ABSTRACT
The concern of successor elites was with ensuring their power and authority, that is, creating a local functioning state machine along with ensuring that the population took the regime to be legitimate: in brief, a mobilized polity-in-the-making. In East Asia, as the countries of the region became prosperous, elite concerns shifted towards economics, that is, trade and investment. However, in East Asia, the collapse of European and American state-empire systems during the wars of the early part of the twentieth century had left a legacy of a multiplicity of new states concerned to create nations and pursue development. One aspect of this historical process was the elite concern for differentiation, for drawing up clear borders and creating within them coherent nations thereafter ordered by sovereign states. A newer set of regional institutions became important–most are officially focused on economic issues but some commentators' think that they have proved most successful in the political sphere.
