Developing less developed countries: regional integration in Southern Africa

"Since the end of the cold war, and in the shade of an intensifying globalisation, a new wave of regionalism has emerged in several parts of the world. A variety of competetive political, economic or combined approaches have attempted to explain regionalism from different viewpoints, but have run short as their focus is mainly on developed countries and 'success-stories' like the well dissected European Union (EU). According to international political economy and political factors of demand and supply. These are inter alia economics of scale and comparative cost advantages or common institutions and benevolent policy entrepreneurs. (...)" (author's abstract

Regional economic integration in Southern Africa: SADC's Protocol on Trade and South Africa's big fingerprint.

"With the end of the Cold War, a new wave of regionalism emerged in the shadow of an accelerating globalisation. This so-called 'New Regionalism' (...) can be observed in various parts of the world and manifested in several more or less promising regional integration projects, notably among less developed countries in the southern hemisphere. All of them have a major focus on regional market integration. This paper will try to answer the question why and for what purpose member states of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) pursued the path of regional economic integration and decided to negotiate and adopt a common 'Protocol on Trade'. It has rather strong focus on theory but the empirical part will not be marginalised as I will particularly look at the underlying motivations and preferences of the states and additionally try to illustrate the design, function, and added-value of the Protocol." (excerpt

Two logics of regionalism: the importance of interdependence and external support for regional integration in Southern Africa

"Existing theories of European integration and political economy usually assume that economic interdependence is an important precondition for successful regional integration. This includes that regional integration among developing countries is unlikely to be successful, because their economies are usually more dependent on developed countries in the North than on their neighbours in the South. However, this article argues that developing countries use regional integration more in order to improve their standing vis-à-vis other world regions in the global economic system than to govern intraregional interdependence. Thus, the progress of regional integration in the South is at least as dependent on the feedback from other regions as it is on developments within the own region. This argument will be illustrated at the example of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), which made important steps towards regional integration in the last decade. It centralised its institutional structure in 2001 and announced a Free Trade Area in 2008. This development can partly be explained by interdependence between the less developed countries of the SADC and the relatively well developed Republic of South Africa, but it was also favoured by external support from other world regions, especially the European Union (EU). Nevertheless, further regional integration towards a customs union is disturbed by external influence, because the EU currently negotiates different Economic Partnership Agreements with the SADC member states, which prevents the harmonisation of tariffs for imports from outside the region." (author's abstract)"Bestehende Theorien der europäischen Integration und der internationalen politischen Ökonomie gehen in der Regel davon aus, dass intraregionale Interdependenz eine Bedingung für erfolgreiche regionale Integration von Volkswirtschaften ist. Dies würde bedeuten, dass regionale Integration zwischen Entwicklungsländern zum Scheitern verurteilt ist, da diese normalerweise mehr von entwickelten Ländern des Nordens als von ihren Nachbarn im Süden abhängig sind. In diesem Artikel wird jedoch argumentiert, dass Entwicklungsländer regionale Integration vor allem dazu nutzen, um ihre Position gegenüber anderen Regionen zu stärken. Daher ist der Fortschritt von regionaler Integration im Süden in hohem Maße von dem Feedback aus anderen Weltregionen abhängig. Dieses Argument wird am Beispiel der Southern African Development Community (SADC) illustriert. Die SADC hat in den letzten zehn Jahren erhebliche Integrationsfortschritte gemacht, sieht sich aktuell jedoch mit erheblichen Problemen konfrontiert, da die Verhandlungen über Economic Partnership Agreements mit der EU die weitere Integration erschweren." (Autorenreferat

The ‘great war’ in liberia as a classic example for persistent armed conflicts and war economies in africa

Armed conflicts in less developed countries are often very persistent although one could expect the opposite due to lacking financial and material capacity in those areas. How can violent actors and warlords manage to continue warfare lastingly? The article presents, in its theory section, several assumptions regarding the longevity of these armed conflicts from the perspective of fragile statehood, collapse of neo-patrimonial networks, conflict-resources, social grievances and ethnicity. Additionally, the character of the “new” wars and particularly the design and functional logic of a typical wareconomy is analysed as the latter is assumed to fuel armed conflict significantly. The “Great War” (1989-2003) in Liberia is a classic example for persistent armed conflicts in connection with war-economies in Africa and thus suits well as empirical illustration to employ the preceding assumptions on.Los conflictos armados en países poco desarrollados son a menudo persistentes, aunque uno podría esperar lo contrario, debido a la deficiencia en la capacidad financiera y material en esos sectores. ¿Cómo logran los actores violentos y señores de la guerra prolongar la guerra durante largos períodos? El artículo, en su sección teórica, presenta varios supuestos sobre la longevidad de estos conflictos armados desde la perspectiva de la fragilidad del Estado, el colapso de redes neopatrimoniales, recursos del conflicto, agravios sociales y etnicidad. Adicionalmente, se analiza el carácter de las guerras “nuevas” y, en especial, el diseño y lógica funcional de una típica economía de guerra, pues se asume que es esto lo que promueve significativamente el conflicto. La “Gran Guerra” (1989-2003) en Liberia es un clásico ejemplo de conflicto armado persistente en conexión con las economías de guerra en África, y sirve efectivamente como ilustración empírica en la cual se pueden emplear los supuestos anteriores

Die zwei Logiken des Regionalismus: die Bedeutung von Interdependenz und Dependenz für regionale Integration im südlichen Afrika

"Bestehende Theorien der europäischen Integration und der internationalen politischen Ökonomie gehen in der Regel davon aus, dass intraregionale Interdependenz eine Bedingung für erfolgreiche regionale Integration von Volkswirtschaften ist. Dies würde bedeuten, dass regionale Integration zwischen Entwicklungsländern zum Scheitern verurteilt ist, da diese normalerweise mehr von entwickelten Ländern des Nordens als von ihren Nachbarn im Süden abhängig sind. In diesem Artikel wird jedoch argumentiert, dass Entwicklungsländer regionale Integration vor allem dazu nutzen, um ihre Position gegenüber anderen Regionen zu stärken. Daher ist der Fortschritt von regionaler Integration im Süden in hohem Maße von dem Feedback aus anderen Weltregionen abhängig. Dieses Argument wird am Beispiel der Southern African Development Community (SADC) illustriert. Die SADC hat in den letzten zehn Jahren erhebliche Integrationsfortschritte gemacht, sieht sich aktuell jedoch mit erheblichen Problemen konfrontiert, da die Verhandlungen über Economic Partnership Agreements mit der EU die weitere Integration erschweren." (Autorenreferat)"Existing theories of European integration and international political economy usually assume that economic interdependence is an important precondition for successful regional integration. This would include that regional integration among developing countries is unlikely to be successful, because their economies are usually more dependent on developed countries in the North than on their neighbours in the South. However, this article argues that developing countries use regional integration more in order to improve their standing vis-à-vis other world regions than to govern intraregional interdependence. Thus, the progress of regional integration in the South is highly dependent on the feedback from other world regions. The theoretical argument will then be illustrated at the example of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), which made important steps towards regional integration in the last decade, but which currently faces problems due to ambivalent feedback from the negotiations about Economic Partnership Agreements with the EU." (author's abstract

Regionalism and African agency : negotiating an Economic Partnership Agreement between the European Union and SADC-Minus

This article investigates the regional dynamics of African agency in the case of negotiations for an Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) between the EU and a group of Southern African countries, known as SADC-Minus. I argue that these negotiations were shaped by a pattern of differentiated responses to the choice set on offer under the EPAs by SADC-Minus policymakers and by a series of strategic interactions and power plays between them. I offer two contributions to an emerging literature on the role of African agency in international politics. First, I argue for a clear separation between ontological claims about the structure-agency relationship and empirical questions about the preferences, strategies and influence of African actors. Second, I suggest that in order to understand the regional dynamics of African agency it is important to pay close attention to the diversity and contingency of African preferences and to the role of both power politics and rhetorical contestation in regional political processes

The "great war" in Liberia as a Classic Examplefor Persistent Armed Conflictsand War Economies in Africa

Los conflictos armados en países poco desarrollados son a menudo persistentes, aunque uno podría esperar lo contrario, debido a la deficiencia en la capacidad financiera y material en esos sectores. ¿Cómo logran los actores violentos y señores de la guerra prolongar la guerra durante largos períodos? El artículo, en su sección teórica, presenta varios supuestos sobre la longevidad de estos conflictos armados desde la perspectiva de la fragilidad del Estado, el colapso de redes neopatrimoniales, recursos del conflicto, agravios sociales y etnicidad. Adicionalmente, se analiza el carácter de las guerras nuevas y, en especial, el diseño y lógica funcional de una típica economía de guerra, pues se asume que es esto lo que promueve significativamente el conflicto. La Gran Guerra (1989-2003) en Liberia es un clásico ejemplo de conflicto armado persistente en conexión con las economías de guerra en África, y sirve efectivamente como ilustración empírica en la cual se pueden emplear los supuestos anteriore

La "Gran Guerra" en Liberia como ejemplo clásico de conflicto armado persistente y economías de guerra en África

Los conflictos armados en países poco desarrollados son a menudo persistentes, aunque uno podría esperar lo contrario, debido a la deficiencia en la capacidad financiera y material en esos sectores. ¿Cómo logran los actores violentos y señores de la guerra prolongar la guerra durante largos períodos? El artículo, en su sección teórica, presenta varios supuestos sobre la longevidad de estos conflictos armados desde la perspectiva de la fragilidad del Estado, el colapso de redes neo-patrimoniales, recursos de conflicto, agravios sociales y etnicidad. Adicionalmente, se analiza el carácter de las guerras �nuevas� y, en especial, el diseño y lógica funcional de una típica economía de guerra, pues se asume que es esto lo que promueve significativamente al conflicto. La �Gran Guerra� (1989-2003) en Liberia es un clásico ejemplo de conflicto armado persistente en conexión con las economías de guerra en África y sirve efectivamente como ilustración empírica en la cual se pueden emplear los supuestos anteriores