The IPE literature on compliance has presented three theoretically competing mechanisms to induce compliance with international regulatory regimes: externality- based, market, and domestic compliance mechanisms. However, most studies on compliance have limited their analytic focus to formal compliance with explicit provisions of regimes, neglecting the question as to whether formal compliance enhances regime effectiveness, which is the fundamental issue of compliance. Yet, although national authorities implement an international regulatory regime, they frequently manipulate the implementation to help regulatory targets formally comply with its explicit provisions but still allow them, in practice, to defect from its objectives. This study introduces the concepts of cosmetic compliance and comprehensive compliance, and it analyses the effectiveness of the three compliance mechanisms in ensuring comprehensive compliance by addressing compliance with a momentous international financial regulatory regime, the 1988 Basel Capital Adequacy Accord, in three important Asian countries, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, from 1988 to 2003. All three countries were formally in compliance with the regime throughout most of the period. However, Japan's compliance was consistently cosmetic, while Korea and Taiwan also complied cosmetically during much of the period. A high degree of comprehensive compliance occurred only in Taiwan during the early 1990s and in Korea during the late 1990s and early 2000s. All three compliance mechanisms contributed to formal compliance. However, the externality-based compliance mechanism and the market compliance mechanism were not effective in ensuring comprehensive compliance. The operation of the domestic compliance mechanism was necessary for comprehensive compliance; yet, its effectiveness relied on the capacity of national authorities to implement it. As a result, the actual outcome of the operation of the domestic compliance mechanism was affected by domestic factors, in particular, the capacity to deal with formal compliance failures by regulatory targets, the domestic distributional effects of compliance, and the independence of the regulatory authority.

Despite the fact that there is considerable literature in the English-language on East Asian history in the nineteenth century, there are very few works that focus on the international politics of the region in the thirty-five years or so between the end of the Arrow War and the outbreak of the First Sino-Japanese War in July 1894. As a result, the history of East Asia in this period is often understood as a period of brief moratorium for the Qing dynasty of China before it finally fell prey to Western and Japanese imperialism at the turn of the century. In reality, the Qing was neither as passive nor as powerless as is often believed. On the contrary, the Chinese were successful in re-emerging as the most influential regional power in East Asia by the 1880s by making a conscious effort to reassert their influence in East Asia not only through domestic self-strengthening, but also by drawing on the traditional network between the Qing Empire and its neighbouring vassal kingdoms. This point has already been raised by some historians who have focused on Chinese policy towards Korea – a country which became the focus of imperial competition not only between Qing China and Japan but also Britain and Russia from the 1880s. However, little attention has been paid to how other states reacted to China’s revival. Much light can be shed on this process by looking at how two of the most significant players, Japan and Britain, related to the reassertion of Qing power and to each other over the future of Korea in the period from 1876 to 1894. This dissertation will demonstrate that it was difficult for the Anglo-Japanese relationship to become closer when the international environment in the region required them to prioritise their respective ties with the Qing Empire.