Beyond Regionalism?

Regional Cooperation, Regionalism and Regionalization in the Middle East

Matteo Legrenzi, Cilja Harders, Cilja Harders

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317174578
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politica e relazioni internazionali
• Subtopic: Politica

Regional cooperation, regionalism and regionalization in the Middle East are usually considered to be weak and rather ceremonial. However, since September 11, 2001, a new regional order is emerging and the impact of geostrategic changes in the international environment has yet to be satisfactorily studied. With older regional organizations suffering from weaknesses, new forms appear to be developing and flourishing, due either to European support or growing sub-regional identities. This volume offers refined theoretical models and approaches which are attuned to the new dynamics and contradictions of a wide range of regionalist projects in the contemporary Middle East. Case studies of the most important regional organizations in different policy fields offer comprehensive overviews of the main actors, institutions, historical development and current issues.

Part 1
Theorizing Regionalism and Regionalization in the Middle East

Chapter 1

Comparing Regionalist Projects in the Middle East and Elsewhere: One Step Back, Two Steps Forward

Fred H. Lawson

Current scholarship on regionalism concentrates almost exclusively on the factors that promote (or inhibit) the emergence of regional political-economic formations and/or the impact that greater regionalization is likely to have, either on the countries involved or on the broader global arena. These dual emphases entail two interconnected consequences. First, they make it hard to delineate the scope and depth of regionalization that characterize any specific regionalist project, and how trends toward (or away from) greater regionalization might be changing over time. Second, they make it inordinately difficult to construct useful comparisons among diverse instances of regionalism. Thus it is not unusual for quite different kinds of regional formations to be lumped together to demonstrate a given analytical point.

This procedure is particularly evident in studies of regionalism in the contemporary Middle East, where it is not uncommon to find fundamentally dissimilar regionalist experiments—such as the Arab League, the Arab Maghreb Union, the Gulf Cooperation Council and the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership Initiative—presented as analogous projects. One way to avoid such misconceptions, and at the same time advance the general study of regionalism, is to take a look back at the first generation of attempts to construct rigorous, conceptually based typologies of regional formations. Some aspects of this initial literature reflect the biases and theoretical shortcomings that later critics claim to have permeated the “first wave” of scholarship on regional integration (Hettne and Söderbaum 2000; Breslin and Higgott 2000). But by making judicious use of the central components of these early writings, it is possible to formulate a rigorous typology of regionalist projects that substantially improves our ability to identify and compare analytically similar cases, both across different parts of the world and through different periods of time.

Regionalism in the Middle East

Several thoughtful studies of the experience of and prospects for regionalism in the contemporary Middle East have appeared in recent years. Ali Çarkoğlu, Mine Eder and Kemal Kirişci (1998, 16-19) begin one such analysis by reiterating the classic types of regional economic formations proposed by Bela Balassa (1961): free trade areas, customs unions, common markets, economic unions and fully integrated economies, the last of which Çarkoğlu, Eder and Kirişci (1998, 17) call “political union.” They go on to list several forms of political integration that might overlap with these types of economic regionalism: detente, rapprochement, entente, appeasement, alliance and amalgamation (Çarkoğlu, Eder and Kirişci 1998, 19-20). Unfortunately, all of the empirical examples that are presented to illustrate these overlapping conceptual notions are drawn from Europe, Latin America and East Asia. The 1965 Arab Common Market is mentioned in passing (Çarkoğlu, Eder and Kirişci 1998, 21), but is not located in terms of any of these eleven analytical categories. Instead, the authors simply remark that “the Middle East remains a peculiar exception to the overall trend of regionalism. Among various regions, the Middle East is not only the least integrated into the world economy but is also characterised by the lowest degree of regional economic cooperation” (Çarkoğlu, Eder and Kirisçi 1998, 31).

Paul Aarts (1999) concurs. Aarts systematically surveys regionalist projects in the contemporary Middle East, highlighting three notable cases of “subregional integration”: the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), the Arab Maghreb Union (AMU) and the Arab Cooperation Council (ACC). Additional instances of regionalism in the Middle East are hinted at, but not mentioned explicitly (Aarts 1999, 913). By the end of the essay, the discussion comes to focus not so much on regionalism itself—which, the author claims, continues to be virtually non-existent in this part of the world—as on the potential for heightened “inter-Arab co-operation” (Aarts 1999, 920). Aarts concludes that at present “the Arab states do not coordinate; to the contrary, they compete. In the foreseeable future, the dominant strategy will be bilateralism, not regionalism or multilateralism” (Aarts 1999, 921; see also Tripp 1995; Lindholm-Schulz and Schulz 1998; Laanatza, Lindholm Schulz and Schulz 2001).

More firmly grounded in the international relations literature on regionalism stands Melani Cammett’s (1999) focused comparison of the GCC and the AMU. The essay situates these two cases in the context of ongoing debates concerning the connection between the internationalization of trade and investment on one hand and the emergence and consolidation of “regional [economic] blocs” on the other (Cammett 1999, 380). Cammett points out that both sets of terms tend to be deployed in confusing ways; she thus proposes to follow Robert Keohane and Helen Milner (1996) in defining internationalization as “processes generated by underlying shifts in transaction costs that produce observable flows of goods, services, and capital,” and to adopt Andrew Hurrell’s (1995) distinction between “state-led ‘regional integration’ efforts” and “regionalization,” that is, the dynamic whereby “autonomous economic processes …lead to higher levels of regional interdependence within a given geographical area” (Cammett 1999, 380). In these terms, Cammett concludes that the GCC and AMU more closely approximate instances of regionalization than they do the sort of government-sponsored regional integration that one finds in other parts of the world.

Michael Hudson (1999) revives a typology of regional security formations that was originally formulated by Karl Deutsch (1957). This scheme categorizes regional entities in terms of a) their degree of “integration,” defined as “the attainment, within a territory, of a ‘sense of community’ and of institutions and practices strong enough and widespread enough to assure, for a ‘long’ time, dependable expectations of ‘peaceful change’ among its population;” and b) the extent to which they are “amalgamated,” that is, enjoy a “formal merger of two or more previously independent units into a single larger unit, with some type of common government” (Hudson 1999, 5). Hudson (1999, 5) observes that “the ‘amalgamated security community’ encompasses the Arab nationalists’ dream.” On a more practical level, he claims that the United Arab Emirates and the Republic of Yemen represent cases of integrated-amalgamated entities; the GCC might be categorized as integrated but not amalgamated, as could several other pairings of Arab states at particular points in time (Hudson 1999, 7). Hudson (1999, 7) concludes that “wahda (unity) in the traditional sense may be a chimera, but takamal (integration), tansiq (coordination), and ta’awun (cooperation) are not as scarce as the daily newspaper headlines might lead one to expect.”

Hudson goes on to list a number of “subregional groupings” that he does not try to incorporate into Deutsch’s conceptual framework. These include the 1958-61 United Arab Republic (Egypt and Syria) and the 1971-73 Federation of Arab Republics (Egypt, Syria and Libya), as well as the AMU and the ACC (Hudson 1999, 20-21). It also appears that the Joint Arab Economic Action project of the 1980s counts as an analogous form of subregional integration (Hudson 1999, 22). Given this heterogeneous mix of cases, Paul Noble (1999, 60) appears wise to concentrate on analyzing “cooperation rather than integration” in the contemporary Middle East.

Ahmed Galal and Bernard Hoekman (2003, vii) propose to investigate the course of ongoing “Arab economic integration,” despite the fact that such integration is immediately compared to “the European Union experience.” The authors assert that “examples [of Arab integration] include a 1953 treaty to organize the transit of goods trade among the states of the Arab League; a 1964 agreement between Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, and Syria to establish an Arab common market; a 1981 agreement to facilitate and promote intra-Arab trade signed by eighteen member states of the Arab League; the short-lived Arab Cooperation Council, made up of Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, and Yemen; and the Maghreb Arab Union, composed of Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, and Tunisia” (Galal and Hoekman 2003, 3). A further instance is “the 1998 Greater Arab Free Trade Area (GAFTA) agreement” (Galal and Hoekman 2003, 5).

In defense of juxtaposing such a wide range of regionalist projects to the European Union (EU), Galal and Hoekman (2003, 7) point out that “both the EU and earlier [Arab integration] experiments were politically motivated. Both sought to use economic cooperation as a mechanism for [political] integration.” They go on to claim that the historical experience of the EU can offer a useful guide to Middle Eastern policy-makers, and in particular teaches that the effort to promote regionalism requires leaders to envisage a clearly-articulated “ultimate objective” (Galal and Hoekman 2003, 10). Furthermore, the EU demonstrates that a variety of supranational institutions must be created in order to nurture and enhance integration.

What these otherwise disparate studies share is a tendency to lump together regionalist projects that differ from one another in important ways. It goes without saying that phenomena that appear at first glance to be profoundly different can usefully be grouped together for analytical purposes, so long as this is done according to well-defined theoretical criteria. Such is after all the promise of both Balassa’s influential categorization of regional economic arrangements and Deutsch’s elegant typology of security communities. But instead of formulating precise criteria that clearly delineate the basic components and range of values of the dependent variable, existing studies of Middle Eastern regionalism devote themselves to exploring the plethora of independent variables that can be hypothesized to stimulate, enhance, derail or block regionalist projects. They thus fail to recognize that it is premature to assess causal arguments and processes, so long as what we are trying to explain remains ill-conceived.

Broader Conceptual Approaches

Perhaps the most influential line of argument concerning regional integration at the present time is the New Regionalism Approach (NRA) pioneered by Bjorn Hettne and Fredrik Söderbaum (1998). This research program posits a sharp break between the “old regionalism” of the 1960s and the “new regionalism” of the post-Cold War era. Whereas earlier regionalist projects tended to be imposed from outside, newer ones “involve more spontaneous processes that often emerge from below and within the region itself, and more in accordance with its peculiarities and problems.” Largely for this reason, “regionalism refers to the general phenomenon as well as the ideology of regionalism, that is, the urge for a regionalist order, either in a particular geographical area or as a type of world order. There may thus be many regionalisms.” Regions are identified as geographical areas that “constitute a distinct entity, which can be distinguished as a territorial subsystem (in contrast with non-territorial subsystems) from the rest of the international system.” But for the most part, Hettne and Söderbaum (1998, 9) argue that it is best

to maintain eclectic and open-minded definitions of regions, particularly in the lower stages of regionness and as far as their outer boundaries are concerned, which often tend to be the most blurred. There are thus many varieties of regions, with different degrees of regionness. This eclectic understanding of regions is made possible because the problematique of the NRA is not the delineation of regions per se, but rather to determine the role of regions in the current global transformation and analyse the origins, dynamics, and consequences of regionalism in various fields of activity; that is, increasing and decreasing levels of regionness.

How that task might be accomplished using such a loose definition of region is left unclear.

Recognizing the methodological problem, Hettne and Söderbaum offer a three-stage characterization of “regions in the making.” The first stage consists of “proto-regions,” which take shape largely within the context of physical and ecological constraints, such as “Africa south of the Sahara” or “the Indian subcontinent.” The second stage involves the emergence of regions per se, and “could start with either ‘formal’ intergovernmental regional cooperation/state-promoted regional integration or ‘informal’ spontaneous market- and society-induced processes of regionalization, in any of the cultural, economic, political or military fields, or in several of them at the same time.” The third stage appears when a region becomes an “acting subject with a distinct identity, institutionalized actor capability, legitimacy, and structure of decision-making, in relation to a more or less responsive regional civil society, transcending the old state borders.” Since even this sort of framework turns out to “cover too many phenomena to be useful as an analytical tool,” the authors lay out four defining features of regionalism: comparatively loose or informal “intergovernmental regional cooperation” versus more formal “state-promoted regional integration”; “market- and society-induced regionalisation;” “regional convergence and coherence;” and heightened levels of “regional awareness and regional identity.” That such aspects of regionalism may turn out to be both defining characteristics and causal processes seems to Hettne and Söderbaum to be an advantage, rather than an obstacle, to further research.

Shaun Breslin, Richard Higgott and Ben Rosamond (2002, 14) assert in a more recent overview of scholarship on regionalism that “the literature comparing regional projects remains stubbornly small. Most detailed analyses examine individual regional processes that attempt to place the case study at hand in a wider comparative context.” They attribute this sorry state of affairs to a widespread fixation on the experience of the European Union and the general unwillingness of western scholars to delve into the complexities of regionalism in peripheral parts of the world (see also Cochrane 1969). On the other hand, Breslin, Higgott and Rosamond (2002, 17) point out that “to undertake comparison, we need to have something with which to compare,” so focusing on the EU may not be completely wrong-headed. This methodology highlights the facts of particular cases, and downplays the importance of analytical frameworks that might give structure to meaningful comparisons. It thus demonstrates the essentially positivist nature of Breslin, Higgott and Rosamond’s research enterprise.

Rather than address the epistemological problem directly, the authors simply distinguish between regionalism and regionalization, and argue that “this distinction opens more possibilities for studying those processes of regional integration in those parts of the world where more formalized, EU style regional organizations are absent” (Breslin, Higgott and Rosamond 2002, 20). Nevertheless, the focus of study remains fixed on juxtaposing various “processes of integration” (Breslin, Higgott and Rosamond 2002, 21). It is unclear whether this term refers to causal processes (independent variables) or outcomes (dependent variables). Comparing causal processes may be a useful, second-order research enterprise, but it is likely to distract us from investigating the sources of divergent types of regionalism.

Luk Van Langenhove (2003, 4) claims that the notion of region “is a polysemous concept: it has different meanings as ‘region’ can refer to geographical space, economic interaction, institutional or governmental jurisdiction as well as to social or cultural characteristics.” Yet he also points out that “this conceptual vagueness has consequences for the theoretical and empirical quality of … research. Without a clear view of what constitutes a region, it becomes difficult to analyse what regional integration is and how that is realised.” Consequently, he constructs a four-factor model of “regionhood.” First, regions “exist as entities …if they (i) have a certain degree of autonomy (intentional acts) and (ii) have the power to engage in some sort of purposive action.” Second, regionhoo...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Notes on Contributors
• Foreword by HE Ambassador James A. Larocco
• Introduction: Beyond Regionalism? Regional Cooperation, Regionalism and Regionalization in the Middle East
• Part 1 Theorizing Regionalism and Regionalization in the Middle East
• Part 2 Case Studies
• Index