ABSTRACT
In large parts of the world our communities have developed in their organization grosso modo from anarchy to the modern state, and some would claim the post-modern state. Power has as a general rule been accumulated and centralized in increasingly larger units following Michael Doyle’s statement (1986, 27): ‘To fail to grow is to decline’. Today we have the large federations like Brazil, the European Union (EU), India, Russia and the United States of America (US). Other states have declared that they want to be great powers, too: the Organization of African Unity (OAU) transformed itself into the African Union (AU) in 2001; in 2008 the treaty establishing the Union of South American Nations (USAN) was signed; and in general regional integration is widely referred to. 1 According to Paul Kennedy’s point of view (1988, xvi), ‘wealth is usually needed to underpin military power, and military power is usually needed to acquire and protect wealth’ and this is needed to gain security. Regional integration is thus ‘logical’ as it is supposed to advance wealth and peace. But is this a natural law: ever bigger, ever larger? Well, disintegration takes place, too. The Soviet Union is an example of that, so is the breakup of Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia. At the time of writing, strong groups are striving for the independence of Flanders from Belgium, of Scotland from Britain and of Catalonia from Spain, just to mention a few examples. In some places regionalization is flourishing but regional integration is not. In Asia, the core of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) could have been expected to move together, not only economically but politically to balance Japan and the rising China, but they do not. Some regional integration projects like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and Mercosur seem to stagnate, so there is no automatism, and certainly there are limits to regional integration. This is the topic of this volume. We will examine 11 cases ranging from lack of integration in the Arctic and the Middle East to ongoing or progressing integration in Europe to uncover what ‘blocs’ regional integration.
