Layered Legacies: Cold War Export Control Institutions and Allied and Partner Responses in Asia‐Pacific Technology Governance

ABSTRACT Why do US allies and strategic partners in the Asia‐Pacific translate a common US‐centred technology‐governance pressure environment into different policy forms? This article argues that the answer lies in historically uneven export‐control institutional pathways, alongside current threat perception, exposure to China and domestic industrial politics. Using comparative historical analysis and structured, focused comparison, it examines Japan, South Korea, Australia, and Taiwan. Historical export‐control institutional legacy is coded through evidence fixed before the post‐2022 semiconductor‐control shock: Cold War and CoCom linkage, the first export‐control statute and its design, the lead agency around 1990, and pre‐2022 post‐Cold War retention. The inherited institutional objects are legal authorities, administrative procedures, bureaucratic lead‐agency routines and alliance or strategic‐trade coordination mechanisms. Post‐2022 alignment is then disaggregated into control lists, destination or embargo controls, end‐use and end‐user controls, the link between national lists and multilateral export‐control regimes, and the main domestic institutional channel. The analysis shows that older control architectures shape how legal authorities, bureaucratic routines and coordination channels are converted, layered and repurposed for economic‐security and technology‐governance goals. Japan follows a trade‐bureaucratic continuity pathway; South Korea a late strategic‐trade and firm‐sensitive managed‐adaptation pathway; Australia a defence/security‐control continuity pathway; and Taiwan a non‐CoCom strategic‐trade translation pathway that combines export control with separate technology‐protection instruments. The article contributes a historically grounded account of policy translation in Asia‐Pacific technology governance.