2025/06/30 by Yaechan Lee, William W. Grimes · 1 voice
Social Sciences · Economics, Econometrics and Finance · #International Development and Aid #International Relations and Foreign Policy #Global trade and economics
paper · doi:10.1080/09512748.2025.2522778
openalex publication_date 2025/06/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/15
Recent decades have seen the creation of a variety of new regional multilateral institutions by states that are dissatisfied with the rules and norms of incumbent global institutions, a phenomenon that Morse & Keohane term “contested multilateralism.” They have become particularly prominent in Asia, where China’s increasing capabilities and ambitions enable challenges to global institutions led by the United States, Europe, and Japan. In principle, these new regional institutions should differ significantly from the incumbent ones whose influence they seek to blunt or replace, but in practice, many of them end up adopting similar practices to the incumbents. This can be seen in a variety of functional areas, including development banking, crisis liquidity, and regional summitry. Why does such convergence emerge despite its origins in contestation over rules, norms, and power? And what explains the persistence of convergent regional institutions, given their limited added value? We develop a model based on prospect theory to show why states that have invested in establishing regional challenges to incumbent global institutions may end up essentially replicating those incumbents, and then sticking with them even after contest has given way to convergence. We demonstrate the usefulness of this model through case studies.