REGIONALISM &
REGIONAL INTEGRATION
CONCEPT CLARIFICATION –REGIONALISM
· Regionalism also
constitutes one of the three constituents of the international commercial system (along with multilateralism
and unilateralism).[1]
· It refers to the
expression of a common sense of identity and purpose combined with the creation
and implementation of institutions that express a particular identity and shape
collective action within a geographical region.
· The first coherent
regional initiatives began in the 1950s and 1960, but they accomplish little,
except in Western Europe with the establishment of the European Communities.
· Some analysts call these
initiatives "old regionalism".[1]
· In the late 1980s, a new
bout of regional integration (also called "new regionalism") began
and still continues.
· A new wave of political
initiatives prompting regional integration took place worldwide during the last
two decades,
while, in international trade, after the failure
of the Doha
round, regional and bilateral trade deals have mushroomed.[2]
· The European
Union can be classified as a result of regionalism.
· The idea that lies behind
this increased regional identity is that as a region becomes more economically
integrated, it will necessarily become politically integrated as well.
· The European example is
especially valid in this light, as the European Union as a political body grew
out of more than 40 years of economic integration within Europe.
· The precursor to the EU,
the European Economic Community (EEC) was entirely an economic entity.
· Joseph Nye
defined international region "as a limited number of states linked by a
geographical relationship and by a degree of mutual interdependence", and
(international) regionalism as "the formation of interstate associations
or groupings on the basis of regions".[3]
· Ernst B. Haas, stressed
the need to distinguish the notions of regional cooperation, regional system,
regional organization and regional integration and regionalism.[4]
· [7] The region as a unit of analysis became important not only in the Cold War
context, but also as a result of the self-consciousness of regions themselves.[8] Because of the subsequent demands by states that
had already made heavy political investments in regional arrangements such as
the Inter-American System, the Commonwealth and the Arab League,
regionalism made its appearance even in the finalized UN Charter.[a]
· In 1951 in Paris France, West
Germany, Italy,
Belgium, Luxembourg
and the Netherlands
established the European Coal and Steel Community
(ECSC) to pool the steel
and coal resources
of its member-states. The same states established on March 25, 1957 by the signing of
the Treaty
of Rome the European Atomic Energy Community
and the European Economic Community, most
important of two European Communities.
FUNCTIONALISM THEORY
· David Mitrany’s theory of
Functionalism greatly influenced Contemporary Integration Theorists.
· He suggested that the
growing complexity of governmental systems had increased greatly the
essentially technical,non political tasks facing governments.
· Such tasks not only
created a demand for highly trained specialists at the national level, but also
contributed to essentially technical problems at the international level, who
solutions lies in collaboration among technians rather than political elites.
·
The growth in importance of technical issues
in the 20th century is said to have made necessary the creation of
frameworks for international coperation. Such functional Organizations could be
expected to expand both in their numbers and in scope as the technical problems
confronting mankind grew both in immensity and magnitude.
· For the functionalist,
what is technical or functional is deemed to be political. To move from a
political to a technical framework is to limit drastically or even to eliminate
the potential for conflict.
· Hence functionalist
emphasis is on the progressive restriction of the role of political actors in
favour of the technician.
· Functionalism is based
upon the hypothesis that national loyalties can be diffused and redirected into
a framework for international cooperation in place of national competition and
war.
· Because the State is
inadequate for solving many problems because of the interdependent nature of
the modern world, the obvious answer is said to lie in international
organizations and perhaps eventually in more tightly knit management and
resolution of technical issues at the regional or global levels.
· In Mitrany’s theory there
is a doctrine of “ramification”, whereby the development of collaboration in
one technical field leads to collaboration in other technical fields.
· Functional collaboration
in one sector results from a felt need and generates a felt need for functional
collaboration in another sector.
· The effort to create a
common market for example gives rise to pressure for further collaboration on
pricing, investment,
transport insurance, tax,wage, social security,
banking monetary policies.
· Mitrany assumed that
functional activity could reorient interational activity and contribute to
world peace.
· Eventually, such
collaboration would encroach upon and even absorb the political
sector.”Economic unification would build up the foundation for political
agreement”.
· His basic strategy was to
shift attention to supposedly noncontroversial technical problems.
· As an alternative to
conflict, Mitrany suggested the gradual creation of a transnational web of
economic and social organizations and the remoulding of attitudes and
allegiances to make the masses of people more amenable to international
integration.
· Functionalism was
reconciliable with democratic political theory.
· Functionalism is based
upon the most characteristic idea of modern democratic – liberal philosophy
that which leaves the individual free to enter into a variety of relationships-
religious, political and professional,
social and cultural- each of which may take the individual in different
directions and dimensions and into different groupings some of them of
international range.
· Each of us is in fact a
‘bundle’ of functional loyalties so that to build a world community upon that
liberal conception is merely to extend and consolidate it also between national
societies and groups.
David Mitrany, A Working Peace System (1966)
------------------“The Functional Approach to World Organization” (1948)
------------------“International Cooperation in Action”(1959)
REGIONALISM &
GLOBALIZATION
v For all the talk of
Globalization, Many indicators of globalization for example, (trade, foreign
direct investments, international institutions) are directed at regional
Partners.
v In essence, economic and
political activities increasingly cluster in regional patterns.
v Three regions (Western
Europe, North America and East Asia) constitute the most important zones of
global economic integration.
v There are other regions
of importance for example, Southern Africa, Central Europe, Middle East, the
Pacific Rim, South America, and sub-regional economic zones like the Greater
South China Economic Zone( Hong Kong, Macao,Guandon,Fujian Provinces, Taiwan)
and the Growth Triangle including Singapore, Batam Island in Indonesia and
Johor Province in Malaysia.
DEFINITIONS OF REGIONAL
INTEGRATION
In his book, International Regions
and the International System,
Bruce Russett proposed three criteria for the definition of regions:
v First way of Defining
Regions
Physical Proximity and separateness
Spatial Definitions of regions are not enough.
v Second Way of Defining
Regions
Is to ask the question, how interconnected / Interdependent
a set of entities is, especially in economic terms. Do countries in Latin
America, Europe or South Asia have high levels of economic transactions in
trade, production of goods, tourism, labour flows etc.A region in this sense is
a zone where there is a high density of economic transactions relative to other
units.
v The Third way of defining
or identifying regions is Homogeneity .A large number of variables fit within
this framework: similarity of values, of economic systems, of political
systems, of way of life, of level of economic development and so on
INTEGRATION AS A PROCESS AND CONDITION
v
Ernst Haas
defines integration as a Process “whereby political actors in several distinct
national settings are persuaded to shift their loyalties, expectations, and
political activities toward a new centre, whose institutions possess or demand
jurisdiction over the preexisting national States”.
v
In another article, Haas conceives of
integration as “referring exclusively to a process that links a given concrete
international system with a dimly discernible future concrete system…”
v
Amitai Etzioni
asserts that the possession by a political community of effective control over
the use of the means of violence represents one criterion by which its level of
integration is measured.
v
Such a community
has a centre of decision making that allocates resources and rewards and forms
the dominant focus of political identification for a large majority of
politically citizens.
v
In Etzioni’s
theory, political unification is the process whereby political integration as a
condition is achieved. Unification increases or strengthens the bonds among the
units which form a system.
v
Leone.N.Lindberg
in his work on the European Community, defines integration as “(1) the
processes whereby nations fore go the desire and ability to conduct foreign and
key domestic policies independently of each other, seeking instead to make
joint decisions or to delegate the decision making process to new central
organs, and
(2) The process whereby political actors in
Several distinct settings are persuaded to
Shift their expectations and political
Activities to a new centre.
v
Lindberg viewed
political integration as part of a broader process of international integration
in which larger groupings emerge or are created among Nations without the use
of violence and in which there is joint participation in regularized, on going
decision making.
v
Karl.W.Deutsch
refers to political integration as a process that may lead to
A condition in which a group of people
Has attained within a territory a sense of
Community and of institutions and practices
strong enough to assure, for a long time, dependable expectations of peaceful
change among its population.
v
Deutsch suggests
that integration is a matter of fact, not of time.
v
Johan Galtung
defines integration as the process whereby two or more actors form a new actor.
When the process is completed, the actors are said to be integrated.
Galtung sketches several
models designed to establish conditions for integration:-
v
First,
integration may be viewed as value integration. Here there are 2 models.( 1).
An Egalitarian model-
This provides for the
integration of values in the sense that actors have ‘coinciding interests’
(2). the hierarchical model, this
includes the integration of values which are arranged so that dilemmas and
conflicts can be resolved by choosing the value highest in the hierarchy.
v
Second category
of conditions, Galtung conceptualizes integration as actor-integration. There
are 2 Models here too:-
1.
Increasing
similarity model- This is a model in which integration consists of increasing
similarity among actors in rank, demographic composition, and economic and
political structure. Similarity is viewed as homology.
2.
The
interdependence model. Integration is a process by which cultural, political,
and economic interdependence between actors is increased. Actors become linked
to such an extent that what harms one actor injures the other.
A third category provides for
integration as exchanges between parts and whole. Here there are 2 models:-
1. The Loyalty model. Under this
model,
Integration develops and endures
so
long as the unit is supported by
its
component parts. Support forms
an
input such as acts of allegiance
or the
allocation of resources from the parts
To the whole.
2.
The allocation model. In this model, the
existence of the integrated unit depends upon its ability to offer outputs to
its parts. Such outputs include a nation providing a sense of identity to
individuals, ensuring protection from enemies, or furnishing economic gains such
as markets and high living standards.
·
In itself, none
of these conditions is necessary and sufficient for integration.
·
Integration is a
process in which great importance is attached both to the constituent actors
and their environment.
In contrast to
the more comparative focus of Deutsch and Etzioni, the work of Enst Haas deals
with specific cases, which Haas analyzes with the use of an elaborate
theoretical framework.
In his work on
the European Coal & Steel Community, Haas postulates that the decision to
proceed with integration, or to oppose it, depends upon the expectations of
gain or loss held by major groups within the unit to be integrated.
Haas assumes that
integration proceeds as a result of the work of relevant elites in the
governmental and private sectors, who support integration for essentially
pragmatic rather than altruistic reasons. Elites having expectations of gain
from activity within a supranational organizational framework are likely to
seek out similarly minded elites across national frontiers.
Haas attempts to
refine functionalist theory of integration. Haas postulates that power is not
separable from welfare. Haas advances the proposition that “functionally
specific international programmes, if organizationally separated from diffuse
orientations, maximize both welfare and integration”
Crucial to
integration is the “gradual politicization of the actors’ purposes which were
initially considered ‘technical’ or ‘noncontroversial’.
It must be noted
that central to Haas’s work is the concept of spill over or what
Mitrany called the doctrine of ramification. In his examination of the European
Coal & Steel Community (ECSC), Haas found that among European Elites
directly concerned with coal and steel, there were relatively few persons who
were initially strong supporters of the ECSC.
Only after the
ECSC had been in operation for several years did the bulk of leaders in trade
unions and political parties become proponents of the Community.
Earlier decisions
spill over into new functional contexts, involve more and more people, call for
more and more interbureaucratic contact and consultations.
ALLIANCES
The concept of Alliance is a derivative
of Strategic thinking and a function of the balance of power operating within a
multiple-state system.
Indeed, Alliances
constitute one of the different methods of the balance of power in International Relations. The other
methods are (i) Divide & Rule
(ii) Compensations
(iii) Armaments
The general
nature of Alliances is illustrated by two Nations A and B, competing with each
other. They have three choices in order to maintain and improve their relative
power positions:
(i)
They can increase their own
Power – By embarking on
Armaments race.
(ii)
They can add to their own Power
The power of other Nations
– Policy of Alliances
(iii)
They can withhold the Power of other
Nations from the adversary
- Policy
of Alliances.
Not every
community of interests, calling for common policies and actions, also calls for
legal codification in an explicit alliance.
On the other
hand, an alliance requires as of necessity a community of interests for its
foundation.
One may then ask
under what conditions, does an existing community of interests require the
explicit formulation of an alliance? What is it that an alliance adds to the
existing community of interests?
An alliance adds
precision, especially in the form of limitation, to an existing community of
interests and to the general policies and concrete measures serving them. The
interests nations have in common are not typically so precise and limited as to
geographic region, objective, and appropriate policies.
The typical
interests which unite two nations against a third are both more definite as
concerns the determination of the enemy and less precise as concerns the
objectives to be sought and the policies to be pursued.
Not every
community of interests calling for co-operation between two or more nations
requires that the terms of this cooperation be specified through the legal
stipulations of a treaty of alliance.
It is only when
the common interests are inchoate in terms of policy and action that a treaty
of alliance is required to make them explicit and operative.
OTHER DEFINITIONS OF THE CONCEPT OF
ALLIANCES
Alliances are a
necessary function of the balance of power operating within a multiple State
system. States in such a system that consider themselves weak tend to align
with relatively stronger States in the system in order to check any
preponderant power from attacking them.
A Nation will
shun alliances if it considers itself strong enough to hold its own unaided,
similarly a Nation places less emphasis on alliances if its estimation of costs
being committed to the alliance outweighs the envisaged advantages.
Alliance formation is of definite nature and purpose. As a
case in point; the definite nature and purposes of NATO and Warsaw Pact are
observable in the treaties establishing them.
The term
alliances tends to refer to a conditional commitment of a political or military
sort exchanged by several States and directed at some specified though unnamed
State.
A typical
alliance qualifies to be described as strategic and significant at the same
time if it is observed that it attempts to transform a small fraction of the
total interests of the contracting parties into common policies and measures.
There seems to
exist a correlation between the permanency of an alliance and the limited
character of the interests it serves.
As offered by
Hans Morgenthau, that those interests referred to above, as well as the
alliances expressing them and the policies serving them, can be distinguished in
four different ways;
(i)
According to
their intrinsic nature and relationship,
(ii)
The distribution
of benefits and power,
(iii)
Their coverage in
relation to the total interests of the nations concerned,
(iv)
Their coverage in
terms of time and their effectiveness in terms of common policies and actions.
The reason for
making and breaking alliances define the main conditions of their cohesion.
Alliances tend to
weaken if the costs, when weighed along with the benefits, fall unevenly on the
major Parties.
Alliances tend to
weaken if there are differences among members on policies to be pursued to the
third party. Similarly, alliances tend to weaken if the perception of the enemy
changes between the major parties to the alliance.
George Liska says
that “if allies are to stay together despite setbacks, the grounds for alliance
must be rationalized” and that what performs this function of rationalization
is ideology.
A typical
alliance ideology will define the basis and by implications, the limits of
alliance solidarity. Beyond that, alliance ideology tends to merge with the
rationalization of the struggle that brought it about.
Consultations and
Compromise are other elements observed as germane to alliance cohesion. The
value of consultation in and of itself can be great if consultation affirms the
internal constitution of the alliance, as one of equality and solidarity among
allies.
David.V.Edwards’s general propositions
on Alliances:
(i)
States will form
alliance when they confront a new and threatening change in the military situation
and the dominant power among them seeks new ways to maintain its position over
its allies in the face of tendencies toward the decline of each.
(ii)
The dominant
power seeks new ways to maintain its position of strength in confronting the
adversary.
(iii)
The dominant
power seeks new ways to maintain the position of influence over its allies in
the face of tendencies toward its decline.
General Propositions on Strategic Significance of
Alliances
Alliances have
lost their significance altogether. A French theorist, General Gallois, has
argued for example that nuclear weapons have made alliance obsolete.
Faced with the
risk of total destruction, no nations will jeopardize its survival for another.
Alliances now differ
in large respects namely, that Political goals have superceded military
The relative
power and the number of participant States have altered.
The end of the
cold war had signaled the end of ideology.
The determination
of the major powers to avoid war caused a qualitative change in international relations.
This expectation
that war can be avoided makes the primary purpose of alliance- deterrence of
war rather than preparation for its conduct.
No comments:
Post a Comment