Transcript Dimensions of Regionalism (Hurrel 1999)

Conceptual tools to understand
regionalism in different parts of
the world
:I
In search of definitions and theories that
can travel
Regional Interation .Module of Political
Science
L. 1
Why definitions ?
“One of the biggest obstacles facing students of comparative
regionalism is the conceptual one. There is a wide range of
definitions of region, regional integration,regionalism,
regionalisation and related concepts in the academic
literature..... Definitions are ... essential in comparative
research, since the definition and choice of concepts,
including the fundamental question of what is a case, will
affect the ability to compare and ultimately to generalise.”
1st step -identifying the dependent variable:REGION
P.De Lombaerde, F.Soederbaum, L. Van Langenhove, F. Baert, The problem of comparison in
comparative regionalism, Review of International Studies, 36 (2010) p.735)
What is a region?
Scholars of economic background tend to define
regions in terms of increased economic
interdependence , as integrated market places
In this course we look at regions as political and
administrative units.
Regions don’t emanate simply from the forces of
geographic proximity and the intensity of
economic flows , but are the product of policy
choices by national decision makers
What is a region ?
Regions may be defined by what they are not: they
are not sovereign states.
But tehy have some resemblance to states - the
concept of regionhood help to distinguish
between a region from a non-region.
Regionhood (region-ness) sees regions as nonsovereign governance systems with (partial)
statheood properties .
The emphasis is on process rather than a specific
institutional model or a priori definition of region .
(Soderbaum et al.)
What is a region ?
Agreement of the fact that regions imply:
Geographical proximity
Mutual interdependence
Some scholars maintain they imply also:
Some cultural homogeineity
Or a shared identity (sense of “we-being”)
Regionalization
Regionalization refers to the growth of societal
integration within a region and to the often undirected
processes of social and economic interaction.
(regional complex)
Essentially greater economic interdependence within a
geographical area than between that area and rest of
the world.
Main drivers are the market and economic actors.
Trade but also people and ideas.
Main point is that is not based on purposeful action of
states neither presuppose impact on the relations
between the states
REGIONALISM (def 1)
• Refers to processes and structures of region
building in terms of closer economic, political,
security and social cultural linkages between
states and societies that are geographically
proximate
• (Boerzel 2011)
REGIONALISM vs
REGIONALIZATION
Regionalsim as a state-led project based on
intergovernmental negotiations and
treaties . It generally includes structures
and processes of region-building in view of
closer relations on economic, security and
socio-cultural level.
Clearly distinguished from regionalization
,which refer to an increasing of intraregional soscio-economic interactions
among private actors.
OUTCOMES of REGIONALISM
The outcomes of regionalism
can take various forms ranging
from regional cooperation to
regional integration.
Integration and cooperation
• Conflict ------------------ Cooperation
• Integration is a subset of cooperation , not
the most frequent. Regional integration
and regional cooperation are the opposite
ends of a continuum
• Integration is not just increasing trade
flows or more intense transborder
communication
Integration is not Convergence
• A further distinction :
• Integration means that m.s. get ever closer
• Convergence means that states become
more similar.
• Greece is closer to Germany (single
currency, membership of NATO) than
Sweden to Norway, but the latter are more
similar.
Dimensions of regional integration
• Balassa’s typology collapses two dimensions of
regional integration which should be kept
separate:
scope or breath of policy
integration
• -depth of integration
• -
scope or breath of policy integration
• Refers to the issues to be dealt with at regional level
• These issues do not only include the dismantling of
national barriers to market exchange ( market-making)
and dealing with negative externalities of liberalization
(market-correcting).
• They may include security, constitutional issues, social
issues .
• The more the issues included in the regional agenda ,
the broader integration becomes
• Also referred to as “FUNCTIONAL DEEPENING”
depth of integration
• Concerns the political authority that regional
institutions have on issues delegated to them .
• Weakest form of delegation regards administrative
tasks (organizing intergovernmental meetings ,
passing information)
• Strong form regards the power to adopt collectively
binding decisions (legislative authority) ,
implementing them(executive authority) and
autonomy in dispute setting (adjudicative authority)
• Also referred to as INSTITUTIONAL DEEPENING
REGIONAL INSTITUTIONS
Depending on how much autonomy regional
institutions have in excercising their
authority and how much they can
encroach on national soveregnity rights ,
they can be defined :
INTERGOVERNMENTALIST (low
authonomy)
SUPRANATIONALIST (high autonomy)
Orientation
• Irrespective of their degree of formal supranationality
regional organizations may tend to privilege either the
authority of formal impersonal institutions or the
decisions of specific personal power-holders .
• The orientation depends more on the state-society
relations prevailing in the major states than on the
nature of institutional arrangements.
• Regional oragnization can be :
• More Rule-oriented (EU )
Or more
• Power Oriented (“presidential diplomacy” in
MERCOSUR)
Regional organizations
The regional organization we consider here
must be characterized by
• More than 2 member
states
• Geographical proximity
• Exclusive membership
• Serve multiple purposes
Dimensions of the evolution of
regional organizations
WIDENING (enlargement) including newm.s.
FUNCTIONAL(breadth
->issue areas)
DEEPENING
AUTHORITY of regional
institutions
Regionalism-Regional
integration (def.)
• Haas(1961) “process of how and why
nation states volountary mingle, merge
and mix with their neibourghs so as to
loose the factual attributes of sovereignity
while acquiring new techniques for
resolving conflicts among themselves”
• + (Schmitter 2004) “by creating common
and permanent institutions capable of
making decisions binding on all members”
Mapping forms of regional cooperation and
integration
Schmitter 2007
Regional cooperation and regional integration : how to
distinguish between them?
• Scmitter (2007) three characteristics suffice not only to
describe trans-regional organizations but to predict
their behaviour and future evolution:
• Variable 1: The Rules that govern their decisionmaking
• Variable 2: The Costs and Benefits that ensue from
membership (and the costs of exit from membership)
• Variable 3: The Actors involved in their activities
From these three variables one can distinguish between
regional cooperation and regional integration and lay the
foundation for analyzing their distinctive dynamics, as
well as their eventual interconnections.
Forms of regional cooperation and integration
Cost and benefits of
membership
LOW
MEDIUM
HIGH
Decision-making
rule
Unanimity
Symbolic
1
Status
Conferring
2
Imperial
3
Consensus
Functional
4
CONFEDERAL
5
Consortial
6
impossible
Condominial
Federal
8
Majority
7
Forms of regional cooperation
and integration
• The two extreme cases are :
• 1 Symbolic-unanimity rule (no delegation of authority
to regional institutions) and low costs of exit(or
benefits of membership)
• 8. Federal –from individual nations states to a new
State (US; EU not yet)
• .
Forms of regional cooperation and
integration
Where to locate the EU?
EU- consensus rule or possibility to opt-out:
6 Consortial consensus rule and high benefits
and costs of exit
or 7 Condominial when the decision rule may be
majority but there are possibilities of opting-out.
depending on issue area and decision rules
provided for it by the Treaties
Forms of regional integration
and cooperation
4 Functional and 2 Status
conferring forms of regional
cooperation differring in terms of
decision rules and costs of exit
Forms of regional integration
and cooperation
Imperial
regional cooperation
dominated by an hegemon who
imposes unanimity and high
costs of exit for members
Forms of regional integration
and cooperation
Confederal- is a consensus oriented
form of cooperation that starts to
provide benefits .
M.s. are sort of “locked in” cooperation because
exits costs are relatively high but don’t give up
sovereignity
Marks the transition from cooperation
to possible integration :m.s. may decide
for deepening (ex:by adopting majority rule)
Third dimensions:number of actors
• Regional cooperation and regional
integration tend to involve different sets of
actors.
• Regional cooperation  ministers,
normally foreign ministers
• Regional integration civil servants of the
m.s., interest groups , non-governmental
oragnizations,social movements.
A new wave of regionalism?
467 regional accords
Registered by the WTO
• In 2010
271 in force
ONLY 9 Custom Unions
40% no more
than 2 partners
not contigous
(50% 2
partners
from distant
regions)
90% PTA or FTA
ONLY 5 common
markets
Most of important regional organizations (multiple isuues) originated well before
1990 some were re-established ater the end of the Cold War
Two trends
Classical regional economic
cooperation
-->shallow economic regionalism
Forms of regional cooperation that
seem to have evolved towards
regional integration (deepening
and braodening the scope
of cooperation) that
present some institutional
similarities
A new wave of regionalism?
• Old and new regionalism a false divide
.
• But in major regional organizations a trend towards delegation
of new policy competences and more political authority:
– From FTA to CU to Common markets
– New areas of cooperation :external and internal security
(fighting terrorism, managing migrations)
– Still reluctance on the part of member states to delegate
political authority but institutionalization of decision
procedures (with some openings to MV) and mechamisms of
dispute settlement, setting up of parliamentary assemblies
with a consultative role.
Maps from Boerzel 2012
LEGITIMACY
• Since legitimacy is generally a property of nation
states, when authority is delegated to supranational
institutions the issue of the legitimacy of these
institutions and their decisions becomes prominent.
• When the institutional arrangement is
intergovermentalism (and the decision rule
consensus or unanimity) the legitimacy of the
decision resides in the legitimacy of the goverments'
of member states that have agreed on that
decision.
• But what about decisions of supranational
authorities or taken with supranational rules
(majority) ?
Types of legitimacy
Fritz W. Scharpf (1999) proposed to differentiate
between two types of beliefs about the
democratic legitimacy of a political order – inputand output-oriented legitimacy .
Reference is to work of David Easton (1965), who
defined input into the political system as
consisting of citizens’ demands and support
(conferred not only through elections but also by
citizen identity and sense of system legitimacy)
and output as consisting of government
decisions and actions
„Scharpf assigns to the two types legitimacy one
aspect of Lincolns phrase of a government of
the people, by the people, for the people .
Types of legitimacy
• Scharpf and Schmidt with reference
to the EU define 3 types of legitimacy
–INPUT legitimacy
–OUTPUT legitimacy
–legitimacy OF
THROUGHPUT (V. Schmidt 2009)
INPUT legitimacy
• GOVERNMENT BY THE PEOPLE
• the democratic quality of the political
process
• Authorization “from below”
• “democratic deficit in the EU”
OUTPUT legitimacy
• GOVERNMENT FOR THE PEOPLE
• Here, political choices are legitimate if and
because they effectively promote the common
welfare of the constituency in question.‟
• There are three kinds of performance to which
output-oriented theories typically put down the
democratic legitimacy of a political system:
prevention of tyranny, realisation of the common
good and economic prosperity (Scharpf 1970:
21-25).
legitimacy OF THROUGHPUT
• GOVERNMENT WITH THE PEOPLE
• “throughput” efficiency, accountability,
transparency, and openness to
consultation with the people of the ( EU’s )
internal governance processes.
• “Community method”
• “new modes of governance”open
coordination method