cases of authoritarian consolidation in the region threaten regional cooperation by complicating the relationship with key external actors. The breakdown of competitive authoritarianism in Myanmar and the controversial electoral management in Cambodia led to economic sanctions from the United States and the European Union. Given that the security and economic coordination with the Western powers has been indispensable for regional cooperation, these backsliding-driven sanctions represent a significant predicament for continuing such endeavors.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the challenges of regional cooperation in East Asia are multifaceted, and affected significantly by both internal and external factors. The rise of democratic backsliding in East Asia has added yet another layer of complexity to the already challenging process toward cooperation in the region. As democracy retreats, traditional foreign policy positions become less tenable, and abrupt changes are more likely. This new environment makes regional cooperation even more elusive. The examples of South Korea, the Philippines, Myanmar, and Cambodia illustrate how executive aggrandizement (or authoritarian consolidation) can pose a direct threat to regional cooperation. As democratic backsliding in East Asia seems to remain pervasive, the future of regional cooperation in East Asia also remains uncertain. Innovative institutional frameworks and redefinition of the roles of internal and external actors might be the areas for improvement that warrant further exploration.