What causes changes in international governance details?: An economic security perspective

This article introduces a new interpretative lens to enrich our understanding of a relationship between small states’ economic security and the terms of multilateral governance. It seeks to shed light on the question: “What causes such changes in the details of multilateral agreements?” by establishing the causal pathways linking countries’ economic security with their institutional responses and decisions to rejig particular arrangement terms. I argue that different types of major powers’ behavior – rivalry among themselves, their economic statecraft, and their gaining advantage in existing negotiation frameworks – undermine small states’ economic security differently, causing them to select dissimilar institutional responses and adjust dissimilar institutional rules. To test the argument, the case of the Ayeyawady-Chao Phraya-Mekong Economic Cooperation Strategy (ACMECS) which was revamped in 2018 is examined. My work contributes to the literatures on economic security, small states’ institutional strategies, and seeks to stimulate more interdisciplinary research between International Relations and International Political Economy.