Regional Integration and the Rule of Law

The recent proliferation of regional trade agreements has generated significant academic interest among scholars of International Relations and International Political Economy. Much of this research, however, has concentrated on the sources of regional cooperation and the design of regional institutions. Less attention has been paid to the actual impact of these institutions on state behavior. This paper seeks to address this gap in the literature by investigating the extent to which regional trade agreements work to promote compliance and implementation of signed agreements among member-states. It begins by discussing alternative ways of measuring commitment in regional trade blocs. Using the regional level as the unit of analysis, an ‘implementation gap’ index, capturing the difference between agreements signed and implemented, is constructed. This composite measure is then used to assess and compare the level of actual commitment in regional integration agreements in Europe, Latin America, Asia and Africa. The paper also examines the sources of observed variation in scope and in levels of implementation across trade blocs, paying particular attention to the impact of power asymmetries, trade interdependence, design of dispute settlement mechanisms, and domestic political factors. The preliminary results suggest that while power concentration tends to result in less ambitious regional agreements, the presence of a regional hegemon facilitates their implementation. In addition, the findings indicate that non-democratic governments tend to be more willing than their democratic partners to undertake broad and ambitious commitments, but less ready to implement them.

2020

Except for the history of colonialism, the European Union (EU) and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have similar roots and they share initial targets to foster economic growth and competitiveness. However, the EU and ASEAN have diverging economic integration paths. The ASEAN Way implies non-interference in the internal affairs of the member nations. ASEAN has deliberately avoided creating a strong supranational regional institution and it has also avoided a strong EU-type agency. ASEAN is a major economic bloc, but compared to ASEAN, the EU is a stronger and more successful regional organization. Following profound integration initiatives in Southeast Asian countries, this region has now become the most dynamic and fastest growing regions of the world, especially when compared to other Asian subregions such as South Asia. In Southeast Asia, intraregional trade has increased to 25% in the 2010s from 18% of total trade in the early-1990s. Southeast Asia has also beco...

2009

Libman A., Vinokurov E. (2018) Autocracies and Regional Integration: the Eurasian Case. Post-Communist Economies, 30 (3), 334-364., 2018

The establishment of the Customs Union of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan in 2010, succeeded by the Eurasian Economic Union in 2015, constituted an important discontinuity in the development of post-Soviet regionalism: while the preceding organisations remained cases of 'ink-on-paper' regional integration, in the case of the Customs Union the members actually implemented their commitments. This creates an important theoretical challenge: the literature (which the previous experience of Eurasian regionalism was very much in line with) conjectures that authoritarian states are unable to successfully implement an economic regional integration agreement (RIA). The aim of the article is to explore the conditions under which implementation of economic RIAs by autocracies happens. We argue that the implementation is influenced by the extent of economic, social and political ties between member states, and suggest that, unlike democratic states, which are more likely to implement a RIA where there are strong economic ties, non-democracies are more likely to do so in the case of intermediate economic dependence.

2008

2009

The aim of this paper is to provide new empirical evidence about the determinants of per capita income in African countries, with particular attention to the affects of governance institutional quality and sub regional integration on income level. We use a sample of 49 countries from the period 1996-2004 and the Generalized Method of Moments Estimation model for dynamic panel, proposed by Arellano and Bond (1991). The results show that African regional groups with better institutions, higher degrees of regional integration cooperation, higher rates of investment in human capital and lower rates of population growth, show a higher level of per capita income

An overwhelming majority of Jewish university lecturers in Germany have experienced ha-rassment, threats and bullying, and many have even been physically attacked. They are let down by politicians and university administrations. In Göttingen, people who publicize such conditions are attacked and threatened by the “Stu-dents for Palestine” and the so-called “Civil Society for Justice” and grotesquely accused of “anti-Islamic agitation”. These two groups are part of the openly anti-Semitic, nationwide „Kufiya network“ which, among other things, actively campaigns for the release of convicted Palestinian terrorists (including of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the PFLP and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades), publicly expresses solidarity with the Islamic Center Hamburg (IZH), which was recently banned by the Federal Ministry of the Interior due to Islamist and anti-Semitic calls for terror: The „Kufiya network“ already condoned terrorist attacks on Israeli society in its founding declaration in December 2023.