Parliamentary Dimensions of Regionalization and Globalization

The Role of Inter-Parliamentary Institutions

O. Costa, C. Dri, S. Stavridis, O. Costa, C. Dri, S. Stavridis

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781137322746
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Globalisierung

The end of the Cold War has seen an international proliferation of parliamentary bodies of all types and at all levels. How can this process of parliamentarization be assessed and under what conditions do these institutions operate? This book explores how regional integration and globalization are developing from a parliamentary perspective.

1

Introduction

Olivier Costa, Stelios Stavridis and Clarissa Dri

1.1. Preliminary remarks

Interest in the role of International Parliamentary Institutions (IPIs) remains extremely limited, especially if one considers their growth in the international relations of a globalizing-cum-regionalizing world. Indeed, much work has been published on the new world order that is slowly – and painfully – emerging since the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Empire in the seminal years of 1989–1991. In brief, there is a parliamentarization of regionalization and globalization that deserves the attention of the academic world.

Parliamentarians and parliamentary institutions engage in international affairs in three major ways (Malamud and Stavridis 2011)¹:

1. by influencing foreign policy, mainly through national parliaments;

2. by conducting parallel diplomatic relations, known as parliamentary diplomacy; and

3. by establishing and empowering parliaments as representative bodies of international, often regional, organizations.

The objective of this volume is to make some sense of the current “puzzle” that IPIs represent worldwide.² They represent a brainteaser for the reason that their rapid growth in numbers and in a diversity of forms in the emerging post-Cold War new order is a worldwide phenomenon. But at the same time its first expression dates back to 1889, with the setting up of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) nearly 125 years ago. It is true that, together with the Nordic Council and the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association – under their previous names – which were set up in 1907 and in 1911, respectively, these were the only three IPIs that existed prior to 1945.³

Before considering the questions of the definition and categorization of IPIs through a literature review, specifying the research questions addressed in this volume and presenting the various chapters’ contents, a contextualizing of the book within the existing literature on globalization, regionalization and democratization is undertaken.

The international system results from a number of important developments that ran over centuries but accelerated in the last decades. Most of them can be associated with normative processes of change: democratization, regionalization (also described as regional integration) and globalization (initially of a financial and economic type, later Multi-Level Governance [MLG]). These processes follow each other chronologically, but it is important to note that

• they are not irreversible;

• they can be mutually reinforcing, although this is not always necessarily the case; and

• sometimes one of the processes takes precedence over the others.

This does not mean that there are no other conceptualizations or theoretical approaches that are as, or even sometimes more, relevant. But all studies and analyses contain assumptions, preferences and also prescriptions. Even when one attempts to disassociate oneself from such a (in fact often doomed to fail) direction, other assumptions and preferences usually prevail, in spite of claims to the contrary (“objective and scientific analyses, with no normative dimension included”, are claims often heard or read for instance).

Democratization in the modern era began in the late 18th century.⁴ Democracy is also a rather enduring model as it has adapted over time (from direct to representative and, nowadays, participative or deliberative democracy, for instance) and over space (different federal or centralized government models, plus a variety of in-between, quasi-federal ones); as well as reacting to new developments, mainly of a technological kind (transport, telecommunications, military etc., but also mass education). The criteria for democracy, as defined by integration and regionalism scholars, still leave room regarding the institutional arrangements and the type of democracy (representative, deliberative, participatory, procedural etc.) that underline them. We also find such a variety when we look at how regional parliaments are organized and (s)elected: via direct elections or as national parliamentarians appointed by their institution, or sometimes a mixture of both (this is particularly true of inter-regional parliaments). These questions do not only have an impact on the democratization debate but also on whether those regional and inter-regional parliaments facilitate the democratization-through-socialization of the representatives from the less(er) developed democracies – the so-called “socialization effect”.

Both (sometimes overlapping) literatures on democratization and on governance show the importance of the question of “legitimacy” and of “accountability”. Whereas the former largely refers to many features of a regime (values, institutional rules, mechanism of participation, rule of law etc.) and to the perceptions of citizens, the latter refers to more specific institutional rules and organizational mechanisms – that we can call “checks and balances” or intra-systemic legitimization. Both approaches are, however, concerned with and address the role/importance of parliamentary bodies and institutions. From the “democracy/democratization” literature on (global) governance, but also on “regionalization” (Warleigh 2006), we retain and stress the importance that both give to parliamentary institutions/bodies.

Regionalization and regional integration are rather more recent phenomena, in their current and adapted forms: the end of World War Two is the main starting point of what is now called “old regionalism”. No doubt, there were earlier versions prior to then, but regional integration usually refers to post-1945 developments, initially in (Western) Europe, and later in Latin America and in Africa – with very few in Asia at that time.⁵

Regionalism and, in particular, its post-Cold-War version, “new regionalism” (NR), also known as “open regionalism”,⁶ represents a less theoretical, less structured and less normative approach than MLG (see below). It is, indeed, more descriptive and does not necessarily aim eventually to produce something as ambitious as world governance.

However, what are the main differences between these two approaches? Fundamentally,⁷ rather than stressing the more formal, institutional, economically and financially biased process of integration (based on Europe’s experience), it would be more useful and productive to include (Söderbaum 2008: 6–7) a form of regionalism “open”⁸ to an increasing set of actors – both state and non-state – including civil society and parliaments (the latter being the focus of interest in this volume), of a multi-level type and cutting across regions (again, the comprehensive dimension of this book), which is as much a result of globalization (following the end of the Cold War) as it is a reaction to it.

NR also favors a “bottom-up” rather than a “top-down” approach: nonstate and non-governmental actors play a very crucial role, especially within civil society. Regionalization is not only considered as a matter for heads of states/governments, ministers, diplomats and highly ranked civil servants, as supposed by the neo-realists, but as involving other levels and types of public organizations (judicial institutions, central banks and parliamentary bodies – again, the focus of the current study); because of this “bottom-up” dimension, “state-centred” models are not able to assess how effective those new integration processes are.⁹ This dimension is crucial to the current volume as parliamentary entities often act as “transmission belts” between the “governed” and the “governing”.

All this has led to a proliferation of academic studies, in International Relations (IR) but also in Comparative Studies, as well as in other social science disciplines and sub-disciplines (Bach 1999; Warleigh 2006; Söderbaum 2008; Warleigh-Lack, Robinson and Rosamond 2011; Rosamond and Warleigh-Lack 2011).

Moreover, as Hettne (2003: 25) claims, there are other implications of NR, mainly the proliferation of various levels of “inter-regionalisms”:

• trans-regionalism, which refers to “relations between regions”;

• inter-regionalism, which refers to “organized or formal relations between two regional organizations” and

• multi-regionalism, which means “regional multilateralism”.

Thus, in addition to regional processes across the world, there also are new types of relations between those regional groupings. These definitional distinctions are particularly relevant for this volume as they identify a number of inter-related and yet different processes. Their parliamentary dimensions will also reflect such a complexity, as we will show in this volume.

Globalization, politically speaking, is a much more recent phenomenon still. Initially of a financial and economic kind, it developed into a political phenomenon once the bipolar system came to an end in the 1989–1991 seminal years. The “positive” side of the bipolar system was its predictability (avoidance of escalation, limited wars, each super power had an “empire”, although one was no doubt more benign than the other), but its rigidity meant that many conflicts were postponed until the sudden collapse of that order. Many “implosions” thus took place within the old Soviet state and on its immediate periphery, the most notorious case in Europe being the violent collapse of Yugoslavia.¹⁰

MLG builds on a number of IR theories. It is usually associated with the internal and external dimensions of the EU (Hooghe and Marks 2001a, b, 2002, 2004; Grau 2011;Morata 2011;Awesti 2009).

The concept itself refers as much to a decision-making process as it does to the various institutions and organs involved in it. MLG research addresses extensively the question of legitimization of regional integrations and of the relationship between the various levels of governance (Marks, Hooghe and Blank 1996). Indeed, MLG possesses a specific democratic/democratization dimension, as it claims to bring citizens as close to a policy decision as possible. It draws on the concept of “subsidiarity”, central to federal regimes, which has been present in the European Union (EU) discourse since the beginning of the 1990s. In all globalization and MLG studies, the role of parliamentary institutions is particularly relevant when addressing the wider questions of accountability and legitimacy, two concepts related closely to that of efficiency.

In this volume, we concentrate on the “regionalism and integration” realms, and on the “governance” approaches. We do not claim that other schools are not relevant, but only that those concepts and models are best suited to tackle the question of democracy/democratization that has been central to the process of creation and empowerment of parliamentary bodies at regional and inter-regional levels. The democratic question has, indeed, always been the main argument for the promoters of parliamentarization or for members of parliament (MPs) themselves to get involved in European, regional or international affairs (see chapter on the European Parliament [EP]).

In fact, the argument was two-fold. MPs first insist on the need for a better involvement of citizens in regional integration processes or globalization management through their elected representatives – that is, themselves. They also underline the need for a better legitimization of regional integration institutions by their progressive parliamentarization, which does not necessarily mean the indirect involvement of citizens, but at least the existence of checks and balances. We have thus witnessed, in the EU and today in the Mercado Comum do Sul (Southern Common Market) (MERCOSUR), the adoption of some features of representative democracy (parliamentary or presidential), along with elements of direct democracy.

1.2. “State of the art”: a review of the existing literature on IPIs¹¹

A. The origins and causes of IPIs

The creation of the first IPI was a result of the promotion of a permanent institutional structure for the peaceful settlement of disputes: in its original plans, the IPU should have served mainly as an arbitrator in quarrels among states.¹² There has thus always been a link with conflict and conflict resolution from the start, and hence an IR concern from the start.

However, the real growth of IPIs started after World War Two, when “the public demand for a better transparency of decision-making in international politics came to the forefront of political debates, especially in Europe” (Šabič 2008a: 260). This is in part due to globalization, a democratization process (some of Wilson’s fourteen points, but more importantly after World War Two, with the decolonization process and the Cold War against Communism), and the necessary technological advances for making parliamentary diplomacy possible (internet and other communication revolutions in particular). Those developments have allowed for more than “just” technical parliamentary cooperation to take place (Elorriaga 2004: 35).¹³

In addition, regional integration processes, especially in (Western) Europe, but also in Latin America or even in Africa, have contained a parliamentary dimension from their very start in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The notion of IPIs as a forum for facilitating dialogue and contacts among parliamentarians was increasingly pursued across other continents. Thus, the PACE (the current name of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe) and the European Parliament (the current name of the initial European Coal and Steel Community [ECSC] Assembly) were, respectively, set up in 1949 and in 1952. The Latin American Parliament was created in 1964, the East African Legislative Assembly in 1967, the Arab Inter-Parliamentary Union in 1974, the Central American Parliament in 1975, the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) Inter-Parliamentary Organization in 1977 and the Andean Parliament in 1979.

But the real “boom” occurred after 1989–1991 and the collapse of bipolarity: it is characterized both by the proliferation of IPIs and by the “renaming”/“rebranding” of existing ones. For instance, the Parliamentary Conference of the European Economic Community-African Caribbean and Pacific (EEC-ACP) Association was set up in 1963 and renamed the Joint Parliamentary Assembly (JPA) in 2000. The North Atlantic Assembly had initially been created in 1955 as a private parliamentary club, called the “Conference of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Parliamentarians” until 1967. It was then granted a special legal status by the Belgian Parliament: as a result, it changed its name into the North Atlantic Assembly, until 1999, when it was again renamed “NATO PA” following the trend identified above (Marschall 2007). In 2007, the ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Organization (AIPO), set up in 1977, was also renamed the ASEAN-Inter-Parliamentary Assembly (AIPA).

This demonstrates that the first phase of regional integration (old integration) includes parliaments as part of a regional “internal” process and the need for its legitimization and democratic dimension. But the new (or open) regionalism of the globalization (initially financial, then commercial and eventually political) calls for IPIs to play a role in trying to create a new world order (glo...