A Political Sociology of Regionalisms

Perspectives for a Comparison

Kevin Parthenay

• Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9783319984339
• eBook ISBN: 9783319984346
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: African Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book provides an alternative approach to regionalism in neglected parts of the world. Taking stock of several decades of conceptualization, the author provides a political sociology approach of regionalisms fed by recent contributions from the sociology of international relations and public policy analysis. It uses a methodological rather than theoretical framework to bring a new perspective on an emerging field of comparative regionalism. The relational dimensions, the social contexts and characteristics of actors and their practices are key to shed a new light on what is considered in this book as a 'social international phenomenon'.

© The Author(s) 2019

Kevin ParthenayA Political Sociology of Regionalismshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98434-6_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction: Comparative Regionalism, Why Bother (Again?)

Kevin Parthenay¹

(1)

Sciences Po, Paris, France

Kevin Parthenay

Abstract

Comparative regionalism has generated a massive academic production. Before starting a journey within what has become an established field of research, it is necessary to recall the reasons that justify an additional contribution. This introduction aims at drawing a general picture of how regionalisms echo the main transformations of world politics and can serve as a grid to understand the international system.

Keywords

RegionalismsWorld politicsBrexitPost-TPP worldComparison

End Abstract

Is there still a space for a new book on comparative regionalism? This interrogation will appear as a legitimate one for those who have had in their hands a great number of books on comparative regionalism, which is nowadays characterized as an established scientific field at the crossroads of international relations, comparative politics and economics.

An Established Field

Since the early 1960s, empirical monographs and theoretical proposals have contributed to the emergence of an academic and scientific space that has progressively been institutionalized. It has accelerated since the 1990s. This established field still, however, has fuzzy outlines. Despite an outstanding and ever-increasing number of international research projects and programmes, post-doctoral fellowships, university chairs and editorial collections, comparative regionalism remains an academic field in the making.

Announced as a “field whose time has come” by one of the leading scholars of this subfield, Amitav Acharya (2012), many ontological and epistemological questions remain to be addressed. That is the sense of Alberta Sbragia’s (2008) question: “what might be” comparative regionalism? After almost a decade of academic production, Alexandra Russo points out the paradox of a field that appears already to be being reformed while it is still emerging (Russo 2016). A general literature review indicates that the scientific community has reached an important stage in terms of the intellectual agenda, epitomized by the promotion of a “consensual core” through a recent Oxford Handbook of Comparative Regionalism (Börzel and Risse 2016). However, this apparent consensus should not conceal unexplored approaches, nor the permanent mutations of the international order.

Indeed, the current world order implies that regionalism still deserves special attention, in particular through comparative perspectives. This introductory chapter argues that comparative regionalism is key to understanding world politics. It aims at answering two general questions: why does comparative regionalism still deserve particular attention in the contemporary international order? And consequently, what is the major purpose of comparative regionalism? To explore those questions, I use a brief empirical and contemporary panorama in order to encapsulate a fascinating phenomenon.

Let us first consider some numbers. The regional phenomenon has spread worldwide, as has its actorness. Since the early 1990s, regional agreements have increased remarkably. By June 2011, Tanja Börzel indicated that “the number of regional accords had increased more than five times compared to 1990” (Börzel 2011: 10). By January 2018, the general number of regional agreements had increased quite significantly, from 445 (2011) to 669 (2018). An evolution of the depth of regional integration is noticeable as well, as listed in 2018 by the World Trade Organization (WTO). In fact, 29 customs unions (only 9 in 2011) and 150 Economic Integration Agreements (EIA) have entered into force. About 60% are still composed of Free Trade Agreements (FTA; 250) and Preferential Trade Agreements (23). Moreover, if 50% of those regional agreements were bilateral in 2011, 66% are plurilateral and only 33% bilateral in 2018. In the end, 175 of those agreements are cross-regional. However, those empirical data are rooted in a macro-economic approximation and then rely on a restrictive understanding of what is regionalism, as described later (Fig. 1.1).

Fig. 1.1

Evolution of regional trade agreements in the world (1948–2018). (Source: RTA Section, WTO Secretariat, 25–Jan–18)

In the contemporary international scene, regional orders are built around regional organizations that may be defined as formal institutions with some variable degrees of actorness. Those regional organizations institutionalize the interdependent relations between states or the non-governmental actors from different countries (at least three countries to properly be “regional”, according to Börzel and Risse 2016: 7). In the same perspective, a recent international project coordinated by Antja Jetschke and Patrick Thiener, called the “Comparative Regional Organizations Project” (CROP; Jetschke and Thiener 2015), has built a new database on regional organizations around the world. The project, which “aimed to develop an index of similarity between texts, and therefore institutions”, makes the initial diagnostic of a remarkable growth in the number of regional organizations since the mid-1980s, from 42 to 100 (Fig. 1.2).

Fig. 1.2

Number of existing regional organizations by region, 1919–2015. (Source: Jetschke et al. 2018)

How can we account for this growing interest? At the end of the 1990s, Walter Mattli underlined that “interest [in comparative regionalism] was sparked, in part, by a new wave of regionalism in Asia, Africa, and the Americas that grew in strength in the 1990s” (Mattli 2012: 778). This statistical argument lies today at the forefront of the renewed academic interest (Börzel and Risse 2016: 5; CROP 2015). Beyond the quantitative argument, there is a more interesting question of the nature of what have been conceptualized as “waves” or “sequences” (Mansfield and Milner 1999; Baldwin 2011; Dabène 2012; Mattheis 2014). Are the institutional designs of those regional organizations similar from one period to the other? Do they share the same characteristics (task specific vs general purpose; institutional depth; formal vs informal)? Why do some regional orders, “confer significant authority on supranational agencies, encourage the use of qualified or simple majority in joint decision making, and make provisions for strong dispute settlements procedure, powerful enforcement tools and extensive common monitoring while others are strictly interstate cooperation” (Mattli 2012: 778)? Have the variations in decision-making procedures changed over time?

Beyond numbers, regional organizations have also progressively developed their own actorness in international politics. Many regional organizations are involved beyond their geographical or conceptual borders, in particular through membership in international organizations or problem-solving in other regions (Panke et al. 2015). Panke, Lang and Wiedemann account for an emergent phenomenon known as a “regionalization of international negotiations”: as many regional organizations acquire formal status within international organizations, they assume an active role in multilateral arenas that become more and more complex governance systems (Panke et al. 2015, 2017). As for some multilateral arenas and international negotiations, the development of the regional phenomenon coincides with complex transformations of states, societies and economies. Moreover, it confronts complex international change processes that imply not only maintaining attention on the regional phenomenon, but also shedding an alternative light on it.

The EU and Brexit

The referendum organized on 23 June 2016 in the United Kingdom (UK) decided on an exit from the European Union (EU). This unexpected result triggered major questions on regional affairs even beyond the EU. At first, Brexit has reconfigured a debate that has long paralysed the study of comparative regionalism: Eurocentrism. Crisis and flexibility bring European experience closer to extra-European cases. Europe and the EU are facing a time of turmoil. As a consequence, the economic, migratory and political crisis has weakened the legitimacy of the EU, and even more its “yardstick dimension” to analyse other regional projects. As an unanticipated major event in world politics, Brexit generated a multi-faceted debate in the comparative regionalism field.

Brexit has fed many debates on institutional design and questioned the deep core of regionalism’s functions. Thinking about Asian regionalisms, Laura Allison-Reumann and Philomena Murray wrote that “Brexit has served as a cautionary tale for both officials and observers in Asia of the perils of a strong, supranational body with complex institutions” (2017). They also explain that “the Brexit crisis has to an extent reinforced the view that the EU is not a body to be replicated elsewhere, and that ASEAN and the EU are distinct” (2017). Brexit also echoed loudly in other parts of the world. Indeed, in an article titled “No Brussels here” published on 7 July 2016, The Economist quoted Chilean Foreign Minister Heraldo Muñoz saying that the lesson of Brexit is that integration must be “flexible, concrete (…) and not bureaucratic” (The Economist 2016). As a conclusion, The Economist wrote:

Latin American governments do not want to cede sovereignty to a supranational body. Unlike Europe neither history nor geography has encouraged them to do so. Mercosur has a small secretariat; the Pacific-Alliance is purely intergovernmental (…). If it is to happen at all, Latin American integration will be very different from the EU. (The Economist 2016)

Likewise, African regionalism has drawn some lessons from Brexit. Henke and Asmelash explain that in Africa, Brexit predominantly underlined the absolute necessity that regional integration’s “benefits trickle down to the micro-level”, recording that the “benefactors of any integration process should always be the people” (Henke and Asmelash 2016). In the end, the post-Brexit debates put on the table the fact that the EU is no longer a model to replicate; that supranational institutions are strongly downgraded and that regionalism does not necessarily need strong institutions; and that flexibility appears as a privileged option for a political phenomenon that aims at creating collective goods at the regional level.

Thus, Brexit contribu...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction: Comparative Regionalism, Why Bother (Again?)
• 2. Comparative Regionalism: Tracing the Field’s Consolidation
• 3. A Political Sociology to Compare Regionalisms: The Intellectual Legacy
• 4. A Political Sociology to Compare Regionalisms: The Analytical Framework
• 5. A Political Sociology to Compare Regionalisms: A Methodological Approximation
• 6. Conclusion
• Back Matter