ABSTRACT
The globalization of economic activity has been a defining characteristic of recent years. Globalization is a much used and contested term but is employed here to describe the deepening integration of global economic activity facilitated by the rapid development of information and communications technology (ICT) and the underlying trend towards liberalization in trade and investment. The union of these two forces has resulted in global, if uneven, economic expansion. Globalization may also be understood as a continuation of the constant struggle between states and markets and although it has been claimed that states are increasingly losing out to other economic actors in this process, the multinational company (MNC) in particular, the growing trend towards regionalism appears to reaffirm the importance of the state as a critical unit of analysis. Indeed, regionalism, a defining feature of the late 1990s and early twenty-first century, is an exclusively state level process (Gamble and Payne 1996). At the same time, in East Asia1 this political process has emerged as a response to globalization and the deepening regionalization of economic activity. This interaction between regionalization and regionalism, between private and state actors, is a key dynamic of the East Asian political economy today. Moreover, as regionalism may only be properly understood with reference to regionalization this in turn requires an investigation into the international division of labour as observed in East Asia.
