Crisis And Institutional Change In Regional Integration

Comparative regional integration has met with increasing interest over the last twenty years with the emergence or reinforcing of new regional dynamics in the EU, NAFTA, MERCOSUR and ASEAN. This volume systematically and comparatively analyses the reasons for regional integration and stalemate in European, Latin American and Asian regional integration. It examines whether regional integration systems change in crisis periods, or more precisely in periods of economic crises, and why they change in different directions. Based on a neo-institutionalist research framework and rigorously comparative research design, the individual chapters analyse why financial and economic crises lead to more or less integrated systems and which factors lead to these institutional changes. Specifically it addresses institutional change in regional integration schemes, power relations between member states and the institutions in different policy domains, and change in individual or collective citizens’ attitudes towards regional integration. Adopting an actor-centred approach, the book highlights which regional integration schemes are influenced by economic and financial crises and how to explain this. This text will be of key interest to scholars, students and policy specialists in regional integration, European Politics, International Relations, and Latin American and Asian studies.

The contributors to this volume, all leading specialists in the field of EU studies, examine the trajectory of the EU and draw on the theoretical tools of historical institutionalism to assess the central political challenges facing the EU.

This book analyses the evolution of the French model of capitalism in relation to the instability of socio-political compromises. In the 2010s, France was in a situation of systemic crisis, namely, the impossibility for political leadership to find a strategy of institutional change, or more generally a model of capitalism, that could gather sufficient social and political support. This book analyses the various attempts at reforming the French model since the 1980s, when the left tried briefly to orient the French political economy in a social-democratic/socialist direction before changing course and opting for a more orthodox macroeconomic and structural policy direction. The attempts of governments of the right to implement a radically neo-liberal structural policy also failed in the face of a significant social opposition. The enduring French systemic crisis is the expression of contradictions between the economic policies implemented by the successive left and right governments, and the existence of a dominant, social bloc, that is, a coalition of social groups that would politically support the dominant political strategy. Since 1978, both the right and the left have failed to find a solution to the contradictions between the policies they implemented and the expectations of their respective social bases, which are themselves inhabited by tensions and contradictions that evolve with the structural reforms that gradually transformed French capitalism.

Comparative regional integration has met with increasing interest over the last twenty years with the emergence or reinforcing of new regional dynamics in the EU, NAFTA, MERCOSUR and ASEAN. This volume systematically and comparatively analyses the reasons for regional integration and stalemate in European, Latin American and Asian regional integration. It examines whether regional integration systems change in crisis periods, or more precisely in periods of economic crises, and why they change in different directions. Based on a neo-institutionalist research framework and rigorously comparative research design, the individual chapters analyse why financial and economic crises lead to more or less integrated systems and which factors lead to these institutional changes. Specifically it addresses institutional change in regional integration schemes, power relations between member states and the institutions in different policy domains, and change in individual or collective citizens’ attitudes towards regional integration. Adopting an actor-centred approach, the book highlights which regional integration schemes are influenced by economic and financial crises and how to explain this. This text will be of key interest to scholars, students and policy specialists in regional integration, European Politics, International Relations, and Latin American and Asian studies.

Phillip Y. Lipscy explains how countries renegotiate international institutions when rising powers such as Japan and China challenge the existing order. This book is particularly relevant for those interested in topics such as international organizations, such as United Nations, IMF, and World Bank, political economy, international security, US diplomacy, Chinese diplomacy, and Japanese diplomacy.

"Aftershocks was written in the midst of the deepest economic crisis since the Great Depression. Although it would be premature to presume to identify the repercussions of the crisis, it is clear that it will have profound aftershock effects in the political, economic, and social spheres. The book contains essays based on semi-structured interviews with leading scholars, European politicians and representatives from the world of business. They reflect on the origins of the crisis as well as the possible social, economic, and political transformations it may engender."--Publisher's description.

This text examines regionalism from the perspective of developing countries. It presents a comprehensive account of existing theory and empirical results and incorporates the findings of formal analyses ofthe politics and dynamics of regionalism.