The Rise of Regional Powers and the Decline of Regional Integration: Why Brazil and South Africa Hinder Mercosur and SADC
Sebastian Krapohl, University of Bamberg
It is a widespread argument of international relations and international political economy that the existence of benevolent hegemons is supportive or even necessary for collective action. This argument has also been transferred to the new regionalism literature and the study of regional integration. From this point of view, the rise of regional powers in developing regions should be a positive development for regional integration, because the emerging powers may gain potential to act as regional hegemons and to provide the collective good of regional integration. However, empirically, one can observe that the opposite is the case. The rise of regional powers during the last decade has not been followed by improved regional integration, but on the contrary, the integration of regions like South America or Southern Africa seems to be in a crisis, and the high hopes of the new regionalism in the 1990s seem to be disappointed. Based on insights of international political economy and game theory, the proposed paper develops a theoretical concept, which explains why most regional powers are unlikely to be benevolent for regional integration, even if they had the potential to act as regional hegemons. Due to the economic structure of most developing regions, the economic gains of regional integration are rather limited for regional powers, but these powers still compete with their smaller neighbours for export shares to and foreign direct investments from other world regions. Thus, regional powers are often better off, if they act on their own in the global arena, even if this interferes with regional integration. In this way, they become Rambos rather than benevolent hegemons of regional integration. The plausibility of the theoretical argument is demonstrated at two case studies of Brazil within MERCOSUR and South Africa within SADC. Both regional powers profit more from cooperation with extraregional economic partners than from regional integration. The result is that both regional powers act more and more independently in the global arena and prove unwilling to carry the burdens of regional integration.