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EU Trade Strategies. Between Regionalism and Globalism. By Vinod K. Aggarwal and Edward A. Fogarty (eds.). Palgrave Macmillan 2004, pp.xiii, 249. $26.95.

Reviewed by Galina Zukova.

 

The book is a compilation of articles on the study of interregionalism – which is defined as an economic integration of two distinct regions (p.vii) – taking the European case as an example. It represents the results of the project, which were led and supported by the University of California, Berkeley.

 

The basic question the authors try to answer to in their work is whether “pure interregionalism” will replace multilateralism, and whether the former will become the predominant form of trade organization in the global economy as the world increasingly divides into regional groupings. To prove their thesis, they analysed EU’s net of bilateral trade arrangements, stemming from Latin America/MERCOSUR, across the world (ACP, Mediterranean, ASEM, Eastern Europe) to North America. The basic conclusion is that in most of these cases, the EU tends to pursue its policy of interregionalism. However, in some of these case studies – specifically that of North America – there is no strong incentive for the parties to engage in interregionalism due to a good economic climate and relative lack of problems in managing trade relations between them (p.219). According to the authors, there are a number of factors that explain the EU’s “pro-interregionalism” policy choice. Amongst of which is the reference to EU’s motivations (lobbying, bureaucratic policies within the EU itself, as well as the set of “European” ideas and the need for the search of European identity), as well as its counterpart regions’ own preferences, their power and collective cohesiveness. One should not underestimate the general uncertainty surrounding the multilateral WTO process being an additional factor which boosts the emergence of new interregional integration schemes. Nevertheless, this uncertainty does not appear to be the main reason behind EU’s policy favouring interregionalism.

 

Based on the premise that there are strong indicators that prove EU’s preference for interregional cooperation, the authors suggest that given the fact that such a practice is pursued by one of the leading global trade blocks, this may well attest to the possibility that similar tactics will be employed by other FTAs and Customs Unions, as these arrangements go along with in furthering the definition of their own identity and internal coherence. On a more general note, the authors suggest that politically driven regionalism may well take precedence over market-driven globalism.

 

The authors of the “EU Trade Strategies. Between Regionalism and Globalism” must be commended for their attempt to undertake the study on a rather new paradigm in international relations – interregionalism. I would recommend the book not only to political scientists working on international trade, but also to lawyers and economists dealing with these issues. In the reviewer’s view, one of the strongest points of the book is the proposed theoretical framework for the study of interregionalism. On the other hand, one of the major weak spots of the volume lies in the descriptiveness of the case-studies essays (the history of negotiations, institutions in place, etc.), whereas the theory, so brilliantly sketched out in the introductory chapter, is not thoroughly applied to substantiating or providing evidence on the authors’ assertions. In the concluding chapter, Aggarwal and Fogarty try to mitigate this weakness; still, this does not compensate for the short-comings in the preceding chapters.