The Social Structure of Geoeconomics: Institutional Transformations Underpinning Weaponisation of Economic Interdependence in East Asia after the 2008 Financial Crisis

Abstract

Why have geoeconomic tensions continued to rise in East Asia despite the deepening level of economic interdependence in the region? This thesis analyses the global and regional transformation of institutions that contributed to the rise of the weaponisation of economic interdependence in East Asia after the 2008 global financial crisis. It uses the concept of primary institution (i.e. normative principles ordering international society) from the English School of International Relations to conceptualise institutional transformations underpinning weaponised interdependence. The thesis finds that the transformation of the market (i.e. liberal market ideology) as a primary institution after the 2008 crisis has changed the way states view the security value of economic interdependence. The declining influence of liberal market ideology after the crisis has increasingly allowed and legitimised subordination of economic relations to the state’s security and nationalist imperatives, allowing the weaponisation of economic interdependence to rise during conflict. Through the case of China’s economic coercion in East Asia, the thesis demonstrates that the deepening and weaponisation of economic interdependence came together as the downstream impact of declining influence of the market in ordering international society. This thesis contributes to the study of geoeconomics by analysing weaponised interdependence as part of broader institutional changes unfolding in the global and regional levels.