The Political Economy Of Regionalism In Southern Africa

In the face of increasing economic globalization, the countries of southern Africa have made commitments to enhanced regional development and the integration of their economies. Margaret Lee examines the challenges to regionalism in southern Africa, providing a critical assessment of the prospects for successful implementation. Lee's detailed study of the processes driving (or inhibiting) regional integration is firmly grounded in the history of the Southern African Development Community (SADC). Her analysis of the evolution of the SADC regional economy, as well as its political, social, and economic contexts, is a major contribution to debates about the merits and pitfalls of regionalism and options for African integration.

The Political Economy of Regionalism: The Case of Southern Africa challenges prevailing wisdom, showing how ruling political elites and 'big business' join forces with certain external actors in order to promote market integration and economic globalization, boost regimes, and to satisfy group-specific and even personal interests. Only rarely do these forms of regionalism contribute to the poor and disadvantaged, who instead opt out, and survive through informal economic regionalisms or seek to create regionalisms rooted in civil society.

This edited volume transcends conventional state-centric and formalistic notions of regionalism and theorizes, conceptualizes and analyzes the complexities and contradictions of regionalization processes in contemporary Africa. The collection not only unpacks and theorizes the African state-society complex with regard to new regionalism, but also explicitly integrates the often neglected discourse of human security and human development. In so doing, the book moves the discussion of new regionalism forward at the same time as it adds important insights to security and development. It is organized into three parts. Part I theorizes, conceptualizes and analyzes the new regionalism in Africa from the point of view of the region (e.g. West, East, Central and Southern Africa). The national perspectives in Part II focus on the new regionalism in Africa from the point of view of particular countries or specific state-society complexes, such as Kenya, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the enclave of Cabinda, Angola and Zambia. Part III contains two concluding chapters that tie the main threads of the volume together, theoretically and empirically, and discuss the contribution of the analytical framework, the new regionalism approach (NRA) to the larger study of regionalism.

p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 10.0px Arial} p.p2 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 10.0px Arial; min-height: 11.0px} This book analyses the main factors influencing the political economy of Africa’s asymmetrical regionalism, focusing on regional and sub-regional trade, investment, movement of people, goods and services. It pays particular attention to the way in which regional and sub-regional dynamics are impacted by extra-regional relations, such with the EU, US, China and India. Because African regionalism is influenced not only by economic processes, peace and security are also analysed as important factors shaping both regional and sub-regional relations and dynamics.

Exploring regionalism from a political economic perspective, this text investigates why regional arrangements are formed, the conditions under which these arrangements solidify, and why they take on different institutional forms.

Once torn by ideological conflicts and the dominance of command economies, Southern Africa is now moving towards economic liberalism and openness. In general, the ascendancy of 'market economics' is acknowledged by its governments, albeit with different degrees of enthusiasm. Theoretically rich and empirically engaging this timely book offers a critical insight into the ensuing debate on regionalism and the process of regionalization in southern Africa.

Examines South Africa's role in regional political economy since its transition to democracy.