A comparative analysis of regionalism in the Global South: The security and defence dimension of Unasur and the African Union

The aim of this article is to compare Unasur and the African Union with regard to their institutional structure, agenda and performance. Although some scholars have made comparative assessments of regional institutions in the same region or comparisons between regional projects worldwide and the European Union, there are still few academic contributions which develop a cross-regional comparison among regional initiatives from different regions of the Global South. By assessing the cases of Unasur and the African Union, and particularly Unasur’s Defence Council and the AU’s Peace and Security Council, taking into account their institutional structure, performance and limitations, and the role of regional leaders and exogenous actors in both cases, we have elaborated an analytical framework aiming to identify and explain the similarities and differences between two regional institutions outside Europe. Based on the contributions of comparative regionalism and the evaluation of Unasur and the AU, we conduct a comparative analysis of both regional organisations, giving specific attention to their security and defence agendas, moving forward the empirical and analytical agenda of comparative regionalism.     

APEC与多边贸易体制

区域集团是世界贸易组织最惠国待遇的一个最大例外。区域集团由于其本身固有的排他性 ,势必会对多边贸易体制产生一定的冲击。但APEC却通过自己独特的合作机制将这种消极影响减少到最低限度 ,开创了区域合作的创新之路。本文在对当前主要区域经济组织进行比较研究的基础上 ,着重分析了APEC在制度创新及其与世界贸易体制的关系。接着分析了APEC在新形势下面临的挑战及我国的对策。在我国加入世界贸易组织之际 ,强调区域集团的作用具有深远的理论意义和现实意义 ,这将使我国经济在“区域集团”和“多边贸易体制”两个轮子上快速、健康、稳定地发展。     

Pacific Regionalism and the Polynesian Leaders Group

ABSTRACT

In November 2011, the Polynesian Leaders Group (PLG) was formed. The inclusion of Samoa, Tonga and French Polynesia gives it enough political muscle to have some influence on Pacific regionalism, but exactly what this will be is uncertain. Notably, it was formed during a tense period for regionalism; Australia’s and New Zealand’s disproportionate influence in the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) and Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat was increasingly being called into question, while Fiji was crowned the chair of the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) even though it was then expelled from the PIF. To date, the PLG’s most notable work has been done in relation to climate change, while it also promises to address decolonisation, both of which are pressing issues on the regional agenda. These might be issue-areas where the PLG will make its mark. Another might be in counterbalancing the increasing regional influence of the MSG, which over the past 10 years has been willing to act independently of the PIF and its traditional benefactors: Australia and New Zealand. An examination of when and why the PLG was formed, how its membership is determined, and its position on key regional issues might provide answers about its regional implications.     

Diplomatic Rivalries and Cultural One-upmanship: New Zealand’s Long Quest to Become More Pacific than Australia

Abstract

New Zealand’s governmental and non-governmental agencies, academic commentators and media have long framed the country as uniquely and favourably positioned on cultural grounds to be a strategic diplomatic actor in the South Pacific. Justifications for the framing stem from two linked complexes: the history of New Zealand’s colonial and post-colonial involvement in a number of Polynesian territories in the Pacific; and the related history of relations between settlers and indigenes in New Zealand itself. These different strands of the argument have increasingly been brought together by the growth in numbers of New Zealand-born and domiciled Pacific Islanders. They, along with Maori, have been recruited into the diplomatic service and overtly contribute to the use of Polynesian encounter rituals in New Zealand’s diplomatic outreach. Such histories are used to justify New Zealand’s role in the Pacific in its relations with other external powers, especially in diplomatic jostling with Australia. The claims to special insight and cultural capital are subjected to critical scrutiny.     

The impact of EU multi-level regionalism strategy on Bulgarian local authorities: qualitative comparative analysis among nine border areas

This article suggests a new perspective on the analysis of the EU multi-level regionalism strategy (EUMRS) by emphasizing the important role of local authorities in border areas. The EU, indeed, has been pursuing a multi-level strategy formed by three action layers corresponding to three new regional trasnational spaces: (1) the European Union itself; (2) the strategic macro-regional actions – such as the EU Strategy for the Danube Region; (3) cross-border cooperation. Particularly, the article tries to explain why local officers working for different Bulgarian municipalities perceive the EUMRS in a different way. The perception of the EUMRS represents the internalization and impact of the EUMRS among the interviewed local officers of nine borderland Bulgarian municipalities. The research is grounded on a qualitative comparative analysis to identify and explain the different combinations of causally relevant conditions linked to the specific outcome.     

Practical vs. identity regionalism: Australia's APC initiative,a case study

On 4 June 2008 Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced his ‘vision for an Asia Pacific community’ (APC). Though failing to win support among Asian countries, the initiative offers a useful case study. This article does not focus on the motives and interests of the various governments responding to the proposal but rather on the different (and sometimes conflicting) understandings of regionalism that underpinned those responses. In its diplomatic advocacy of the APC, the Australian government stressed ‘practical regionalism’ – emphasizing the capacity of such a new ‘community’ to deal with security, economic, environmental and other challenges faced in recent times in the Asia-Pacific region. The Australian campaign gave little attention, however, to the influence of cognitive and emotive factors in community planning: it neglected ‘identity’ regionalism. In particular, it did not seem to take seriously the possible role of non-Western perspectives in shaping the development of post-colonial inter-state relations. Through the investigation of key Asian-language terms – relating to the English terms for ‘region’ and ‘community’ – this article seeks to demonstrate the importance of the identity dimension in both policy development and academic analysis. It argues for an analytic and diplomatic skillset that goes beyond the disciplines of international relations and economics and draws upon expertise in linguistics and regional political cultures.     

论中国亚洲地区主义战略的构建及影响因素

中国的亚洲地区主义战略构建要着重注意三个方面:一是加强自己的亚洲认同,在国际事务中尽可能反映亚洲的利益.二是建设好三个支点,包括提升与东盟的关系,加强中国与东盟自由贸易区建设;重视中亚,使上海合作组织发挥更大的作用;积极主动地促成以中日韩为核心的东北亚地区合作.三是在亚洲地区合作中应积极参与和主导规则的制定和机制的构建,在亚洲自由贸易区建设中发挥一定的主导作用,发挥中国的政治大国优势,构筑亚洲地区主义发展的政治基础,在形成本地区多边安全机制中有所作为,逐步建立起涵盖各领域的互惠共赢和开放包容的地区合作网络.中国在构建亚洲地区主义战略过程中,既存在诸多有利条件,也有一些制约因素.     

新地区主义视角下的中国东亚区域合作外交

在全球化时代的世界政治中,东亚新地区主义的发展为20世纪90年代以来的中国外交提供了广阔的舞台。当前,东亚区域合作外交正在成为中国外交中一个日益凸显的亮点。在新地区主义理论的视野中,中国提出新安全观,塑造负责任的大国形象;提出并倡导“开放的地区主义”思想,为新地区主义在亚太地区的发展开辟了道路;积极推进“10+3”合作,着力发展“10+1”;积极参与东亚区域合作的制度化建设,支持东盟为推进东亚区域一体化所作的努力;以“10+3”机制为契机,深化中、日、韩三国合作。在未来的东亚区域合作中,中国应在加快自身经济发展的同时,让东盟国家从中切实受益;继续坚定不移地树立负责任的大国形象,发挥大国作用;切实按照《南海各方行为宣言》所规定的各项原则处理同有关国家的海上领土争端和历史遗留问题;大力发展中、日、韩三国经贸合作,切实推进三国次区域自由贸易区建设;以建设性的合作精神发展中美关系。     

The Arabness of Middle East regionalism: the Arab Spring and competition for discursive hegemony between Egypt,Iran and Turkey

The Middle East is often considered to demonstrate a case of weak regionalism. This article suggests that the continued prevalence of Arab identity as the hegemonic component of regional consciousness contributes to this. The dominance of a discourse of ‘Arabness’ reduces the region's flexibility to adapt and develop regional institutions in several ways and particularly vis-a-vis the non-Arab communities and states that are found within the spatial boundaries of the Middle East. To explore the role played by Arab identity politics in regionalism with regard to the status of non-Arab states, this article presents a study of the competing hegemonic regional discourses employed by Turkey, Iran and Egypt during a two-year period following the 2011 uprising in Egypt. This analysis suggests that even during a time of crisis, non-Arab states face obstacles to their assertion of regional projects and that Arabness is a central factor in the narratives resisting alternative interpretations of the interests and definition of the Middle East as a region. The article concludes that Arabness forms the hegemonic discourse that shapes the international relations of the Middle East.     

Vladimir Iowa Lenin,Part 1: A Bolshevik Studies American Agriculture

A busy year for Russian revolutionary Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1917 also marked the publication of his study of American agriculture. The report reads as more than a historical curiosity, offering insights, however era-bounded, on a variety of topics of substantive and epistemological interest today. Lenin writes of the history of American agriculture, its dynamic regionalism, and its sector-specific class conflicts. Along the way, despite his obvious structural tendencies, we meet an anti-foundational author who, while upbraiding bourgeois economists for their expedient technicism, often in scathing terms, also warns that sweeping conclusions about the sizes of farm and capitalization are problematic in the face of historically dependent and contradictory trends. Here, in the first of the paper’s two parts, we begin to place Lenin’s project in the broader stream of critical agrarian studies, including the classic contrast with agricultural economist Alexander Chayanov, but also the diseconomies of modern agriculture, the biological limits on industrializing food production, and Stalin’s “dekulakization” campaign. Our aims here are more than academic. The exploration is framed by the roles the structure of agriculture and its impacts on its participants play in political change, from elections to revolution.