Regional Powers as Leaders or Rambos? The Ambivalent Behaviour of Brazil and South Africa in Regional Economic Integration
The behaviour of regional powers towards their own regions is often volatile in the developing world, which leads to unstable integration processes. We argue that this volatility is due to limited intraregional gains from regional integration in developing regions, which implies that the behaviour of regional powers is constrained by their extra-regional economic interests.
When regional integration is not in conflict with extra-regional interests, regional powers provide regional leadership. However, when extra-regional interests are in conflict with regional integration, regional powers become regional Rambos. We illustrate this argument with the two examples of Brazil’s behaviour in MERCOSUR and South Africa’s behaviour in SADC. Both regional powers provided leadership during some periods of the regional integration process, but became Rambos when important extra-regional interests were at stake, and this damaged regional integration processes in South America and Southern Africa considerably.
Publication details
Sebastian Krapohl, Katharina L. Meissner and Johannes Muntschick (2014). ‘Regional Powers as Leaders or Rambos? The Ambivalent Behaviour of Brazil and South Africa in Regional Economic Integration’ Journal of Common Market Studies Volume 52, Issue 4, pages 879–895, July 2014