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The preoccupation of critical IPE (international political economy) theory with the global neoliberal program of deregulation & restructuring tends to hide the emergence of alternative patterns of regulation in different sites of global transformation. Currently, Japanese capitalism projects on a regional plane, concepts of regulation that negate neoliberal discourse. The contours of the regionalization of Japan's state & economy are taking shape in the form of tightly coordinated production networks, administrative guidance of investment patterns, & a regional division of labor. The roots of Japan's regulation strategy for the Asian region are traced to a historical logic of ideological, political & institutional responses of Japanese capitalism to structural change in the world order. At three successive moments in the history of Japanese capitalism, the strategic competence, conscious compromises, & "sense of direction" of administrators played a critical role. It is contended that an account of the history of this intellectual stratum in the process of social differentiation would not only shed light on the persistence of Japan's enigmatic political culture, but also clarify the absence of liberal ideas in Japanese concepts of regulation. 45 References. Adapted from the source document.

Abstract In this paper, we present ten scenarios developed using the IMAGE2.4 framework (Integrated Model to Assess the Global Environment) to explore how different assumptions on future climate and air pollution policies influence emissions of greenhouse gases and air pollutants. These scenarios describe emission developments in 26 world regions for the 21st century, using a matrix of climate and air pollution policies. For climate policy, the study uses a baseline resulting in forcing levels slightly above RCP6.0 and an ambitious climate policy scenario similar to RCP2.6. For air pollution, the study explores increasingly tight emission standards, ranging from no improvement, current legislation and three variants assuming further improvements. For all pollutants, the results show that more stringent control policies are needed after 2030 to prevent a rise in emissions due to increased activities and further reduce emissions. The results also show that climate mitigation policies have the highest impact on SO2 and NOX emissions, while their impact on BC and OC emissions is relatively low, determined by the overlap between greenhouse gas and air pollutant emission sources. Climate policy can have important co-benefits; a 10% decrease in global CO2 emissions by 2100 leads to a decrease of SO2 and NOX emissions by about 10% and 5%, respectively compared to 2005 levels. In most regions, low levels of air pollutant emissions can also be achieved by solely implementing stringent air pollution policies. The largest differences across the scenarios are found in Asia and other developing regions, where a combination of climate and air pollution policy is needed to bring air pollution levels below those of today.

In recent years, an approach based on voluntary pledges by individual regions has attracted interest of policy-makers and consequently also climate policy research. In this paper, we analyze scenarios in which the EU and China act as early-movers in international climate policy. Such a situation risks leakage between regions with ambitious emission reduction targets and those with less ambitious targets via fossil-fuel markets, displacement of heavy industry and land-use consequences. We examine some of these factors using the IMAGE model. While IMAGE does not include all mechanisms, we find the leakage rate to be relatively small, about 5% of the emission reductions in the EU and China. The far majority occurs via the energy market channel and the remainder through land-use change. Reduced oil prices due to less depletion forms the key reason for this leakage impact.