European and Asian Responses to the Global Financial Crisis — And its Precedent

Abstract

This chapter compares European and Asian responses to the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) of 2007–2012 — and its precedent, the Asian Financial Crisis (AFC) of 1997–1998. Section II reflects on how globalisation has affected Europe, the US and Asia and how comparative regionalism can understand its impact. Section III analyses the events of 1997–1998 in Asia in that light. Section IV examines how the EU responded to the GFC in four stages of deepening engagement, while Section V surveys its contrasting effects in the Asian region. Four aspects of similarity and difference between the European and Asian experiences of financial crisis and how these could affect relations between the two regions in coming years are suggested. Globalisation drew both regions into participation in a more unitary capitalist system opened up by neoliberal deregulation and financialisation. Managing that dynamism encouraged differential degrees of regional integration in these two regions. Overcoming the defects exposed by the crisis saw in both a similar rebalancing of state-market relations. This common experience could, finally, serve to draw them closer together in a world which has been pitched by the crisis into a transition towards greater multipolarity and interdependence.