Articles and chapters by Fredrik Söderbaum
This article deals with the ownership of African regional organizations (ROs) in the context of a... more This article deals with the ownership of African regional organizations (ROs) in the context of an overreliance on foreign funding. It focuses specifically on whether and how Swedish development cooperation contributes to the ownership of ROs on the continent. Sweden constitutes a particularly pertinent case study for several reasons: it is one of the world's largest and most important donors to African ROs, it places great emphasis on the ownership principle and it is often considered to be a role model for effective development cooperation. The empirical material consists of an in-depth study of Swedish regional development cooperation with sub-Saharan Africa (2010-2015), policy reports and reviews, aid evaluations and a range of semi-structured interviews with Swedish and African aid officials. The study reveals a series of challenges regarding what is to be owned and by whom, and Sweden's stress on building the capacity of the secretariats of ROs as the main way of strengthening ownership.
This article expands our knowledge about the role of civil society in the formulation and impleme... more This article expands our knowledge about the role of civil society in the formulation and implementation of social policy at the regional level, and it focuses on the issue of HIV/AIDS in the Southern African Development Community (SADC). The analysis critically examines the conventional view that the involvement of civil society organizations in regional social policy contributes to participatory processes and reduces the democratic deficit of regional intergovernmental organizations. There are three key questions. Firstly, to what extent and how do civil society actors participate in SADC policy making and decision making in the field of HIV/AIDS? Secondly, what functions do civil society actors perform in regional policy design and implementation? Thirdly, what patterns of inclusion and exclusion exist? The study is based upon in-depth fieldwork and numerous semi-structured interviews with a range of policy makers, donors and civil society representatives. From these, it is concluded that SADC member states, and to some extent also the SADC Secretariat, limit and even undermine civil society involvement in decision making and policy formulation. By implication, civil society’s main role lies in service delivery and legitimating state-steered regional social policy at the expense of deeper, more genuinely participatory processes.
What is new and different about development as it goes more global today? This special issue of "... more What is new and different about development as it goes more global today? This special issue of "Forum for Development Studies" debates this question from a variety of disciplinary, theoretical, empirical and policy angles. In two parts this opening essay sets out broader themes which crosscut the more specific papers that follow. The first part examines shifts in the conceptualization of development (in terms of definitions, theories and methods) that accompany the changing global agenda. The second part considers shifts in the substance of development (in terms of actors, issues and policies) that figure in the changing global agenda.
The purpose of this article is to reflect on the status of Nordic
development studies in light of... more The purpose of this article is to reflect on the status of Nordic
development studies in light of the experience of the last Joint Nordic Conference on Development Studies held in Gothenburg in 2015. To that end, we reflect on two themes that we consider as essential to the field of study but which causes both friction and fragmentation: (i) the many meanings of development; and (ii) Africa as a continued 'object' of Nordic development studies. The article concludes with a reflection about how we think different standpoints on these issues can be productively balanced.
International Journal of Water Governance, Vol. 3, No. 3, pp. 1-12., Jan 1, 2015
This article challenges the prevailing ‘problem-solving’ discourse around transboundary water man... more This article challenges the prevailing ‘problem-solving’ discourse around transboundary water management, according to which river basins are largely taken as a ‘given’ ecological spaces and where the main challenge is to find environmentally sustainable ‘solutions’ to a number of specific ‘problems’ through rational, functional-technocratic or even scientific policies and institutions. Without rejecting the normative attractiveness of ecologically sustainable and basin-wide approaches, this article pays particular attention to the continued relevance of politics, power and national sovereignty. Such political perspective gives rise to a number of general but often overlooked policy issues, two of which are focused upon in this article. The first is the challenge to reconcile national benefits and interests with the common good and basin-wide approaches. The second is related to whether transboundary waters are best governed through specialized and functional river basin organizations (RBOs) or through more multipurpose regional organizations that have a more distinct political leverage?
Regionalism. Edited by Philippe De Lombaerde and Fredrik Söderbaum, 2013
Regionalism is a collection that has been created to capture and organize 60 years of research an... more Regionalism is a collection that has been created to capture and organize 60 years of research and policy discourse on regional integration and regionalism since the 1940s until today.
The ambition of the collection is to contribute to the consolidation of a fragmented field of study, which is characterized by a lack of dialogue among academic disciplines, area specializations, as well as theoretical traditions and approaches. Progress in the field requires a better understanding of the intellectual roots of the field; it also requires that academics engage increasingly with other texts and theorists across time periods, discourses and disciplines, which is rather rare in the current debate.
Regionalism provides the academic community of scholars with a collection of seminal articles that have contributed to shaping the thinking about regional integration, regionalism and regionalization during the past six decades. The four volumes are structured chronologically, reflecting the evolution of the subject. This organization shows historical dynamisms, the various lines of influence, cross-fertilization and descendence:
Volume One: 1945-1970 Classical Regional Integration
Volume Two: 1970-1990 Revisions of Classical Regional Integration
Volume Three: 1990-2000 New Regionalism
Volume Four: 2000-2010 Comparative Regionalism
The collection includes three Nobel prize winners — Jan Tinbergen, Robert Mundell and Paul Krugman — next to pioneers such as Ernst Haas, Karl Deutsch, Joseph Nye, Raul Prebisch, Bela Balassa and more recent leading theorists such as Amitav Acharya, Jagdish Bhagwati, Björn Hettne, Peter Katzenstein, Andrew Moravcsik, Walter Mattli, and Iver Neumann.
This Introduction gives an overview of the field and situates the four volumes. It elaborates some of the key issues shaping the development of the field and which have been essential for the selection of articles to the four volumes and which have been central to the intellectual history of the field: (i) the ontology of regionalism and regional integration; (ii) the role of European integration theory/practice and comparison; and (iii) the role of theory.
This article provides an analytical framework for understanding the EU’s foreign policy relations... more This article provides an analytical framework for understanding the EU’s foreign policy relations (FPRs), namely enlargement (towards new candidates), stabilization (towards the neighbourhood), bilateralism (towards great powers) and interregionalism (towards more far away regions of Africa, Asia and Latin America), but with a particular focus on interregional relations, taken to be the most typically European form of external relations. The various policy forms differ over time between FPRs, due to a number of factors, such as relative levels of EU actorness, relative power relations, the combinations of norms and interests, the different policies pursued by different EU members and institutions, the nature of the issue, and external challenges. The purpose is to examine the specific nature of interregionalism in the context of the overall EU-driven external policy and what implications the EU model could have for global governance. This external policy has been characterized in sharply contrasting ways, from a distinctly European normativism to traditional national interest policies hidden behind rhetoric. A distinction is here made between idealist ‘civilian power’ and realist ‘soft imperialism’, and the relevance of these two models is analyzed in the EU’s main FPRs. The difference between civilian power and soft imperialism lies in the overall importance of values and norms, and also whether negotiations are carried out in a symmetric, dialogical way rather than by imposition.
Georgetown Journal of International Affairs. 01/2013; 14(2):9-18. , 2013
There is a long tradition in both research and policy to focus on formal and inter-state regional... more There is a long tradition in both research and policy to focus on formal and inter-state regional organizations in the discussion about regions and regionalism. This is a consequence of the dominance of Europe as the main case and paradigm, and of rationalist and problem-solving theoretical perspectives, which privilege state-centric perspectives and pre-given conceptualizations of regions. The problem is that both Eurocentrism and static understandings of regional space negatively impact theoretical development, empirical analysis as well as policy. The view offered emphasizes the social construction of regions and the various ways in which state, market, and civil society actors relate and come together in different formal and informal patterns of regionalism. It is also argued that the next step in the study of regionalism is to develop its comparative element, which will be crucial in overcoming Eurocentrism and other forms of parochialism.
The Routledge Handbook of Asian Regionalism, edited by Mark Beeson and Richard Stubbs, 2011
The goal of this chapter is to provide an overview of some of the key theoretical debates and con... more The goal of this chapter is to provide an overview of some of the key theoretical debates and controversies in the field that are particularly relevant for the study of Asian regionalism. More specifically, the chapter will relate Asian regionalism to the historical development of the field and to the over-emphasis on European integration theory and practice in the field of regionalism as well as to the crucial relationship between formal and informal regionalism.
The study builds upon the understanding that it is not relevant to develop a theory about Asian regionalism per se. Rather, it is of specific interest to situate Asian regionalism within a more general theoretical and comparative discussion. Yet, a related assumption is that Asian regionalism is crucial for the further development of the broader field of regionalism.
In: Andrew Cooper, Chris Hughes and Philippe De Lombaerde (eds), Regionalization and Global Governance: The Taming of Globalization. London: Routledge, pp. 61-79, 2008
Over the last decade regionalism, or what has become known as ‘new regionalism’, has become a hot... more Over the last decade regionalism, or what has become known as ‘new regionalism’, has become a hot issue in a number of social science specialisations: European studies, comparative politics, international economics, international relations and international political economy.
The approach of these different academic specialisations varies considerably, which means that regionalism means different things to different people. In fact, we are facing an intriguing ontological problem. There has been little agreement about what we study when we study regionalism. This implies that there also is a lack of agreement about how we should study it; in other words, we are facing an epistemological problem as well. The great divide, albeit an exaggerated one, is between what has been termed ‘old’ and ‘new’ regionalism. We propose its dissolution.
Part 1 thus describes the first generation of regionalism studies, focused on regional integration in Europe, and the subsequent ‘big leap’ from the ‘old’ to the ‘new’ regionalism, which really was the study of regionalisms in the context of globalisation. The ‘old’ regionalism has been well documented before, so our purpose is rather to look for continuities. The discontinuities are of course also acknowledged.
Part 2 goes into the various dimensions of the more recent regionalism, the actors driving it and the societal levels at which it manifests itself.
New Political Economy, Vol 5, No 3 (December), pp. 457-473, 2000
We are witnessing a resurgence of regionalism in world politics. Drawing on the significant but r... more We are witnessing a resurgence of regionalism in world politics. Drawing on the significant but rather diverse old and new theorising in the field, this article seeks to move towards a more coherent construction of a New Regionalism Theory (NRT), built around the core concept of ‘regionness’, indicating the multidimensional result of the process of regionalisation of a particular geographic area. The concept of regionness — ranging from regional space, regional complex, regional society, regional community to region-state — is outlined and suggested as a comparative analytical tool for understanding the emergence and construction of regions and the formation of relevant actors in a historical and multidimensional perspective. To some extent the five levels express a certain evolutionary logic, but there is, for sure, nothing deterministic with the rise of regionness. Furthermore, there are many regionalisms and the processes of regionalisation at different points in time provides various entry points into the globalised order for particular regions.
In: Förhoppningar och farhågor — Sveriges första 20 år i EU, eds Linda Berg and Rutger Lindahl, Nov 5, 2014
Utöver att skydda Sveriges territorium och frihet så hjälper Sverige till att försöka ”skapa fred... more Utöver att skydda Sveriges territorium och frihet så hjälper Sverige till att försöka ”skapa fred” i världens olika oroshärdar genom att delta i olika typer internationella fredsfrämjande insatser, vanligtvis under ledning av FN eller EU. Väldigt lite reflektion ägnas emellertid till att diskutera alla de problem som uppstår när externa aktörer och biståndsgivare snabbt ska försöka lösa eller lindra komplexa konflikter och katastrofer i kulturella kontexter och omgivningar som de endast har begränsad förståelse om. Detta kapitel problematiserar och diskuterar grundläggande frågor såsom i vilken fas av konfliktcykeln intervenerar Sverige och EU i sitt engagemang för att bygga fred och lindra nöd? Varför intervenerar man egentligen? Med vilka medel? Vilket tidsperspektiv anammas i de internationella insatserna? På vilket sätt tar man hänsyn till nationella och lokala kontexten i de fredsfrämjande insatserna, och hur förankras insatserna nationellt och lokalt?
GEF STAP Issues Paper, 2014
"Most freshwater and marine systems are transboundary in nature and therefore depend on sound reg... more "Most freshwater and marine systems are transboundary in nature and therefore depend on sound regionalism and regional governance. The way these transboundary water systems are governed and managed is of vital importance for economic and social development, food security, biodiversity conservation, and the sustainable use and mainte¬nance of ecosystem services. Yet there is little systematic knowledge about how transboundary water management systems are affected by regionalism and regional organizations. This STAP Publication on The Political Economy of Regionalism provides the context and analytical tools needed to understand contemporary regionalism and regional organizations from a global and political economy perspective. It reports on the results of an extensive desk-study of the GEF International Waters (IW) portfolio to assess each project’s relation to regional cooperation and the extent to which it met its design objec¬tives. It concludes with recommendations to the GEF to:
1) engage more fully with stakeholders to synchronize national and regional concerns, incentives and benefits,
2) assess what regional institutional frameworks are most effective for delivering GEBs, and
3) to consider more fully the regional and economic con¬text, including the logic of recipient country-led regional organizations, during the design of IW interventions and projects."
In book: The European Union in Africa. Incoherent policies, asymmetrical partnership, declining relevance?, Publisher: Manchester University Press, Editors: Maurizio Carbone, pp.25-42 , 2013
The overarching question addressed in this paper is to what extent and under what circumstances t... more The overarching question addressed in this paper is to what extent and under what circumstances the EU should be seen as an “actor” in its relations with Africa, with a particular focus on trade, aid and peace policies. The paper shows that whereas the EU often speaks with one voice, for instance in trade, it is more ambiguous and pluralistic in other policy areas, such as aid and security/peace, where decision-making is either “shared”, or is based on national and intergovernmental policies. Sometimes there is even little in the way of articulated EU policy, and the EU member states pursue their own national policies outside of the EU framework. What explains this pattern? Much like other global actors, including the most powerful EU member states, the EU’s actions in Africa are characterized by the pursuit of power and the manifestation of various regional and national identities and interests. The nation-state logic is still active. Going beyond the EU’s official rhetoric (which invariably contain an often misleading egalitarian flavor), the EU is strongly concerned with establishing itself as a global actor and with gaining political power (for various purposes). It is nevertheless clear that the EU deals with the external world — including Africa — in a different manner from that of an ordinary great power driven by geopolitical interests. This is because the civilian or ‘normative’ power employed in the EU’s own region-building is also being projected in its external relations as the preferred world order model.
This introduction outlines the dramatically changed context and content of the renewed trend towa... more This introduction outlines the dramatically changed context and content of the renewed trend towards regionalism in the international system. We start by identifying some of the most relevant aspects of the latest wave, the ‘new regionalism’. The central concepts in the study of regionalism are both ambiguous and contested, and attempts are made at clarifying them. The concept of ‘regionness’ is central to the New Regionalism Approach (NRA), which is suggested as a broad, open-ended framework for analysing regionalisation in a multilevel and comparative perspective. Several specific theories and theoretical perspectives are needed for understanding the complexities of present day regionalism, and a distinction is here made between regional and world approaches. Another distinction is that between monodisciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches. Finally, the future of the new regionalism, the possibility of a regionalised world order, is touched upon
SAGE Handbook of Comparative Politics, Editors: Todd Landman, Neil Robinson, pp.477-496 , 2009
Despite a growing number of specific comparisons of selected aspects of regionalism (especially r... more Despite a growing number of specific comparisons of selected aspects of regionalism (especially regarding regional institutions and the role of power) in selected regions (particularly in the Triad: Europe, East Asia and North America), there is virtually no systematic debate regarding the fundamentals of comparison, such as “what to compare”, “how to compare” or “why compare”. Consequently, the purpose of this chapter is to contribute to the general discussion about “the problem of comparison” in the study of regionalism and regional integration. It does not attempt a detailed empirical comparison of a set of pre-defined regions according to a fixed set of variables. The chapter will provide an overview of the state of comparative regional integration and regionalism, an outline of the main debates and controversies, and a discussion of the state of the research field and directions in which it ought to be moving.
Alex Warleigh-Lack, Nick Robinson and Ben Rosamond (eds.) New Regionalism and the European Union. Dialogues, Comparisons and New Research Directions, London: Routledge, pp. 59-79., 2011
Where scholars even take the time to reflect on regionalism on the African continent, they consid... more Where scholars even take the time to reflect on regionalism on the African continent, they consider it primitive, weak or simply a ‘failure’. A closely related misunderstanding is that regionalism in Africa is of little relevance for comparative regionalism, which is intimately related to the overwhelming dominance of Eurocentric theories in the study of regionalism. This chapter seeks to ‘bring Africa in’ to the discussion on comparative regionalism. Drawing on the new regionalism approach (NRA), the chapter discusses four modes of regionalism in Africa: the ‘project’ of market integration, regime-boosting regionalism, shadow regionalism and the role of civil society in regional governance. The study offers an alternative understanding to regional dynamics more broadly than the mainstream Eurocentric approach allows for. Given that that few of the tendencies highlighted are uniquely ‘African’, the African case also offers valuable insights and venues for comparison across different regions, including enriching the European case.
EUI Working Papers 64, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute 06/2014, 2013
This working paper deals with one of the most pressing problems in the study and policy of region... more This working paper deals with one of the most pressing problems in the study and policy of regional integration: the problem of ‘Eurocentrism’, which in this context implies that assumptions and theories developed for the study of Europe crowd-out both more universally applicable frameworks and contextual understandings. In their frustrated attempts to avoid Eurocentrism, some scholars dealing with non-European regions tend to treat the Europe as an ‘anti-model’—a practice which often results in a different form of parochialism where context is all that matters. The general ambition of this paper is to contribute to rethinking Eurocentrism and the role of Europe in comparative regional integration. More specifically, the study shows how Eurocentrism (in various guises) is detrimental to theoretical development, empirical analysis and policy debates, claiming instead that European integration should be integrated into a larger and more general discourse of comparative regionalism, built around general concepts and theories, but which is still culturally sensitive.
New Political Economy, Vol 12, No 3 (September), 319-37., 2007
This article argues that the general neglect of civil society in the majority of the literature o... more This article argues that the general neglect of civil society in the majority of the literature on regionalism is above all a theoretical and methodological failure. It argues that a critical perspective on regionalism in the form of the new regionalism approach (NRA) provides a useful point of departure for better understanding civil society on at the regional level. To this approach should be added general insights from literature on civil society and the post-colonial state in Africa. The analysis shows that Southern African civil societies in Southern Africa are is not powerless, is not simply ‘national’, nor is it necessarily subject to state policies or states-led regional organisations. Rather, civil society in Southern Africa is extending its field of competence and is increasingly engaged in various forms of regionalisation activities, particularly in fields such as social economic justice and debt, trade, health, democracy and human rights, the environment, and research. But regional civil society is by no means harmonious. It encompasses several paradoxes and internal conflicts within itself, and comprises complex relations with states and donors.
in Theories of New Regionalism, edited by Fredrik Söderbaum and Tim Shaw, 2003
This volume contains a wide spectrum of partly overlapping and partly competing perspectives and ... more This volume contains a wide spectrum of partly overlapping and partly competing perspectives and theories of new regionalism. The purpose of this introductory chapter is to situate the theories in the broader theoretical landscape and also clarify some important similarities and differences between them. In so doing the next two sections concentrate on what is ‘new’ and what is ‘regional’ in the new regionalism, respectively. The third section considers the richness of theories of new regionalism, first and foremost in terms of the variety of types of theory and the research focuses that exist. Finally, the structure of the rest of the book is outlined.
Uploads
Articles and chapters by Fredrik Söderbaum
development studies in light of the experience of the last Joint Nordic Conference on Development Studies held in Gothenburg in 2015. To that end, we reflect on two themes that we consider as essential to the field of study but which causes both friction and fragmentation: (i) the many meanings of development; and (ii) Africa as a continued 'object' of Nordic development studies. The article concludes with a reflection about how we think different standpoints on these issues can be productively balanced.
The ambition of the collection is to contribute to the consolidation of a fragmented field of study, which is characterized by a lack of dialogue among academic disciplines, area specializations, as well as theoretical traditions and approaches. Progress in the field requires a better understanding of the intellectual roots of the field; it also requires that academics engage increasingly with other texts and theorists across time periods, discourses and disciplines, which is rather rare in the current debate.
Regionalism provides the academic community of scholars with a collection of seminal articles that have contributed to shaping the thinking about regional integration, regionalism and regionalization during the past six decades. The four volumes are structured chronologically, reflecting the evolution of the subject. This organization shows historical dynamisms, the various lines of influence, cross-fertilization and descendence:
Volume One: 1945-1970 Classical Regional Integration
Volume Two: 1970-1990 Revisions of Classical Regional Integration
Volume Three: 1990-2000 New Regionalism
Volume Four: 2000-2010 Comparative Regionalism
The collection includes three Nobel prize winners — Jan Tinbergen, Robert Mundell and Paul Krugman — next to pioneers such as Ernst Haas, Karl Deutsch, Joseph Nye, Raul Prebisch, Bela Balassa and more recent leading theorists such as Amitav Acharya, Jagdish Bhagwati, Björn Hettne, Peter Katzenstein, Andrew Moravcsik, Walter Mattli, and Iver Neumann.
This Introduction gives an overview of the field and situates the four volumes. It elaborates some of the key issues shaping the development of the field and which have been essential for the selection of articles to the four volumes and which have been central to the intellectual history of the field: (i) the ontology of regionalism and regional integration; (ii) the role of European integration theory/practice and comparison; and (iii) the role of theory.
The study builds upon the understanding that it is not relevant to develop a theory about Asian regionalism per se. Rather, it is of specific interest to situate Asian regionalism within a more general theoretical and comparative discussion. Yet, a related assumption is that Asian regionalism is crucial for the further development of the broader field of regionalism.
The approach of these different academic specialisations varies considerably, which means that regionalism means different things to different people. In fact, we are facing an intriguing ontological problem. There has been little agreement about what we study when we study regionalism. This implies that there also is a lack of agreement about how we should study it; in other words, we are facing an epistemological problem as well. The great divide, albeit an exaggerated one, is between what has been termed ‘old’ and ‘new’ regionalism. We propose its dissolution.
Part 1 thus describes the first generation of regionalism studies, focused on regional integration in Europe, and the subsequent ‘big leap’ from the ‘old’ to the ‘new’ regionalism, which really was the study of regionalisms in the context of globalisation. The ‘old’ regionalism has been well documented before, so our purpose is rather to look for continuities. The discontinuities are of course also acknowledged.
Part 2 goes into the various dimensions of the more recent regionalism, the actors driving it and the societal levels at which it manifests itself.
1) engage more fully with stakeholders to synchronize national and regional concerns, incentives and benefits,
2) assess what regional institutional frameworks are most effective for delivering GEBs, and
3) to consider more fully the regional and economic con¬text, including the logic of recipient country-led regional organizations, during the design of IW interventions and projects."
development studies in light of the experience of the last Joint Nordic Conference on Development Studies held in Gothenburg in 2015. To that end, we reflect on two themes that we consider as essential to the field of study but which causes both friction and fragmentation: (i) the many meanings of development; and (ii) Africa as a continued 'object' of Nordic development studies. The article concludes with a reflection about how we think different standpoints on these issues can be productively balanced.
The ambition of the collection is to contribute to the consolidation of a fragmented field of study, which is characterized by a lack of dialogue among academic disciplines, area specializations, as well as theoretical traditions and approaches. Progress in the field requires a better understanding of the intellectual roots of the field; it also requires that academics engage increasingly with other texts and theorists across time periods, discourses and disciplines, which is rather rare in the current debate.
Regionalism provides the academic community of scholars with a collection of seminal articles that have contributed to shaping the thinking about regional integration, regionalism and regionalization during the past six decades. The four volumes are structured chronologically, reflecting the evolution of the subject. This organization shows historical dynamisms, the various lines of influence, cross-fertilization and descendence:
Volume One: 1945-1970 Classical Regional Integration
Volume Two: 1970-1990 Revisions of Classical Regional Integration
Volume Three: 1990-2000 New Regionalism
Volume Four: 2000-2010 Comparative Regionalism
The collection includes three Nobel prize winners — Jan Tinbergen, Robert Mundell and Paul Krugman — next to pioneers such as Ernst Haas, Karl Deutsch, Joseph Nye, Raul Prebisch, Bela Balassa and more recent leading theorists such as Amitav Acharya, Jagdish Bhagwati, Björn Hettne, Peter Katzenstein, Andrew Moravcsik, Walter Mattli, and Iver Neumann.
This Introduction gives an overview of the field and situates the four volumes. It elaborates some of the key issues shaping the development of the field and which have been essential for the selection of articles to the four volumes and which have been central to the intellectual history of the field: (i) the ontology of regionalism and regional integration; (ii) the role of European integration theory/practice and comparison; and (iii) the role of theory.
The study builds upon the understanding that it is not relevant to develop a theory about Asian regionalism per se. Rather, it is of specific interest to situate Asian regionalism within a more general theoretical and comparative discussion. Yet, a related assumption is that Asian regionalism is crucial for the further development of the broader field of regionalism.
The approach of these different academic specialisations varies considerably, which means that regionalism means different things to different people. In fact, we are facing an intriguing ontological problem. There has been little agreement about what we study when we study regionalism. This implies that there also is a lack of agreement about how we should study it; in other words, we are facing an epistemological problem as well. The great divide, albeit an exaggerated one, is between what has been termed ‘old’ and ‘new’ regionalism. We propose its dissolution.
Part 1 thus describes the first generation of regionalism studies, focused on regional integration in Europe, and the subsequent ‘big leap’ from the ‘old’ to the ‘new’ regionalism, which really was the study of regionalisms in the context of globalisation. The ‘old’ regionalism has been well documented before, so our purpose is rather to look for continuities. The discontinuities are of course also acknowledged.
Part 2 goes into the various dimensions of the more recent regionalism, the actors driving it and the societal levels at which it manifests itself.
1) engage more fully with stakeholders to synchronize national and regional concerns, incentives and benefits,
2) assess what regional institutional frameworks are most effective for delivering GEBs, and
3) to consider more fully the regional and economic con¬text, including the logic of recipient country-led regional organizations, during the design of IW interventions and projects."
The volume is divided into two parts. The first provides an overview of several distinctive theoretical perspectives, with particular emphasis on the dynamic relationship between regions and interregionalism. The second part of the book uncovers the diversity of regional actors and institutions that are engaged in the creation of contemporary interregionalism. The EU is used as an entry point and detailed case studies explore the role of EU member states, the Council, the Commission, the European Parliament and the Court of Justice, in order to map out a patchwork of intersecting interregionalisms around the world.
The ambition of the collection is to contribute to the consolidation of a fragmented field of study, which is characterized by a lack of dialogue among academic disciplines, area specializations, as well as theoretical traditions and approaches. Progress in the field requires a better understanding of the intellectual roots of the field; it also requires that academics engage increasingly with other texts and theorists across time periods, discourses and disciplines, which is rather rare in the current debate.
Regionalism provides the academic community of scholars with a collection of seminal articles that have contributed to shaping the thinking about regional integration, regionalism and regionalization during the past six decades. The four volumes are structured chronologically, reflecting the evolution of the subject. This organization shows historical dynamisms, the various lines of influence, cross-fertilization and descendence:
Volume One: 1945-1970 Classical Regional Integration
Volume Two: 1970-1990 Revisions of Classical Regional Integration
Volume Three: 1990-2000 New Regionalism
Volume Four: 2000-2010 Comparative Regionalism
The collection includes three Nobel prize winners — Jan Tinbergen, Robert Mundell and Paul Krugman — next to pioneers such as Ernst Haas, Karl Deutsch, Joseph Nye, Raul Prebisch, Bela Balassa and more recent leading theorists such as Amitav Acharya, Jagdish Bhagwati, Björn Hettne, Peter Katzenstein, Andrew Moravcsik, Walter Mattli, and Iver Neumann.
Our point of departure is that the multidimensionality of contemporary regionalization warrants a new type of analysis, which transcends the dominant theories of regional integration, such as neorealism, functionalism, neo-functionalism, institutionalism, market and trade integration, structuralism, development integration and so on. In contrast to the different versions of mainstream regional integration theory, we argue that the analysis should avoid fixed and one-dimensional definition of regions as well as a ‘narrow’ and simplified focus on instrumental state strategies, regional organizations, security alliances and trading blocs. In response the book argues for the relevance of what has become established as the new regionalism approach (NRA).
The region-builders are in focus—that is, those actors who build and make micro-regions and their associated region-building strategies. Key research questions are: for whom, for what purpose and with what consequences micro-regions are being made and unmade? There is also a special emphasis on how people on the ground and local communities create their own region-building strategies and how they respond to the region-building strategies of others.
The case studies—written by leading scholars of African studies and the result of extensive fieldwork—include a wide selection of micro-regions from all over Africa, such as the Maputo Development Corridor, the Zambezi Valley region, the Zambia-Malawi-Mozambique Growth Triangle, Walvis Bay, the Sierra Leone-Liberia border zone, cross-border micro-regions on the Horn of Africa, the Great Lakes region, North Africa, and so forth.
CONTENTS:
The EU and the Global South—the Editors.
THE EU’S INTERREGIONAL MODEL. EU Foreign Policy: The Interregional Model—B. Hettne. EU Policies Toward the Global South—S. Grimm.
ECONOMIC COOPERATION. From Lomé to Economic Partnership Agreements in Africa—M. Farrell. The Ups and Downs of Interregionalism in Latin America—S. Santander. A Move Toward Hybrid Interregionalism in Asia—M. Farrell.
DEVELOPMENT COOPERATION. The Limits to Interregional Development Cooperation in Africa—F. Söderbaum and P. Stålgren. The Nature of Interregional Development Cooperation in Latin American—A.M. Haglund. Development Cooperation as a Building Block for Interregional Relations in Asia—S. Grimm.
CONFLICT MANAGEMENT. Unassertive Interregionalism in the Great Lakes Region—S. Smis and S. Kingah. The Impact of Conflict Management in Colombia—P. de Lombaerde et al.
CONCLUSION. Reflections on the EU and the Global South—B. Hettne, F. Söderbaum, and P. Stålgren.
The study contains three empirical cases, which are analyzed with an eclectic combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, using a variety of primary and secondary sources. The first case deals with the political economy of contemporary regionalism in a broad sense, covering state, market, civil society as well as external actors and their relationships. The other two empirical chapters concentrate on the manifestation of the political economy of regionalism in terms of shared river basins (the case of the Zambezi) and micro-regionalism (the case of the Maputo Development Corridor).
One main result of the thesis is that an array of state, market, civil society and external actors are involved in a series of overlapping, contradictory and sometimes competing forms of regionalism. Often ruling political elites and ‘big business’ actors come together with certain external actors in mixed-actor coalitions in order to take advantage of economic globalization, reinforce privatization and liberalization, boost narrow regime interests or satisfy group-specific and even personal interests. Only rarely do these forms of regionalism contribute to the poor and disadvantaged, who instead opt out and survive through informal economic regionalism from below or create alternative and transformative regionalism.
The contributors to the book — all leading researchers in the field — systematically assess and compare the role of the African Union (AU), the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS), and the Southern African Development Community (SADC).
time periods, this Working Paper seeks to contribute to the consolidation of a fragmented field of study
in search of its own intellectual history. The paper identifies four main intellectual phases: early regionalism,
old regionalism (in both Europe and the developing world), new regionalism, and the current phase of
regionalism, referred to as comparative regionalism. It argues that progress in the study of (comparative)
regionalism requires a better understanding of the intellectual roots of the field and an acknowledgment
of the many types of regions that have occurred in many different historical contexts.