Abstract
Because of rapid economic growth and close economic interdependence, East
Asia has recently been in the spotlight of regional integration theorists. Currently,
East Asia is being remapped in two ways: one is the Regional Comprehensive
Economic Partnership (RCEP); and the other is the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic
Partnership (TPP). This article aims at predicting the winner of inter-institutional
balancing between the two tracks from a viewpoint of power politics. To do so,
realist hypotheses are made of regional integration and they are tested against the
Integration Achievement Score (IAS) data. As a result, newly suggested hypotheses
and some conventional ideas are strongly supported. These findings hold, regardless
of model specifications and measurement of variables. Next, after analyzing how
much the RCEP and the TPP accord with those findings, probabilities are presented
showing that the two tracks can achieve regional economic integration. In conclusion,
the TPP is expected to become the winner of inter-institutional balancing.
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