New Publications by CIS Research Associate Jochen Prantl

CIS Research Associate Jochen Prantl has recently had an edited book titledEffective Multilateralism: Through the Looking Glass of East Asia (St Antonys Series, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) and a journal article titled Global Economic Governance in East Asia: Through the Looking Glass of the European Sovereign Debt Crisis published. The journal article was published in a special issue of the journalStudia Diplomatica(Vol. LXVI-1, 2013), which Jochen also guest edited.

This set of publications departs from the observation that Western liberal order is in transition. The authority of the United States-led order has become challenged by the gap between the escalating geographical, functional, and normative ambitions of international society and the lack of (institutional) means to deliver them.

Lewis CarrollsThrough the Looking Glasstaught us long ago about the discontents of authority. His famous character of Humpty Dumpty, the talking egg in a cravat sitting on top of a wall and talking down to little Alice, epitomizes a satirical and ultimately dystopian view of authority that is pretentious and without substance. Consequently, the episode of Humpty Dumpty ends with his fall from the wall, depicting the great fall of false authority. The central research questions both publications pose is therefore: How do we generate real authority under conditions of order transition? What is the nature of cooperation?

Effective Multilateralism: Through the Looking Glass of East Asia makes the case for a new approach to understand and explain collective action, juxtaposing the European concept of effective multilateralism with the empirical reality of regional cooperation in East Asia. The edited volume offers a careful examination of cases that lead to a better understanding of the scope conditions of analytical frameworks of multilateralism.

Global Economic Governance in East Asia: Through the Looking Glass of the European Sovereign Debt Crisisaims at making the following two contributions: first, it narrows the focus of the excessively broad global governance discourse by examining the impact of a specific collective action problem, that is, the European Sovereign Debt Crisis, on regional economic governance in Asia; secondly, it exposes and explains the global-regional and regional-regional nexi driving the mechanisms and processes of East Asian economic and financial integration.