Regionalism from without: External involvement of the EU in regionalism in southern Africa

Stephen Robert Buzdugan

Review of International Political Economy, 2013, vol. 20, issue 4, 917-946

Abstract: Theories and analyses of regionalism, from both 'orthodox' and 'critical' strands of international political economy (IPE), have tended to conceptualise regional integration as a process led by intra-regional actors typically in reaction to external forces such as globalisation and the hegemonic power of international actors. This article sheds new light on theories of regionalism by arguing that international actors can have a direct and significant influence on the dynamics of regionalism, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, by examining the influence of the European Union (EU) on the Southern African Development Community (SADC). Building on the recent literature on Africa and international relations, which shows how lines of sovereignty between domestic and international actors are blurred in the case of African political economies, the article shows how the EU played a significant role in the SADC's inception and has been directly influential in shaping the SADC's strategies and priorities in the post-Lom� period. In the latter instance, this article explains how the EU's institutional embeddedness in the SADC's aid structures and its asymmetrical bargaining power in the SADC Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) has encouraged the SADC's pursuit of a neoliberal, trade-oriented form of regionalism.

Date: 2013
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2012.747102 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:20:y:2013:i:4:p:917-946

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/rrip20

DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2012.747102

Access Statistics for this article

Review of International Political Economy is currently edited by Gregory Chin, Juliet Johnson, Daniel Mügge, Kevin Gallagher, Ilene Grabel and Cornelia Woll

More articles in Review of International Political Economy from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().