The Rise of Asia in Global Finance II: Reconfiguring Global Financial Norms

The rise of Asia within global finance provokes important questions about the role of the state in the economy. By the early 2000s, the old ‘developmental’ state in East Asia had supposedly made way for a neoliberal ‘regulatory’ state, with its emphasis on the non-discretionary enforcement of rules and a broader role for market forces in the organisation of investment decisions. More recently, however, this idea of convergence around a regulatory state has been increasingly challenged by a literature that points to the continued relevance of a ‘developmental mindset’ across Asian economies. What are the implications of the more activist state for global finance as Asian capital internationalises? Just as developmentalism appears alive within the domestic configuration of many Asian economies, internationally we witness an increasing leveraging of economic and financial statecraft. This manifests, for instance, in the active development of alternative pricing mechanisms, multilateral financial institutions, performative practices as well as novel forms of financial innovation and financial diplomacy as papers in this panel will explore. Moreover, these reconfigurations of state-market relationships also raise important conceptual questions about the nature and underlying norms of international financial cooperation and activities.