Crisis and Institutional Change in Regional Integration

Comparative regional integration has met with increasing interest over the last twenty years with the emergence or reinforcing of new regional dynamics in the EU, NAFTA, MERCOSUR and ASEAN.

This volume systematically and comparatively analyses the reasons for regional integration and stalemate in European, Latin American and Asian regional integration. It examines whether regional integration systems change in crisis periods, or more precisely in periods of economic crises, and why they change in different directions. Based on a neo-institutionalist research framework and rigorously comparative research design, the individual chapters analyse why financial and economic crises lead to more or less integrated systems and which factors lead to these institutional changes. Specifically it addresses institutional change in regional integration schemes, power relations between member states and the institutions in different policy domains, and change in individual or collective citizens’ attitudes towards regional integration. Adopting an actor-centred approach, the book highlights which regional integration schemes are influenced by economic and financial crises and how to explain this.

This text will be of key interest to scholars, students and policy specialists in regional integration, European Politics, International Relations, and Latin American and Asian studies.

Sabine Saurugger is Professor of Political Science and Research Dean at Sciences Po Grenoble, France. Her research focuses on theoretical approaches to European integration, interest groups and public policy, and more recently, the interplay between politics and law in the European Union.

Fabien Terpan is Associate Professor of Public Law at Sciences Po Grenoble, France, visiting Professor at the College of Europe, Natolin, and the holder of a Jean Monnet Chair. He is also Deputy Director of the CESICE (Center for the study of international security and European cooperation) and has published widely on EU law, European external action, and the interplay between law and politics in the European Union.