Governance Transfer by Regional Organizations

Patching Together a Global Script

Tanja A. Börzel, V. van Hüllen, Kenneth A. Loparo, Vera van Hüllen, V. van Hüllen, Vera van Hüllen

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN:
  9781137385635
• eBook ISBN:
  9781137385642
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Civil Rights in Law
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This volume explores the conditions under which regional organizations engage in governance transfer in and to areas of limited statehood. The authors argue that a global script of governance transfer by regional organizations is emerging, where regional and national actors are adapting governance standards and instruments to their local context.

Part I

Introduction

1

Towards a Global Script? Governance Transfer by Regional Organizations

Tanja A. Börzel and Vera van Hüllen

Since the end of the Cold War, international organizations and states have developed programs to promote ‘good’ governance in member states and third countries. Regional organizations have gained an important role in governance transfer. They constitute an intermediate level of agency between the nation-state and global institutions. Their broad mandate allows them to promote legitimate governance institutions in their member states and, in some cases, also non-member states. Today, almost every regional organization prescribes, promotes, and protects some standards for governance at the national level, irrespective of its original purpose – including simple free trade agreements. Thereby, they do not only foster the evolution of regional but also induce the transformation of national order.

This book explores the link between regional organizations and the governance institutions of their member states, with a focus on areas where the capacity of domestic institutions to provide public goods or set and enforce rules for their provision is weak. More specifically, we identify conditions under which regional organizations engage in governance transfer in and to ‘areas of limited statehood’ (Risse 2011). It compares how they prescribe standards and develop instruments for their protection and promotion. The chapters present findings on the standards and instruments of 12 regional organizations in Africa, the Middle East and Asia, the Americas, and Europe. The comparison shows that there is an expansion of ‘good’ governance-related regional provisions across time and space. Regional organizations have not only institutionalized commitments to human rights, democracy, the rule of law, and good governance, in particular the fight against corruption. They have also developed more detailed prescriptions of these ‘good’ governance standards and established similar instruments to promote or protect them, including, for example, the legal protection of human rights, democracy clauses, election observation missions, and election assistance.

Despite these common institutional trends, we find systematic differences in governance transfer between regional organizations. If they follow a ‘global script’, its adoption is ‘localized’ (Acharya 2004). Regional organizations choose from a menu of standards and instruments rather than simply downloading the whole package. In fact, we see significant variation in the timing and design of provisions for governance transfer by individual organizations. Why has the Organization of American States pioneered in the field of anti-corruption? Why did the Southern African Development Community establish a supranational court only to abolish it again a few years later? Why were the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the League of Arab States latecomers to governance transfer – and why do regional organizations with largely non-democratic members engage in governance transfer at all? How do we explain that the North American Free Trade Agreement moved beyond free trade, establishing labor and environmental standards? Why has Mercosur recently started to develop its own regional human rights regime parallel to the Inter-American System? Why have the European Union and the Council of Europe only recently installed relatively weak mechanisms for the protection of democratic standards in their member states?

Research on diffusion and comparative regionalism is ill equipped to account for this double finding of increasing similarities and persisting differences. This book adopts a more agency-centered approach, conceptualizing governance transfer by regional organizations as an institutional choice by (member) states. We identify factors that generate the demand by states for governance transfer, on the one hand, and factors that shape its institutional design, on the other. While democratic lock-in is a key driver of the demand, our findings point to other factors, such as ensuring regional stability, attracting foreign aid and trade, and deflecting attempts at governance transfer by external actors, which are equally relevant and explain why non-democratic states also engage in governance transfer by regional organizations.

The chapter proceeds with an outline of the analytical framework and a description of the main patterns of governance transfer by 12 regional organizations since the end of World War II. It then turns to elaborating a set of demand and supply factors that account for the timing and specific design of governance transfer by individual regional organizations, before setting out the plan of the book.

Analyzing governance transfer by regional organizations

We speak of governance transfer if regional organizations explicitly prescribe and/or intentionally and actively promote and protect the building, modification, and respect of governance institutions in their member states or third countries (Börzel et al. 2013; Börzel et al. 2011). Governance institutions are defined as norms, rules, and procedures that are the basis for the provision of collective goods and collectively binding rules (Beisheim et al. 2011).

In this book we are interested in macro-level institutions referring to the organization of authority more broadly as it is reflected in a country’s political system. By prescribing, promoting, and protecting standards for governance institutions, the regional organization defines what governance should look like at the national level to be considered legitimate. While it is an empirical question which criteria for legitimacy regional organizations establish, we find that standards for legitimate governance institutions mainly draw on different notions of democracy, human rights, the rule of law, and good governance.

When regional organizations are transferring governance institutions, this does not necessarily imply that they are themselves governance actors at the national level, directly involved in the adoption and implementation of collectively binding rules and/or the provision of collective goods (Krasner and Risse 2014). Rather, regional organizations try to influence governance institutions at the national level, in member states or third countries (Pevehouse 2005). In this context, they act as standard-setters and promoters through their various bodies and representatives. Depending on the regional organization’s competencies and mandate, these include first of all intergovernmental bodies such as ministerial councils, allowing member states to act collectively, but possibly also its secretariat, parliamentary assembly, or agencies as truly ‘regional’, ‘supranational’ actors. At the national level, domestic actors in member states and/or third countries become the addressees or targets of governance transfer. They are most often state actors, in particular national and/or subnational governments, as well as the judiciary and legislative, but potentially also non-state actors, for example civil society, business, or community-based organizations.

Through the prescription of standards and institutional provisions for their active promotion and protection, regional organizations create an institutional framework for governance transfer. Governance transfer provisions can be integrated into the founding treaties of a regional organization or secondary legislation at the regional level. They can vary in their timing and design, in particular regarding the precision and scope of standards and instruments.

In prescribing standards for domestic governance institutions, regional organizations can simply refer to democracy, human rights, the rule of law, and good governance as abstract standards. Or they can define their content more precisely by specifying their main dimensions or even specific norms. Depending on how many standards, dimensions, or norms regional organizations prescribe, they operate with a broader or narrower set of governance standards.

In addition to prescribing standards, regional organizations can create instruments for their active promotion and protection, drawing on four different mechanisms of influence in order to induce compliance with certain governance standards: coercion, incentives, capacity-building, and persuasion and socialization (Magen et al. 2009). The ‘toolkit’ for governance transfer comprises six different types of instruments, which vary with regard to the degree to which they interfere with the sovereignty of states (Börzel and Risse 2009b): military force and litigation (coercion), sanctions and rewards (negative and positive incentives), financial and technical assistance (capacity-building), and fora for dialogue and exchange (persuasion and socialization). Again, regional organizations can define these instruments, for example the procedures for their application, more or less precisely, and the scope of instruments available can be broader or narrower.

This book focuses on the evolution of the framework for governance transfer by regional organizations, seeking to explain the timing and specific design of standards and instruments. The chapters also provide insights into the practices of governance transfer, that is, the adoption and implementation of actual measures to promote or protect governance standards by regional actors. Chapter 2 sets out the analytical framework shared by the chapters in more detail (Börzel and Stapel in this volume; see also Börzel et al. 2013).

Mapping governance transfer by regional organizations

The book compares governance transfer by 12 regional organizations. It provides an overview of, and some deeper insights into, the transfer of governance institutions by regional organizations in and to areas of limited statehood in Africa, the Middle East and Asia, the Americas, and Europe:

• African Union (AU)

• Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS)

• Southern African Development Community (SADC)

• Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)

• League of Arab States (LAS)

• Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS)

• Organization of American States (OAS)

• North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)

• Common Market of the South (Mercado Común del Sur, Mercosur)

• Andean Community (Communidad Andina, CAN)

• Council of Europe (CoE)

• European Union (EU)

The 12 regional organizations span ‘the West’ and the ‘non-Western’ world. They vary with regard to their institutional design (breadth and depth of regional cooperation) as well as with regard to the degree of statehood and the regime type of their member states. While ECOWAS covers a broad range of issue areas, including peace, security, and human development, NAFTA focuses exclusively on trade liberalization. The EU has the strongest supranational institutions, while ASEAN and LAS are strictly intergovernmental, being controlled by their member states. The supranational powers of ECOWAS and SADC institutions range somewhere in between, which is at least partly related to the greater problem of limited statehood which their members face. Most of the Mercosur, ASEAN, and LAS member states, by contrast, have sufficient capacities to set and enforce (regional) norms and rules. The EU and the CoE were established as communities of democracies. The regional organizations in the Americas have an increasingly democratic membership. ASEAN, while improving, still scores significantly lower, and LAS and CIS largely consist of (semi-)authoritarian regimes. If NAFTA, ASEAN, LAS, CIS, and ECOWAS promote similar standards for legitimate governance institutions using the same set of instruments, this should be a strong indication of the diffusion of a global script. The comparison of major regional organizations as diverse as NAFTA, ECOWAS, ASEAN, LAS, CIS, and the EU enables us to evaluate to what extent we can observe the diffusion of a global governance script and how it is localized at the regional level.

This book shows that the idea of governance transfer by regional organizations has spread around the globe. Especially since the 1990s, there is a global trend towards a broader and more detailed prescription of standards related to human rights, democracy, and rule of law, and a narrower agenda of good governance that focuses in particular on the fight against corruption. This development is complemented by the increasing number and scope of instruments which actively protect and promote these standards at the national level. The comparison of 12 regional organizations from around the world shows that governance transfer has become increasingly similar and identifies typical patterns that occur across time and space (Börzel and Stapel in this volume).

Respect for human rights figures prominently among the first standards prescribed by regional organizations. Especially in Europe and the Americas, but also in Africa, ‘continental’ organizations like the CoE, the OAS, and the Organization of African Unity (OAU), the predecessor of the AU, were founded on the commitment to human rights and drew up detailed catalogues of human rights. These regional charters and conventions cover all generations of human rights, reinforcing and complementing global standards since the 1940s. The commitment to human rights became more widespread in the 1990s also among (sub)regional (economic) organizations. Similarly, references to democracy have become more frequent and more elaborate since the 1990s and again since the 2000s, focusing in particular on elections and threats to the democratic (or constitutional) order, such as military and constitutional coups d’état. The rule of law is often mentioned in conjunction with human rights and democracy, especially since the 1990s, but in comparison with these concepts it is much less prominent and elaborate, and is often limited to very general principles, such as the independence of the judiciary. Standards related to a narrower good governance agenda appeared at the regional level in the 2000s, and concern in particular the fight against corruption and the transparency and efficiency of public administration.

The specific instruments for governance transfer vary with the substantive concepts they seek to promote or protect. Overall, regional organizations use ‘harder’ instruments, drawing on coercion and sanctions, to protect human rights and democracy, whereas they focus on ‘softer’ instruments, based on dialogue and capacity-building, for promoting the fight against corruption and the rule of law. Many regional organizations seek to enforce respect for human rights in their member states by judicial protection through either specific human rights courts or regional courts that also deal with human rights. Their work is often complemented by human rights commissions that regularly monitor the human rights situation, organize fora for dialogue and exchange, and engage in measures for capacity- and awareness-building. Especially since the 1990s, most regional organizations have adopted suspension and/or intervention clauses to punish the interruption of the constitutional – or democratic – order and, in some cases, also the violation of human rights in their member states. Possible measures include efforts at mediation, the suspension of membership rights, additional political and economic sanctions, and in a few cases the use of military force to re-establish order. Another common feature of governance transfer by regional organizations is provisions for election observation and assistance, which appeared early on and have again spread further since the 1990s. Especially since the 2000s, regional organizations have developed comprehensive programs for dialogue and capacity-building in order to promote some of their standards, especially in the field of anti-corruption, but also related to other aspects of good governance as well as democracy and the rule of law.

At the same time, we find important regional differences with regard to when and how our 12 regional organizations prescribe, promote, and protect ‘good’ governance institutions at the national level. First, there is significant variation in the timing of the prescription of governance standards and provisions for their active promotion and protection, sometimes putting several decades between ‘first movers’ and ‘latecomers’. Whereas the CoE and the OAS adopted comprehensive human rights charters in the 1940s, ASEAN and LAS have only recently followed their example. The global comparison suggests that regional organizations in Asia and the Middle East are overall latecomers with regard to governance transfer – if their recent efforts are any indication that they are going to follow the trend in the future. Timing varies also between the other regional organizations, with some pioneering and others following the global trend.

Second, as well as their timing, efforts at governance transfer also vary regarding the exact content of standards promoted, the ultimate choice and design of instruments for their promotion and protection, and, more generally, their intensity. While the European regional organizations emphasize political human rights, African and Latin American regional organizations place more emphasis on economic, social, and cultural rights. They have also installed suspension clauses to protect democratically elected governments against unconstitutional changes. Only the African regional organizations foresee the option of military interventions in order to protect democracy and human rights. Gender plays a more (SADC, EU) or less prominent role, being treated in a separate policy or subsumed under efforts to promote democracy and human rights. Finally, there are also developments going against the global trend. In contrast to most other regional organizations, Mercosur and ECOWAS first developed their standards and provisions to protect democracy before expanding their efforts to cover human rights. SADC has clearly been ‘back-pedaling’ over the last few years, abolishing its tribunal of justice. Similarly, recent developments challenge the commitment to governance transfer by the CIS, which initially jumped on the band-wagon of governance transfer in the early 1990s.

If regional organizations indeed borrow from a ‘global script’ for governance transfer, the timing and localization obviously depend on scope conditions that vary across regions a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Preface
• Notes on Contributors
• List of Abbreviations
• Part I: Introduction
• Part II: Africa
• Part III: Middle East and Asia
• Part IV: The Americas
• Part V: Europe
• Part VI: Conclusions
• References
• Index