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Embedding regional actors in social and historical context: Australia-New Zealand integration and Asian-Pacific regionalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 July 2017

Matthew Castle
Matthew Castle*
Affiliation:
Fellow of the Centre for International Peace and Security Studies (CIPSS), McGill University
*
*Correspondence to: Matthew Castle, Department of Political Science, McGill University, Leacock Building, 855 Sherbrooke Street West, Montreal, Quebec H3A 2T7, Canada. Author’s email: matthew.castle@mail.mcgill.ca
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Abstract

The regionalisation of the world economy is one of the most important developments in global governance in the past two decades. This process has seen ‘inter-regional’ economic agreements emerge between two or more regional groupings. Drawing mainly on the European Union’s external relations, observers accordingly point to the growing importance of regional actors, explaining their agency (or ‘actorness’) with regional attributes such as (supranational) institutional design, size, and member state cohesion. This article challenges this dominant explanation of regional agency. It argues that regional actors are socially, politically, and historically ‘embedded’. Agency reflects the contingency of regional integration processes, the motivations that underpin those processes, and the specific relationships between regions and third parties. This approach explains an important case of inter-regionalism from the Asia-Pacific: CER-ASEAN relations. Since the early 1990s, Australia and New Zealand have used their ‘Closer Economic Relations’ trade agreement for relations with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. This reflects the ambitions of Australasian officials to shape processes of Asian-Pacific regionalism, and the interests of ASEAN officials in consolidating their own process of transnational market-making. Here, regional agency owed to a transforming world economy and the reconceptualisation of regions within new networks of trade governance.

Keywords

Asia-PacificAustralasiaEmbeddednessEuropean UnionInter-regionalismRegional Integration
Type
Articles
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 44 , Issue 1 , January 2018 , pp. 151 - 173
Copyright
© British International Studies Association 2017 

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