The logic of regionalism: a comparative study of regionalism in Europe and Asia

Abstract

Why do some states develop deeper regionalism while others do not? Comparing European and Asian regionalism, this study provides an alternative explanation of different types of regionalism and the national variations in regionalization since the mid 1980s. It defines regionalism as a strategy pursued by a state that desires to enhance its governability of the national economy when market authority outgrows state authority. The rise of regionalism in the neoliberal world economic order changes the balance between the state’s public power and the state’s market governability, consequently resulting in a political convergence toward a majoritarian political system based on individualism and delegative democracy. However, regionalism is realized in very distinctive patterns across different regions as the different historical paths of regional capitalism shape the state-society relationship and the state’s capability of governing the national economy. European welfare states developed a deeper regionalism because they sought to impose a neoliberal economic transformation on their societies by shifting their economic priority of equality and economic policy making based on social concertation toward efficiency and the formation of an encompassing distributional coalition. In contrast, Asian developmental states prefer preserving national autonomy to relying on a formal regional institution to constrain states’ national authority because they are more capable of implementing the neoliberal economic transformation in terms of market governability and the formation of encompassing distributional coalitions.