Regional Integration

Abstract

This panel aims to interconnect innovative and insightful perspectives on comparative processes of regional integration with a view to reveal effective synergies and to help elucidating new global governance dynamics with a positive societal impact. To achieve this aim, the following papers will focus on the challenging and crucial issues of interregional dialogue, trade negotiations, security cooperation, regional actorness and regional integration responses to the economic crisis. As a whole, they commonly analyse paradigmatic cases of cooperation and integration processes and experiences to efficiently and ethically tackle increasing interdependencies at the global level. Furthermore, they aspire to trigger a much needed scholarly debate on the variables and premises of sustainable democracy building and global governance public goods provision taking into account the intertwined role of transnational public and private players, as well as that of non-state actors. This panel opens with Michelle Egan’s paper, which analyses the role played by private industry standards in promoting or impending regulatory cooperation in the framework of the much contested TTIP. In her examination of greater transparency standards, the author also studies how private industry associations and standard setting bodies provide implementation and compliance mechanisms able to provide regulatory coherence among rules which create barriers to trade. Indeed, she particularly observes how lobbies, private standard bodies and stakeholders form an essential link between public regulation and access to markets in this context. Such approach is especially helpful to gain insight on how has private law making changed the nature of international regulatory cooperation. Against this backdrop, and very relevantly to the aims of this panel, the author also explores how these variables influence the production of information and knowledge regarding interregional trade negotiations. Moreover, this paper also explores how trade negotiations help balancing the need for industry expertise with public participation and access, thus shaping regulatory outcomes. In conclusion and beyond the presented case study, this paper further contributes to offering multilevel insights on the interplay between industry and public regulation in transatlantic relations. Secondly, the paper by José Luis Rodríguez Aquino examines the role of Brasilian leadership in South American security between 1995 and 2010. More particularly, the author explores the opportunities for regional partnerships in this domain and the crucial necessity of neighbourhood cooperation to further stabilise the sub-continent. Rodríguez Aquino’s contribution in this realm is especially enhanced by his insightful analysis of the Brasilian efforts to construct a regional security regime oriented towards the institutionalisation of regional dialogue in this field. Thirdly, Matthew Castle’s contribution focuses on a paradigmatic case study of ‘regional actorness without a regional organisation’. Indeed, the case of Australia-New Zealand integration and inter-regionalism in the Pacific area challenges current notions of regional leadership and normative power, constituting a new reference for policy innovation, good practices, sustainable democracy and conflict resolution beyond the European integration example. In this way, Castle’s paper also opens new paths and policy areas for highly illustrative and enriching comparative regional integration studies. Last but not least, Travis Nelson’s further investigates European economic cooperation from the interconnected perspective of states and institutions in the midst of the economic crisis. The author critically analyses the sovereign debt crisis as largely reflective of financial market de-regulation and examines the impact of the austerity responses and institutional regulations in this realm. Nelson’s contribution is particularly enhanced by the use of experienced utility theory and path dependency, which results in an innovative approach key to better understand the origins and development of the sovereign debt crisis. Furthermore, it also contributes to a clearer elucidation of how to regionally respond to multilevel challenges and to search for alternative systemic paradigms in a context marked by an increasing combination of socioeconomic questioning and resilience.

Title	Details
States, Institutions, and Crises: An Investigation of European Economic Cooperation	View Paper Details
In Defense of Order: An Analysis of Brazilian Leadership in South American Security, 1995-2010	View Paper Details
Regional Actorness without a Regional Organization: Australia-New Zealand Integration and Inter-regionalism in the Pacific	View Paper Details
Foregrounding Private Law Making and Industry Standards in TTIP	View Paper Details