ABSTRACT
Helge Hveem, to whom this volume is dedicated, argued that regional integration projects were governance arrangements the recent proliferation of which was closely related to the pressures of global integration (Hveem 2006). Thorough-going global market integration might prove economically efficient, yet the outcome confronts democratic demands for a reasonable distribution of wealth that implies redistributive or other interventions in the market necessary to the legitimacy of authority: “when the self-regulating market produces systemic instability … democratic governance is threatened. The authority of the system loses legitimacy; it is challenged and may eventually break down” (Hveem 2006: 300). Meanwhile, national authorities as the locus of political legitimacy in democratic systems have diminished capacity to deal with this problem on their own while preserving the efficiency benefits of market integration. Hveem saw region building as a potential compromise that might deal successfully with this dilemma: “the comparative advantage of the regional project is that it may be more effective in governing globalization than the nation-state, while at the same time potentially offering more legitimacy and collective identity than globalization itself” (Hveem 2006: 301; italics in original).
