Trading Blocs or Historic Blocs? South Africa/SADC and Brazil/Mercosur and the Globalization Project
Regional economic integration, as promoted by Southern African Development Community (SADC) in southern Africa and Mercosur in Latin America, is typically discussed within the globalization project. They are argued to either offer an alternative route to global free trade in an imperfect world, or to be theoretically inferior to the global non-discriminatory abolition of tariffs and quantitative restrictions. This is also sometimes labeled as the “building blocks” versus “stumbling blocks” view. Both, views, nonetheless, treat the purpose and possibility of regional economic integration among less developed countries within the globalization paradigm, as defined by neo-liberal orthodoxy.
The parties to these regional economic integration schemes are partner to this perspective. The second wave of regional economic integration in the developing world, from Mercosur (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay) to the SADC, has accelerated with the concurrent advance of what is commonly called globalization. The IMF listed sixty-eight regional economic arrangements in 1994. Approximately one half of them include developing countries (without counting the Soviet successor states). And, one of the primary purposes attributed to this proliferation is the desire on the part of the developing and emerging countries of the South to gain greater leverage within the globalization project; as, for instance, represented by the WTO.
This perspective assumes an essential stasis at the domestic level. But, the battle over liberal economic orthodoxy and its alternatives is dynamic. These trading blocs, at least in theory, (and I will argue increasing in reality), could be used as a counter-hegemonic force. First, the structural power of a “historic bloc” is rooted within developments of individual states. As John Ruggie relates, the collective “historic bloc” of the late twentieth century was created by the leading states in partnership with second tier powers. On the eve of a new millennium, the dynamic struggles within emerging states, such as Brazil and South Africa, cast a shadow over the inevitability of the globalization project. Second, discontents within these emerging states not only struggle against the globalization process, but increasing use regional schemes to form cross-regional alliances. Thus, for instance, members of the liberal-ANC wing joined forces with like-minded EU parliamentarians to effect changes in the terms, and possibly framing, of the South African – EU trade talks. In 1998 South African officials met with Mercosur officials to, among other purposes, explore the options open to regional economic integration blocs. Finally, Brazil could, hypothetically, use its member ship in Mercosur to resist the pull of NAFTA and, as well, to form cross regional-alliances with the EU and SADC.
This paper will explore the possible alternative purposes of regional economic integration. It does not reject the “trading bloc” model, but rather points to a possible dialectic between the globalization project it projects onto the domestic political landscape and the possibility of domestic discontents using regionalism to direct or redefine the globalization process.