Some Not Entirely Random Thoughts on the Political Economy of Regional Integration

Regional integration may take many forms. Economic monetary, financial, political and institutional are just some of the popular categories and many scholars have debated the most appropriate definitions and measures of integration and interdependence and the interrelationships between regional and global integration. As Peter Katzenstein (1996) has commented “Definitional ambiguities are a striking characteristic of the international relations literature dealing with …regionalism. ” (p.129). The same can be said of the economics literature. Following the lead of Mansfield and Milner (1997) we shall make no attempt to dictate a particular set of definitions for use at this conference, but we do ask that participants to be aware that there is no generally agreed single concept of regional integrations and to make clear what aspects they are discussing in order to minimize out talking past one another. This also holds with respect to discussions of the objectives of regional integration, which are often left implicit or are only fuzzily explained to the processes being discussed. The “success ” of the European project and especially the launching of the euro have stimulated considerable interest in the prospects for regional integration in other areas. One suspects that much of such talk is just that – prompted by political leaders who wish to sound statesmanlike and the desires of academics and other members of the chattering classes to jump on the latest bandwagon of intellectual fashion