Political Economy of Regional Integration in the Pacific Rim

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

The main objective of the research is to investigate regional integration in the Pacific Rim from both economic and political point of view. The project covers three regions, Latin America, North America and Asia, and focuses on such regional integration as NAFTA,MERCOSUR,AFTA and APEC.Project participant specialized in each regions and investigated the interrelation among the regional frameworks. The main conclusions are :(1) One of the factors that determine the widening and deepening of integration is to have favorable economic performance that ensures the openness of the integration.(2) For realizing favorable performance, it is essential to make sure the policy reform process without causing social and political conflict.(3) Regarding the forming process of FTAA,domestic conditions in the US and its foreign policy will have significant effects.(4) Future perspectives of regionalism in Latin America will have important influences on the APEC process economically and politically.(5) Japan should play a key role for the APEC progress through appropriate foreign assistance policies to Asian countries.As a future task of the project, it must be noted that more inter-disciplinary approach that combine economics and politics should be developed, and the recent Asian currency crisis should be incorporated into the analysis.