ABSTRACT
In the introductory chapter of this book I talked about collective action problems and how institutions and/or leadership can potentially help overcome such problems. Two kinds of collective action problems were singled out: those concerning efficiency and those concerning distribution. In this concluding chapter I want to take a look at existing institutions in NAFTA, MERCOSUR and ASEAN, with references to the situation in the EU without giving a necessarily detailed account of European institutions. Other factors I want to touch upon include leadership, incomplete contracts and power asymmetries. The purpose of this analysis will be to see how the selected integration schemes have tried to deal with commitments and thus realise declared objectives. I suggested in the introduction that a relatively complete contract could be a way to deal with these problems by reducing the need for ex post decision-making, apart from dispute settlement. The other possible approach is the ‘pooling and delegation’ of sovereignty to common institutions. NAFTA is an example of the first approach. The EU is an example of the second approach. But both MERCOSUR and ASEAN, including the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) and the more recent plans for an ASEAN Economic Community (AEC), are incomplete contracts without pooling and delegation to create ‘credible
commitments’. Given these institutional shortcomings we should, ceteris paribus, expect them to have performed more poorly. Could leadership nonetheless have allowed these latter schemes to progress towards more integration?
