Catalytic Diplomacy: International Institutional Complexity and the Acceleration of Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific

Abstract

In recent years, countries in the Asia-Pacific have created a diversity of international institutions across a range of different issue areas to harness cooperation within their broader institutional landscape. This thesis studies the dynamics of institutional evolution by investigating how the architecture of existing arrangements has shaped the negotiations of small group institutions in the Asia-Pacific and how these agreements, in turn, have shaped that architecture. It poses the puzzle: Why has institutionalization of inter-state cooperation accelerated in some issue areas while evolving incrementally in other issue areas? What role has small group institutions - regional and bi/pluri/mini-lateral institutions - played in accounting for this variation in institutionalisation? The thesis engages with the rational design, institutional interplay, orchestration, historical institutionalism, institutional diffusion, and complex adaptive systems literatures. It conceptualises a new analytical lens, "institutional catalyst" and elaborates on a framework of "catalytic diplomacy" that has the following properties: (1) amplification - ability to shape the momentum and direction of an institutional complex, (2) attraction - attract different actors to become a focal node within the complex and, (3) assimilation - channel fragmentation to make a complex system more manageable. It asks: How are institutional catalysts created within an institutional complex and how do they end up shaping that complex? It distinguishes between different types of small group institutions and characterises them according to their roles within an institutional ecosystem: building blocks, facilitators, or catalysts. The thesis challenges the rational design literature and the building/stumbling block conception of small group cooperation and explores how institutions in the Asia-Pacific and global institutions co-evolve in a non-linear and dynamic manner.

The thesis integrates case studies methods and process tracing to investigate the dynamics of institutional interactions and evolution within four different issue areas - Trade, Climate Change, Arms Control, and Finance - to provide a structured comparative analysis across two detailed case studies and two counter-examples. The thesis first maps the different institutional complexes. It then explores the temporal sequence of emergence, transformation, and establishment of small group institutions within their respective institutional complexes. Through data collected from interviews with diplomats and policymakers as well as through primary and secondary documents, it explores the emergence and impact of institutional catalysts such as the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership and the US - China bilateral climate agreement. This thesis argues that international institutions are catalytic when they scale out; scale up; are adaptive and open; align; act as pathfinders; and integrate past processes. It shows that institutional catalysts are the products of interactions between building blocks and facilitators when global multilateral institutions are deadlocked. It further illustrates that institutional catalysts will interact with institutional facilitators to transform an institutional complex and potentially overcome multilateral deadlocks. By surveying regional and minilateral institutions in two other issue areas - Arms Control (Proliferation Security Initiative) and Finance (Chiang Mai Initiative) - where system transformation did not occur, it analyses the boundaries of catalytic diplomacy. This thesis shows that institutional catalysts have the capacity to engage in incremental problem solving and simultaneously, shape the long-term emergence of new institutions, accelerating the process of institutionalisation within an issue area. Thus, this thesis contributes to a better understanding of the use of catalytic diplomacy in navigating and managing international institutional complexity.