Regional Powers as Leaders or Rambos? The Ambivalent Behaviour of Brazil and South Africa in Regional Economic Integration

The behaviour of regional powers towards their own regions is often volatile in the developing world, which leads to unstable integration processes. This article argues that this volatility is due to limited intra‐regional gains from regional integration in developing regions, which implies that the...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of common market studies Vol. 52; no. 4; pp. 879 - 895
Main Authors Krapohl, Sebastian, Meissner, Katharina L., Muntschick, Johannes
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Oxford Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.07.2014
Subjects
Brazil
Common markets
Conflict
Cross selling
Developing countries
Economic Integration
Economic theory
Integration
Interest
LDCs
Leaders
Leadership
Regional economics
Regional integration
SADC
South Africa
South America
Southern Africa
Studies
Volatility
Brazil
South Africa
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Summary:The behaviour of regional powers towards their own regions is often volatile in the developing world, which leads to unstable integration processes. This article argues that this volatility is due to limited intra‐regional gains from regional integration in developing regions, which implies that the behaviour of regional powers is constrained by extra‐regional economic interests. When regional integration is not in conflict with extra‐regional interests, regional powers provide regional leadership. However, when extra‐regional interests are in conflict with regional integration, regional powers become regional Rambos. This argument is illustrated with the two examples of Brazil's behaviour in Mercosur and South Africa's behaviour in SADC. Both regional powers provided leadership during some periods of the regional integration processes, but became Rambos when important extra‐regional interests were at stake. This damaged regional integration processes in South America and Southern Africa considerably.
Bibliography:ark:/67375/WNG-GRPXP533-T
The authors thank Thomas Gehring, Axel Obermeier, Alexander Warleigh-Lack, Jens-Uwe Wunderlich and three anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments. Hirrah Anwar and Timo Jütten proofread the article for language mistakes. All remaining mistakes are our own.
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ISSN:0021-9886
1468-5965
DOI:10.1111/jcms.12116