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‘Straight Path’ Alive and Kicking Regional Organizations

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Re-Evaluating Regional Organizations

Abstract

The chapter is based on qualitative in-depth analysis of several case studies of regional organizations, where instrumental economic cooperation seems to be an important objective pursued by the member countries. In particular, it focuses on the cases of Mercosur, South African Customs Union, and Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf. The cases also provide insights concerning some unusual environments for economic cooperation: that is, interaction of countries with a very high power asymmetry (South African Customs Union) and cooperation among autocrats (Gulf Cooperation Council).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Seawright and Gerring 2008. On the challenges of small-N studies for the analysis of regional integration see Genna and De Lombaerde 2010.

  2. 2.

    http://www.worldtradelaw.net/fta/agreements/mercosurfta.pdf, accessed 1 September 2016.

  3. 3.

    http://www.sice.oas.org/trade/mrcsr/ourop/ourop_e.asp, accessed 1 September 2016.

  4. 4.

    http://en.mercopress.com/about-mercosur, accessed 1 September 2015.

  5. 5.

    Hester and Beaulieu 2000; Bulmer-Thomas 2002; Mendoza 2012; Ocampo and Titelman 2013.

  6. 6.

    Connolly and Gunther 1999.

  7. 7.

    Vaidya 2006.

  8. 8.

    http://eeas.europa.eu/mercosur/rsp/07_13_en.pdf, accessed 1 September 2015

  9. 9.

    Perez 2010.

  10. 10.

    http://www.cvm.gov.br/ingl/inter/mercosul/coloni-e.asp, accessed 1 September 2015

  11. 11.

    Ortiz and Ugarteche 2010.

  12. 12.

    Gomez-Mera 2013:184. See also Gomez-Mera 2005, 2009.

  13. 13.

    Mattli 1999.

  14. 14.

    BBC 2012b. On conflicts in the Mercosur see also Bouzas et al. 2002.

  15. 15.

    Curran and Zignago 2013.

  16. 16.

    Conroy 2013.

  17. 17.

    Hancock 2010 offers a brief history of the SACU and its three main eras.

  18. 18.

    http://www.sacu.int/main.php?id=466, accessed 1 September 2015

  19. 19.

    Hancock 2009.

  20. 20.

    http://www.sacu.int/main.php?id=467, accessed 1 September 2015

  21. 21.

    On Namibia and SACU see Erasmus 2014.

  22. 22.

    http://www.sacu.int/main.php?id=468, accessed 1 September 2015

  23. 23.

    Mattli 1999.

  24. 24.

    Cited in: Fabricius 2016.

  25. 25.

    See also Wang et al. 2007.

  26. 26.

    McCarthy 2003.

  27. 27.

    Canales-Kriljenko et al. 2013:15.

  28. 28.

    On the development of the SACU after 2002 agreement see Gibb 2006; Gibb and Treasure 2014.

  29. 29.

    Possibly, a comparable case is the relations between Russia and Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which have been recognized by Russia as sovereign state since 2008. The treaties between these territories and Russia explicitly mention a unilateral adoption of Russian norms and laws. Interestingly, Abkhazia and South Ossetia also have to adapt the norms of the Eurasian Economic Union, which they of course do not belong to, and they are not recognized by any other member of the EEU. The lack of international recognition makes Abkhazia and South Ossetia even weaker vis-à-vis Russia than BLNS, which is recognized by international community, are vis-à-vis South Africa.

  30. 30.

    BBC 2012a.

  31. 31.

    Cammett 1999.

  32. 32.

    ESMAP 2009.

  33. 33.

    Al-Maskati and Al-Assad 2007.

  34. 34.

    http://www.arabnews.com/node/392336, accessed 30 October 2016.

  35. 35.

    The information on the current allocation of funds in the Gulf Premier Fund can be found here: http://www.gulfbase.com/mutualfund/funddetail/gulf-premier-fund/gulf-investment-corp–gic/state-of-kuwait/131.

  36. 36.

    Alajmi 2015.

  37. 37.

    Termos et al. 2015.

  38. 38.

    Middle East Policy Council 2016.

  39. 39.

    See Colombo 2012; Kamrava 2012; Haimerl 2013; Steinberg 2014 for information on the GCC’s role in supporting regime stability in the Arab world since 2011.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Integration Studies, Eurasian Development Bank, St. Petersburg, Russia

    Evgeny Vinokurov

  2. Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich, Munich, Germany

    Alexander Libman

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  1. Evgeny Vinokurov
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Vinokurov, E., Libman, A. (2017). ‘Straight Path’ Alive and Kicking Regional Organizations. In: Re-Evaluating Regional Organizations. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53055-0_8

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