Sequencing Regionalism: Theory, European Practice, and Lessons for Asia

Richard Baldwin

No 80, Working Papers on Regional Economic Integration from Asian Development Bank

Abstract: Feedback mechanisms are the key to sequencing when it comes to regional integration; can mean that today’s policy or institution alters the political-economy landscape in a way that makes it politically optimal for future governments to take further steps toward integration—even when these steps are not politically optimal from today’s perspective. After outlining the theory, the paper uses feedback mechanisms to organize Europe’s postwar integration narrative, and then draws lessons for today’s integration of East Asia. The paper suggests that the spontaneous cooperation that created “Factory Asia” has not been codified. One starting point for Asian regional institutions would be to institutionalize the spontaneous cooperation that already exists on trade, services, and investment. New, creative thinking is needed on the sort of soft-law commitments and new modes of cooperation that would make this work with limited sovereignty pooling.

Keywords: sequencing regionalism; lessons of European integration; East Asian integration; regionalism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F02 F13 F15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 84 pages
Date: 2011-06-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-sea
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Working Paper: Sequencing regionalism: Theory, European practice, and lessons for Asia (2010)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ris:adbrei:0080

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