ABSTRACT
The study of regional integration has undergone a well-documented revival in recent years. As with all intellectual endeavours, much effort has been placed upon the business of conceptual reflection and the selection of appropriate theoretical apparatuses to study the ‘new regionalism’. Indeed, the use of the epithet ‘new’ to announce this field suggests dissatisfaction with longer-established (that is ‘old’) theories and concepts. Thus the growth of the ‘new regionalism’ over the past decade and a half describes not only an alternative manifestation of an apparently familiar phenomenon, but also a new type of analysis. There is, in short, a claimed reciprocal relationship between the recent emergence of regional projects within the global political economy, on the one hand, and the need for new analytical tools, on the other. Of course, the primary casualties of this double move have been the European Union (EU) as a benchmark case of regionalism and the theoretical tools that have been developed over half a century to study European integration. There is much to be said for abandoning the idea of the EU as a ‘typical’ or ‘advanced’ case of regional integration and this chapter will make no attempt to present an alternative case. However, what this chapter will argue is that the abandonment of the EU as a static comparator in regional integration studies does not justify neglect of the theoretical legacy of EU studies. Alex Warleigh-Lack’s Chapter 2 in this volume makes a compelling case for how studies of regionalism can be reconnected with ongoing dynamic currents in EU studies. The focus here is on what might be thought of as a rather harder body of work to rehabilitate: ‘classical’ integration theory.
