Regional integration

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Regional integration represents a long-term, voluntary cooperation between two or more actors (states or state actors, especially governments) in a limited geographical area with the aim of a permanent institutionalized union and joint regulation in one or more policy fields .

The legal basis of regional integration is usually a contractual agreement, through which material regulations are made and / or institutions are created, to which regulatory powers are transferred, if necessary.

Static view (degree of integration)

Projects of political and / or economic integration can be distinguished on the basis of two dimensions; these are:

  1. the content-related "bandwidth" , d. H. Number and scope of policy areas to which the cooperation extends;
  2. the authority of the established community institutions vis-à-vis the actors who established them. (This includes, for example, the possibility of settling conflicts between these actors in a way that is binding on them or of punishing violations of agreed rules.)

The minimum of content-related bandwidth is the limitation of the cooperation to the regulation of a single, narrowly defined policy field (e.g. the mutual renunciation of trade restrictions), the maximum, however, would be cooperation that extends to all conceivable policy fields. A minimum of authority would be to renounce the creation of common institutions, i. H. a purely intergovernmental cooperation , the maximum would be the formation of a new sovereign ( federal ) state .

Dynamic perspective (integration process)

Integration as a political process accordingly describes:

  1. the addition of new policy fields to the subject area of ​​cooperation,
  2. the strengthening of the authority of community institutions vis-à-vis the actors on which they are founded. In both cases, there is also talk of deepening integration, in contrast to
  3. Extension in which new partners join an existing integration project.

Processes of disintegration would therefore be:

  1. the "relocation" of policy fields, for which cooperation was agreed at an earlier point in time, to the sole responsibility of the individual actors (states),
  2. the weakening of the authority of the community institutions (e.g. also by reducing the funds made available to them),
  3. the termination of the cooperation by individual or all actors involved.

Integration theories

These are political science approaches to explain regional integration processes. The main differences between these theories are:

  1. with regard to the central actors who set in motion or promote the integration process (political or administrative actors of the nation states, political or administrative actors of the community institutions, social actors),
  2. with regard to the motivation for action of these actors (norm-based or interest-based action).

Common explanations refer to:

  1. to the largely discretionary action of national governments ( intergovernmentalism ), which, however, may be conditioned by internal power structures and / or coalitions of interests,
  2. on the normative binding effect that the obligations entered into also develop for formally sovereign actors ( institutionalism ),
  3. to state sovereignty rights exercised jointly by several states or transferred to supranational institutions ( federalism ),
  4. on the rational necessity of integration steps z. B. in the context of an economic-technocratic subject logic ( neo-functionalism ), which may be justified with the consequences of already undertaken integration steps ( spill-over ).

Examples

The European Union (EU) represents the most advanced project of regional integration worldwide in terms of both the scope of content and the authority of the community institutions (see also European integration ). There are less strongly integrated international communities on all continents, for example:

In the East Asia region, there is a less formalized type of regional integration. While economic regionalization has reached a comparable level in other regions of the world, institution building (ASEAN plus system, East Asia summit) is lagging behind due to political obstacles (Ziltener 2012).

literature

  • Claus Giering: Europe between a special purpose association and a superstate. The development of political science integration theory in the process of European integration. (= Munich contributions to European unification. Volume 1). Europa Union Verlag, Bonn 1997.
  • Andreas Grimmel / Cord Jakobeit: Regional integration: explanatory approaches and analyzes of the most important integration associations in the world . Nomos, Baden-Baden 2015.
  • Philomena Murray: Regional Power Europe? The Place of the EU in Comparative Regional Integration Analysis. In: Ariane Kösler, Martin Zimmek: Elements of Regional Integration. Nomos, Baden-Baden 2008, pp. 57–71.
  • Carolin Rüger: Far away from the public? Public opinion in the mirror of integration theories. Würzburger Jean Monnet Papers 3/2019.
  • Philippe C. Schmitter: A Revised Theory of Regional Integration. In: Leon N. Lindberg, Stuart A. Scheingold (Ed.): Regional Integration. Theory and Research. Harvard Univ. Press, Cambridge (Mass.) 1971, pp. 232-264.
  • Patrick Ziltener: Regional Integration in East Asia. An investigation of the historical and current modes of interaction of a world region. (= East Asia in the 21st Century. Politics - Society - Security - Regional Integration). VS Verlag for Social Sciences, Wiesbaden 2012.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Grimmel, Andreas / Jakobeit, Cord: Political Theories of European Integration: A text and textbook . 1st edition VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2009, ISBN 978-3-531-15661-3 , p. 388 .