A Constructivist Reading of Japans Adaptive Responses to US Trade Demands: Power in Trade Dispute Resolutions

Abstract

The purpose of the paper is to show by a revised Wendtian constructivist framework that the changing distribution of material capabilities between the US and Japan could not affect a previous pattern of trade dispute resolutions between the two countries in the 1980s and the early 1990s. Theoretically, this paper argues that study on inter-state policy coordination not only requires analysis of power but sometimes analysis of identity relations as well. More specifically, it is argued that as long as identity relations and bilateral structural practices remain the same, changes in distribution of material capabilities have limited influence on previous patterns of inter-state policy coordination. Empirically, this paper shows that even though the gap in material capabilities between the US and Japan greatly narrowed in the 1980s and the early 1990s, as the identity of Japan and social structure between the two countries remained relatively the same, Japan continued to be adaptive to US trade demands.