Regional Encounters: Explaining the Divergent Responses to the EU's Support for Regional Integration in Africa, the Caribbean and Pacific

TY - JOUR

T1 - Regional Encounters

T2 - Explaining the Divergent Responses to the EU's Support for Regional Integration in Africa, the Caribbean and Pacific

AU - Heron, Tony

AU - Murray-Evans, Peg

N1 - © 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an author-produced version of the published paper. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher’s self-archiving policy. Further copying may not be permitted; contact the publisher for details

PY - 2017/1/25

Y1 - 2017/1/25

N2 - In this article, we map and explain the unevenness of African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) responses to the EU’s external promotion of regional integration in the context of the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs). Although the controversies associated with the EPAs are typically attributed to a common set of problems, what remains to be fully explained is why these manifested themselves to a greater or lesser extent in different national and regional contexts. We account for this variance as a product of the degree of congruence between the institutional trajectory of individual regional projects and the model of economic integration prescribed by the EU in its post-Lomé prospectus for the ACP. We describe this congruence as either ‘high’, ‘medium’ or ‘low’ and use this explanatory model to account for variances in ACP responses to the EPAs, which would otherwise provide an untidy fit with accounts preoccupied with the economic determinants of bargaining outcomes.

AB - In this article, we map and explain the unevenness of African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) responses to the EU’s external promotion of regional integration in the context of the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs). Although the controversies associated with the EPAs are typically attributed to a common set of problems, what remains to be fully explained is why these manifested themselves to a greater or lesser extent in different national and regional contexts. We account for this variance as a product of the degree of congruence between the institutional trajectory of individual regional projects and the model of economic integration prescribed by the EU in its post-Lomé prospectus for the ACP. We describe this congruence as either ‘high’, ‘medium’ or ‘low’ and use this explanatory model to account for variances in ACP responses to the EPAs, which would otherwise provide an untidy fit with accounts preoccupied with the economic determinants of bargaining outcomes.

U2 - 10.1080/23802014.2016.1281089

DO - 10.1080/23802014.2016.1281089

M3 - Article

SN - 2380-2014

VL - 1

SP - 470

EP - 489

JO - Third World Thematics

JF - Third World Thematics

IS - 4

ER -