The Return of the State? French economic policy under Nicolas Sarkozy

This paper addresses the EU’s influence on the design of market-building objectives and dispute settlement mechanisms in Mercosur and SADC over time. It argues that such influence has had an independent effect on the evolution of regional institutional design that is not reducible to mere functional dynamics, which dominant explanations emphasize. Instead, it suggests that EU influence is best conceived as a process of spurred emulation, according to which major political or economic crises in the regions have led to the increasing emulation of EU arrangements, spurred by the EU’s active involvement in the process. This has, however, neither led to a wholesale copying of EU institutional models nor to the adoption of EU practices, but EU templates have regularly been adapted to fit with policy-makers’ normative convictions, especially their continuing concerns about national sovereignty