Navigating Regional Regime Complexity: How and Why Does the European Union Cooperate With Regional Organizations?

The number of regional organizations in Europe has increased in the aftermaths of the Second World War and the Cold War. Whenever regional organizations share member states and are equipped with identical policy competencies at the same time, regime complexity comes into play. Unmanaged regime complexity has not only increased over time but can also bring about negative consequences that can reduce the effectiveness of regional governance. To address these challenges, regional organizations can turn into external actors and cooperate with each other. While some of these cooperation agreements are shallow, others are deep and differ in the specification of policy scopes, instruments, and designated arenas. Thus, we pursue the following research questions: (a) How frequently does the EU cooperate with other regional organizations in the regional regime complex? (b) How does the design of cooperation differ? We show that the EU is an active shaper of regime complexes, not only when it comes to constructing them in the first place, but also with respect to navigating complexity. The EU has entered formal cooperative agreements with most of the regional organizations with which it overlaps. The EU concluded many agreements because it possesses the necessary capacities and is able to speak with one voice externally. We show that the design of agreements is influenced by ideological distances with the other regional organizations

Mapping Governance Transfer by 12 Regional Organizations: A Global Script in Regional Colors

Introduction: Studies on governance transfer by regional organizations (ROs) are on the rise. The extant literature has mainly focused on democracy and human rights (for an overview see Pevehouse forthcoming; McMahon and Baker 2006). Meanwhile, the promotion of other governance standards, such as the rule of law and the fight against corruption, have received far less attention (but see Jakobi 2013a; Zürn et al. 2012) and a systematic comparison of the general patterns of governance transfer by ROs across time, space, and issue areas is still missing

Cooperation and Conflict at the Horn of Africa: A New Regional Bloc Between Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Somalia and Its Consequences for Eastern Africa

In January 2020, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Somalia proposed to form a new regional bloc, occasionally referred to as the Horn of Africa Cooperation (HoAC). This article assesses which factors have contributed to making this proposal and contemplates potential effects for the complex security challenges, political tensions among the neighbours, and existing institutional environment in the region. Drawing on the scholarship on comparative regionalism and overlapping regionalism, we show that a genuine interest to independently address security challenges in the Horn of Africa, as well as domestic concerns, are core motivations for the leaders in all three states. However, the HoAC proposal bears the risk of further alienating partners in the region and undermning security efforts of other regional organisations, most importantly the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, the African Union, and the Eastern Africa Standby Force. Thus, the promises and pitfalls of this new bloc could shape the regional architecture and cause new political challenges in the region.Im Januar 2020 schlugen Eritrea, Äthiopien und Somalia die Bildung eines neuen regionalen Blocks vor, der gelegentlich als Horn of Africa Cooperation (HoAC) bezeichnet wird. Der vorliegende Artikel bewertet, welche Faktoren zu diesem Vorschlag beigetragen haben und betrachtet mögliche Auswirkungen auf die komplexen Sicherheitsherausforderungen, die politischen Spannungen zwischen den Nachbarn und das bestehende institutionelle Umfeld in der Region. Ausgehend von der Literatur des vergleichenden und des überlappenden Regionalismus zeigen wir, dass ein echtes Interesse an der unabhängigen Bewältigung der Sicherheitsherausforderungen am Horn von Afrika sowie innenpolitische Anliegen die Hauptmotivation der Staats- und Regierungschefs in allen drei Staaten sind. Der Vorschlag des HoAC birgt jedoch das Risiko, Partner in der Region weiter zu entfremden und die Sicherheitsbemühungen anderer Regionalorganisationen, vor allem der IGAD, der AU und der EASF, zu untergraben. So könnten die Versprechungen und Fallstricke dieses neuen Blocks die regionale Architektur prägen und neue politische Herausforderungen in der Region verursachen