Beyond theatre regionalism: when does formal economic integration work in Africa?

Thesis

For the most part, formal economic integration between African states can be characterised as ‘theatre regionalism’: governments sign regional economic agreements with no intention to implement them. Yet amidst widespread theatre there have been a few instances of actual integration. This thesis sets out to explain this variance: under what conditions do African governments implement – and not just sign – formal agreements on regional economic integration? To answer this question the dominant Eurocentric literature on comparative regionalism is amended with insights from the third worldist literature on African states to develop a new approach for comparative analysis, the ‘Regionalism as Policy Space’ (RPS) framework. This framework models African regionalism as a two-stage game. At the first stage, governments’ interests in regionalism are determined by perceptions of the existence of structural cross-issue linkages connecting implementation of regional agreements with the widening of government policy space. Given such linkages, at the second stage, governments of a region engage in a coordination game to establish the distribution of benefits from integration. Variance in the implementation of regional agreements, then, is explained by variance in the existence of perceived cross-issue linkages (the Benefits Existence Condition) and the ability of participating governments to ease distributional tensions (the Benefits Distribution Condition). Four African customs union case studies - the East African customs union of the 1960s and 70s, the customs union of the East African Community in the 2000s, the customs union of the Economic Community of West African States and the Southern African Customs Union – lend strong empirical support to the RPS framework. The thesis ends with a discussion of the role of hegemons and proposes a series of policy measures aiming to reduce the likelihood of theatre regionalism in Africa.

Authors: Westerlind Wigstrom, C; Christian Westerlind Wigstrom

• Publication date: 2013
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: policy space; international political economy; issue linkages; Africa; regional economic integration
• Subjects: Public policy; Political economy of markets and states; International studies; Integration; Governance in Africa; Africa