Collective leadership

If being a leader is a social status, a potential leader should engage in two-way social interactions with other potential leaders and potential followers. Although leadership emerges from competition among potential leaders to appeal to followers (Burns, Reference Burns, James1978), all potential leaders are not necessarily competitive. They can be cooperative partners and thus exercise leadership collectively.

The best illustration of collective leadership has been provided by the experience of the Franco-German special relationship in European integration. Even when their immediate interests conflict in some issue areas, they can eventually mediate their differences and come to a common, or at least a joint position.

However, the Franco-German special relationship was not naturally given, but rather constructed through their mutual efforts to transform their social relationship. In particular, it has been built upon two socio-cultural factors: the institutionalization of a large volume of communications and exchanges between the two governments across most policy domains; and the shared norm between the two states that they should consult each other on all important foreign issues to reach a common position, as stipulated in the 1963 Élysée Treaty (Webber, 1999).

The Franco-German experience shows us the importance of institutionalizing social networks and internalizing shared norms between two governments. Institutionalized meetings, communications and exchanges between potential leaders increase their mutual understanding and trust, which in turn enhances the cohesiveness of their relationship. Through these interactions, collective leaders can produce and reproduce concerted ideas for the regional and the global orders. The degree of institutionalized social networks and shared norms between the two governments of potential leaders will therefore be a key criterion for collective leadership.

Just as a special relationship can be constructed, so it can be deconstructed. A special relationship can be damaged or broken by several challenges posed by changes: in their relative material capabilities; in the political and economic contexts resulting from catalytic external challenges; in domestic political elites.

Collective leaders based on a solid bilateral relationship leave little room for other members in the region and external great powers to take advantage of their differences. Without internal competitors, collective leaders can take vigorous action to force other members to follow their concerted leadership projects. If collective leadership is widely accepted by other members in the region, the global hegemonic power, the United States, is forced to acquiesce in the roles of the collective leaders in the region. Or, it has to compete with regional leaders for the adherence of other members in the region in order to exert influence over regional affairs.

Competitive coexistence or a blocking power relationship

Potential leaders, failing to establish a special cooperative relationship among themselves, come to engage in intense competition to gain followers’ acceptance of their leadership claims. In this case, the strategies of and the relations among potential leaders are influenced by their interactions with potential followers.

Although all potential leaders should cultivate followership among their neighbouring states, potential leaders in competition are more sensitive to potential followers’ acceptance than collective leaders. Collective leaders tend to worry more about becoming estranged from each other than from other members. On the other hand, potential leaders in competition fear that they will fall out with potential followers and that they will secure fewer followers than their competitors. Leadership competition forces potential leaders to bind themselves to responses from follower states.

The outcome of leadership competition depends on the relative power conversion capacities of potential leaders, or which of them secures more followers. However, leadership competition is not a one-shot game. If we accept Wendt's assumption that states have a capacity to change their lives (Wendt, Reference Wendt1992), we can expect that potential leaders will be able to change their own power conversion capacities or the degree of potential followers’ acceptance through critical strategic practice. A potential leader reflects critically on its own and others’ capacities and methods of power conversion. It then changes and modifies its critical strategic actions to increase followers’ acceptance. This critical strategic practice can influence its foreign policy strategies and the way it interacts with others, and even its competitors. Therefore, leadership dynamics can be produced and reproduced by potential leaders’ critical strategic practice.

The strategies of and the relations among potential leaders in competition can vary according to whether there are cooperative projects supported by the majority of potential followers. If we limit ourselves to the simplest case of two contending states for the purpose of conceptualization, the critical strategic actions and the leadership dynamics of potential leaders can be twofold: competitive coexistence and a blocking power relationship.

The first critical strategic action of a potential leader is ‘cooperating to compete’, leading to competitive coexistence in which two potential leaders coexist to cooperate in leadership projects, competing for followers’ acceptance. The original idea of the cooperating-to-compete strategy comes from ‘realist internationalism’ which suggests institutionalized cooperation as a means of competing for political influence (see Moore, Reference Moore and Dieter2007). Since the realist understanding assumes that states choose this strategy, on the basis of their fixed interests and independently of their interactions with others, the realist idea cannot capture dynamic changes in potential leaders’ critical strategic choices. This study elaborates the concept by stressing that a potential leader chooses this strategy through critical reflection on its own relative power conversion capacities and those of its competitor, or on the configuration of followership.

If a potential leader (A) succeeds in promoting a leadership project supported by a majority of potential followers, the other potential leader (B) is forced to cooperate with or at least endorse the project. As a result, contending potential leaders come to competitive coexistence. This does not mean that B countenances A's leadership in the group. By endorsing or cooperating for the project, rather, B seeks to prevent A from gaining an uncontested leadership position and to demonstrate B's responsibility as a potential leader to care for followers’ needs.

When two competing potential leaders come to coexist in a project, their competition need not be an impediment to its development. Rather, competitive coexistence can facilitate its development because a potential leader's initiative generates the other's competitive but positive reaction.

The second critical action is ‘conflicting to compete’, resulting in a blocking power relationship in which a potential leader seeks to block its competitor's leadership initiative. The concept of blocking power relationship is suggested by Rapkin, but his concept is based on mutual interests among potential leaders and thus cannot provide a compelling account (Rapkin, Reference Rapkin2001).

This paper assumes that a potential leader takes the strategy of conflicting to compete when its competitor has proposed and seeks to implement a leadership project that will enhance its leading position, but has failed to secure a majority of followers. The potential leader does not hesitate to cancel out its competitor's project because its blocking behaviour does not harm its reputation as a leader, and as being responsible for followers’ needs and wants, but can frustrate its competitor's aspiration effectively. At the same time, the potential leader seeks to promote a leadership project of its own that helps to cultivate followership among its neighbouring states and thus to give it an edge over its competitor. As a result, two competing cooperative projects emerge in a group. The two potential leaders come to engage in intense competition for regional leadership, devoting their considerable power resources to cultivating acceptance among the majority of their neighbours for their own leadership projects.

The influence and roles of potential followers become more important when potential leaders engage in competitive coexistence and a blocking power relationship than in collective leadership. In the former cases, potential followers may have an equal hearing with potential leaders in cooperative projects, taking advantage of the differences between the potential leaders or playing an intermediary role. They can even exercise what is called entrepreneurial and intellectual leadership (Young, Reference Young1991).

Likewise, the global hegemonic power can have more strategic options when potential leaders engage in competitive coexistence and a blocking power relationship than in collective leadership. Shintaro Hamanaka demonstrates this well, although he does not take into account potential leaders’ relative power conversion abilities and critical strategic practice (Hamanaka, Reference Hamanaka and Dent2008). If a potential leader gains followership among the majority of its neighbouring states for its leadership project and thus can steal a march on the other potential leader in leadership competition, the other potential leader has an incentive to include the global hegemonic power to neutralize the competition. This offers the global hegemonic power various strategic options. Enjoying differences between potential leaders, the global hegemonic power can pursue its regional strategy as it pleases.

The framework elaborated here can provide an alternative reading to the dynamics of pluralized leadership in general and Sino-Japanese leadership in particular, filling the gap in the extant literature. Although the main purpose of this paper is to provide a systemic analytical framework to explain the dynamics of Sino-Japanese pluralized regional leadership, a theoretical consideration should be grounded in a realistic empirical context. In this sense, the next section will test the analytical framework presented so far through a brief case study of Sino-Japanese leadership dynamics in East Asian cooperation.

Competitive coexistence in financial cooperation

In the wake of the Asian financial crisis, Japan proposed creating an AMF. Given that an AMF represented a Japanese-led regional alternative to the US-dominated global financial governance system, it was perhaps natural for Japan to face strong opposition from the US. Nonetheless, if Japan had gained acceptance among its neighbours of the project, it might have exercised regional leadership, but it failed to do so.

Japan failed to obtain China's support. When the Asian financial crisis broke out, China stressed the continued centrality of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in the economic reform and adjustment of developing countries, and the responsibilities of developed countries to provide financial and technical assistance to developing countries (Li, Reference Li1997). Through this, China sought to show that it was not only a responsible member of the regional community, but also a responsible great power in the world, respecting and complying with international institutions and norms, rather than pursuing regional hegemony. Regarding the AMF plan, Chinese officials were concerned about Japan's political intention behind it (Yang, Reference Yang2010) and feared that a Japanese-led AMF would create yen hegemony in the region. China was not ready to accept Japan's regional leadership, mainly due to a deep-rooted mistrust of Japan. However, Japan made little effort to assuage China's anxiety. Rather, Japan sent a confidential memo to its major neighbours, to inform them of its AMF plan, but not to China (Blustein, Reference Blustein2001), which increased China's mistrust (Business Times, 2003).

Other East Asian countries were also not convinced of Japan's regional leadership. South Korea and the major Southeast Asian countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand had initially supported Japan's proposal, but all of them except Malaysia finally turned away from it in the face of US and the IMF's strong opposition. They ‘were unwilling to gamble on Japan in a conflict with the United States and the IMF’ at a time when they needed urgent financial assistance from them (Altbach, Reference Altbach1997). This indicated that East Asian countries were not completely happy with the American leadership in the immediate wake of the Asian financial crisis, but at the same time, they also had some doubts about Japan's regional leadership.

Lack of acceptance among other East Asian countries of Japan's regional financial leadership offered China a rationale for ‘a veto by the region's geopolitical heavyweight’ (Blustein, Reference Blustein2001). Taking advantage of Japan's failure to secure regional followership, China withheld its endorsement for Japan's AMF plan. At the same time, ‘in line with the guiding principle of being a “responsible country”, and within the framework of the IMF’, China provided financial assistance worth more than US$4 billion to Thailand and other crisis-hit countries in the region and maintained the no-devaluation policy for its currency (Pang Reference Pang2009). In other words, China took the strategy of conflicting to compete.

Sino-Japanese conflictive competition caused the continuing influence of the US over the region. In fact, taking advantage of China's mistrust of Japan, the US lobbied China to oppose an AMF plan by emphasizing the threat of Japanese yen hegemony (Lipscy, Reference Lipscy2003). China's opposition to an AMF helped the US to frustrate Japan's leadership aspiration.

Despite their conflict about an AMF, Japan and China came to coexist in CMI in 2000, a network of bilateral currency swap arrangements and functionally equivalent to an AMF. This was the result of Japan's and China's critical strategic practice.

After the failure of an AMF, Japan had quietly and persistently pursued its leadership in regional financial governance. In particular, it launched the New Miyazawa Initiative in 1998, to which US$30 billion was committed. Through the Initiative, Japan disbursed financial assistance to the region in a timely manner without US and the IMF's unnecessary intervention and hoped that ‘in the long run the establishment of an international guarantee institution with a prime focus on Asian countries will be seriously considered’ (MOFJ, 1998). The Initiative created a basis for the establishment of CMI, producing two bilateral swap agreements between Japan and South Korea and between Japan and Malaysia.

In response to this, a Japanese-led regional financial arrangement began to re-emerge as a major agenda in many countries in the region. Thailand and Malaysia resurrected an AMF plan in July and August 1999 respectively. In November 1999, ASEAN called on Japan to make the Miyazawa Fund a permanent facility. This was the case even in South Korea, which had an unfavourable perception of Japanese leadership in the region. Prime Minister Kim Jong-phil repeatedly offered his support for a Japanese-led AMF in November 1998.

With regard to Japan's high-profile leadership initiatives, including the New Miyazawa Initiative, China, still not reconciled with Japan, accused Japan of using financial advantage to assume regional leadership (Yang, Reference Yang2010) and remained concerned about the creation of a kind of yen hegemony (Wheatley, Reference Wheatley2001). However, Asian countries’ growing subscription to the idea of creating a regional financial mechanism forced China to reconsider its approach to the regional financial order. China adopted the strategy of cooperating to compete. In response to the revisiting by Asian countries of an AMF, Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji officially offered his support for the idea in late 1999. China finally joined in CMI in May 2000.

This did not mean that China was willing to countenance a Japanese-led regional financial arrangement. Rather, it intended to prevent Japan from gaining an uncontested leadership position in the regional financial order and to demonstrate an image of China as a responsible regional leader, caring for the region's needs. Zhu Rongji attached to his support for an AMF a condition that ‘the final outcome still depends on the detailed consultations and exchange of views among the parties concerned’ (AFP, 1999). Finance Minister Xiang Huaicheng stressed that ‘our government is in support of such an initiative [CMI] because it contributes to financial and economic stability to the region’ (The Nation, 2000).

After joining in CMI, China has competed with Japan for a greater leadership position in its implementation. In the early 2000s when China lagged behind Japan in terms of financial capabilities, China competed with Japan in a defensive way. It sought to prevent Japan from dominating the CMI process by asserting the need for third-party enforcement through the IMF. However, as China's ability became equivalent to or exceeded Japan's in the mid to late 2000s, China began to compete aggressively with Japan in the process of CMI Multilateralization (CMIM), an effort to develop CMI into a full-fledged regional financial governance mechanism. In 2009, in particular, China and Japan were in keen competition to be the largest contributor to CMIM, which would determine their voting weights in its collective decision. China and Japan became co-equal as the largest contributors by each contributing 32 per cent of the total amount of CMIM. In this way, China and Japan have coexisted in the processes of CMI and CMIM to take a greater leadership position.

Sino-Japanese competitive coexistence has caused the close linkage of CMI and CMIM to the IMF – albeit the amounts of the CMI and the CMIM that could be disbursed without IMF's approval has increased from 10 to 30 per cent – and this has allowed the US to maintain its influence over the regional financial order through the US-led IMF.

A blocking power relationship in institutional cooperation

The ten members of ASEAN, China, Japan and South Korea established in the late 1990s the first genuine East Asian institutional framework, named ‘ASEAN+3’. However, both Japan and China were at first less keen to promote ASEAN+3 than to strengthen bilateral relationships with ASEAN. After the failure of the AMF proposal, Japan was reluctant to take the initiative again in the formalization of a region-wide framework like ASEAN+3. Despite its participation in several regional forums since the mid 1990s, China was traditionally unenthusiastic about multilateral frameworks.

From the end of 1998, however, China began to play an active role in promoting ASEAN+3. Behind this were two facilitating factors. First, China's active role was a response to the willing followership by ASEAN countries. It was ASEAN countries that initiated the first ASEAN+3 summit meeting. ASEAN countries converted Japan's proposal in January 1997 for holding regular Japan–ASEAN summit meetings into a more ambitious plan to include China and South Korea. They hoped that ASEAN+3 could address effectively challenges posed by the Asian financial crisis that they could not deal with by themselves. They asked Japan and China to agree to the regularization of ASEAN+3 and to play crucial roles in its promotion. In this context, China sought to demonstrate its responsibility to its neighbours by playing a crucial role in promoting ASEAN+3.

Second, with the promotion of ASEAN+3, China sought to balance Japan, which was cultivating regional followership of its leadership through high-profile initiatives such as the New Miyazawa Initiatives. It is worth noting that China's initial proposals were to regularize ASEAN+3 Finance and Central Bank Deputies’ meetings and ASEAN+3 Finance Ministers’ meetings.

China's involvement led to Japan's competitive leading role in ASEAN+3. As Richard Stubbs noted, ‘although Japan was still reluctant to get involved, the Chinese government's agreement to take up ASEAN's invitation essentially forced Tokyo's hand . . . the Japanese government could not afford to let China gain an uncontested leadership position in the region’ (Stubbs, Reference Stubbs2002). Accordingly Japan and China came to coexist in the process of ASEAN+3, competing to be its major architect. Japan identified regional financial cooperation as one of the core regional agendas. China ignited regional interests in trade liberalization and regional trade arrangements with its proposal for the ASEAN–China Free Trade Agreement.

Sino-Japanese competitive coexistence shifted to their blocking power relationship concerning the establishment of EAS in 2005. China expressed its desire to host the first meeting of an East Asia Summit at the 3rd ASEAN+3 Director-Generals’ meeting in April 2004. This was encouraged by China's confidence in its role in ASEAN+3. Chinese policy elites seemed to have confidence in China's improved regional image as a responsible leader. Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing, for example, claimed that ‘China has proved itself to be a good neighbour, good friend and good partner of the surrounding countries’ (Li, Reference Li2005). In addition, China was gaining an advantage over Japan in ASEAN+3 as a result of its high-profile policies in the trade and security areas in the early 2000s. In this context, by evolving ASEAN+3 to an EAS, China sought to expand its leading role in an East Asian institutional framework, to develop a China-centred East Asian Community, and further to buffer and mitigate US influence in the region.

However, Japan sought to block China's proposal and advocated an expanded regional institutional framework. When an EAS was put on the table at the ASEAN and the ASEAN+3 Foreign Ministers’ meetings held on June 30 and 1 July 2004, Japan argued that an EAS should include Australia, India and New Zealand (MOFAJ, 2004). In January 2005, it proposed that the US should be included in an EAS.

In this way, Japan took the strategy of conflicting to compete. This was the result of Japan's critical reflection on the configuration of regional followership. China's proposal for an EAS received lukewarm responses from many ASEAN countries, particularly Indonesia and Singapore. As challenges posed by the Asian financial crisis were overcome, willing followership by ASEAN countries of China's and/or Japan's leading roles decreased. In addition, China's high-profile policies in the trade and security fields in the early 2000s mitigated the perceptions of China's threat among ASEAN countries but did not eradicate them. Although the region lacked a broader consensus on promoting exclusive East Asian regionalism (Hund, Reference Hund2003), China did not bother to share its vision of an ASEAN+3 based EAS with its neighbours. Rather, it proposed hosting the first EAS without any prior consultation with its neighbours, which increased ASEAN countries’ concerns that the regional project in which they had played important roles would be hijacked by stronger states (Soesastro, Reference Soesastro2006).

Taking advantage of China's failure in cultivating followership among the majority of potential followers for an ASEAN+3 based EAS, Japan shaped its policy toward the regional architecture in consideration of its competition with China for regional leadership. In the face of China's high-profile policies in the trade and security fields in the early 2000s, Japan sensed that ‘China's ASEAN strategy outmaneuvers Japan’ (Fukazawa and Ishii, Reference Fukazawa and Toshinao2002). In addition, as the region overcame the Asian financial crisis, regional interests appeared to move from financial cooperation to trade cooperation (Park and Wang, Reference Park and Yunjong2005). This was unfavourable to Japan in the sense that China's huge potential market would enable China to assume greater leadership roles in regional trade discussions than Japan.

Japan once considered that advocating ASEAN+3 would help Japan consolidate its leadership position in the region. However, as China increased its influence in setting the ASEAN+3 agenda, Japan could not endorse China's idea of an ASEAN+3 based EAS that would consolidate a Sino-centric regional order. Japan sought to make a new stage. It needed to juxtapose a Japanese-led expansive vision of a future regional order with a supposedly more Sino-centric and closed vision (Hughes, Reference Hughes2009).

With the mediation by ASEAN countries, the Japanese version of EAS was launched in December 2005, being juxtaposed with ASEAN+3. Since then, Japan and China have been the champions of EAS and ASEAN+3 respectively, seeking to take a better leadership position in regional cooperation and community-building in East Asia.

While the US were inattentive to an East Asian institutional framework in the early 2000s (Watanabe, Reference Watanabe2004), the Sino-Japanese blocking power relationship has enabled the US to pursue its regional strategy as it pleases. In fact, enjoying the intense Sino-Japanese competition, by 2008 the US had played an outside balancer without joining in EAS. From 2009, it has shifted its regional policy to act as an insider player, re-engaging in the region.