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The Salience of Gains in Third-World Integrative Systems

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Lynn Krieger Mytelka
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor at the School of International Affairs, Carleton University, Ottawa
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Extract

Integration theorists are increasingly turning their attention away from an examination of the relationship of gains to the integration process and towards the elaboration of complex models in which the salience of the former is obscured. As this variable appears to influence the durability of integrative systems among third-world countries and, by entering into actor calculations of alternatives, effects changes within the integrative system, an analysis is warranted which places the relationship of gains to the integration process in bolder relief.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1973

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References

1 As, for example, in the debate over whether European integration has, as Karl Deutsch once maintained, “slowed down since the mid-50s. …” Deutsch, Karl W., “Integration and Arms Control in the European Political Environment,” APSR, LX (June 1966), 355.Google Scholar Or, despite his criticisms of Deutsch, in Donald Puchala's observation that transaction theorists continue the search for “exactly what causes, accelerates, or reverses transaction flows…” Puchala, Donald J., “International Transactions and Regional Integration,” International Organization, XXIV (Autumn 1970), 762.Google Scholar

2 Haas, Ernst B., “The Study of Regional Integration: Reflections on the Joy and Anguish of Pretheorizing,” International Organization, XXIV (Autumn 1970), 628.Google Scholar

3 The primary constraints are those imposed by a lack of resources, by external penetration, and by a subordinate international status, rather than by considerations of role or competition.

4 A collective good is “any good that cannot be withheld from any member of a specified group once it is supplied to one member of that group.” Collective goods are costly and cannot be supplied through market mechanisms because such mechan isms are defined in terms of the supply of goods to individuals on an exclusive basis. See Frohlich, Norman, Oppenheimer, Joe A., and Young, Oran R., Political Leadership and Collective Goods (Princeton 1971), 2.Google Scholar

5 Similar generalizations and supporting evidence can be found, for example, in Hansen, Roger D., “Regional Integration: Reflections on a Decade of Theoretical Efforts,” World Politics, XXI (January 1969), 242–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and his Central America: Regional Integration and Economic Development (Washington, D. C. 1967); Nye, Joseph S. Jr, Peace in Parts (Boston 1970)Google Scholar; Mytelka, Lynn K., “Interstate Relations in a Regional Organization: The Case of the Union douanière et économique de l'Afrique centrale,” unpub. Ph.D. diss. (Johns Hopkins University 1971).Google Scholar

6 Haas, Ernst B. and Schmitter, Philippen C., “Economics and Differential Patterns of Political Integration: Projections about Unity in Latin America,” in International Political Communities: An Anthology (Garden City, N.Y. 1966), 259–99Google Scholar, lists nine independent variables. Ten independent variables are believed to affect the newly isolated dependent variable, “actor integration strategies,” in Schmitter, Philippe C., “A Revised Theory of Regional Integration,” International Organization, XXIV (Autumn 1970), 836–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and fourteen variables are given in Joseph S. Nye, Jr., “Comparing Common Markets: A Revised Neo-Functionalist Model,” ibid., 796–835.

7 One unsuccessful attempt to assign weights to neofunctionalist variables is reported in Barrera, Mario and Haas, Ernst B., “The Operationalization of Some Variables Related to Regional Integration: A Research Note,” International Organization, XXIII (Winter 1969), 150–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 The exception is a recent article by Caporaso, James A., “Theory and Method in the Study of International Integration,” International Organization, xxv (Spring 1971), 228–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 Beyond the Nation-State (Stanford 1964), 20.

10 Political Community and the North Atlantic Area: International Organization in the Light of Historical Experience (Princeton 1957).

11 See, for example, Lindberg, Leon, The Political Dynamics of European Economic Integration (Stanford 1963), 78.Google Scholar

12 An actor's behavior is rational where the actor evaluates alternatives on the basis of his preferences, where preference orderings are consistent and transitive, where the preferred alternative is always chosen, and where alternatives are evaluated in terms of expected-value calculations (the value one places on an event times the probability the event will actually take place). Frohlich and others (fn. 4), 26.

13 Schmitter, (fn. 6), 858.Google Scholar

14 “Structural Theory of Integration,” Journal of Peace Research, v, No. 4 (1968), 386.

15 Discussing the formation of the Latin American Free Trade Association, for example, Haas and Schmitter observed that many of the participants “were not primarily interested in long-range integration for its own sake.” Although they also note that the “primary inducement” for certain of these countries was not industrialization and that only “some countries shared the view of ECLA that the industrialization of the region would be accelerated by the creation of a preferential market …,” we would nevertheless argue that the goal of industrialization through integration would stand high in all preference orderings. Haas and Schmitter (fn. 6), 280–81. In the case of the Customs and Economic Union of Central Africa (UDEAC), interviews with ministers, experts, and secretariat officials who participate in the collective decision-making process revealed that industrialization was overwhelmingly the most important single reason cited for undertaking an integrative effort. Mytelka (fn. 5), 315–17; see also Dell, Sidney, Trade Blocs and Common Markets (London 1963)Google Scholar, chap. 6, devoted to an analysis of common market aims in developing countries.

16 See, for example, Nye (fn. 6) and Schmitter (fn. 6).

17 Reciprocity is often a crucial element in all such systems. In LAFTA, for example, bilateral tariff negotiations were intended to lead to reductions in which “the expected benefits of the reductions must be roughly the same for the same parties.” Haas and Schmitter (fn. 6), 281. Similarly, the debate over imbalances in intra-regional trade and industrial location policy in the East African Community and the UDEAC reflects this concern for “national” gains. See, for example, Ndegwa, Philip, The Common Market and Development in East Africa, rev. ed. (Nairobi 1968)Google Scholar; child, Donald Roth, “Experiment in Functional Integration,” Africa Report (April 1968), 4246Google Scholar, Prevost, Paul-Louis, “L'Union Douaniere et Economique de l'Afrique Centrale,” Revue Française d'Etudes Politiques Africaines, XXXIV (October 1968), 6492Google Scholar; Mytelka (fn. 5), chaps. 7, 8, 9.

18 See, for example, UNCTAD, Trade Expansion and Economic Co-operation among Developing Countries, Doc. No. TD/B/68/Rev. I (Geneva 1966)Google Scholar; Kahnert, F. and others, Integration économique entre pays en voie de développement, OECD (Paris 1969).Google Scholar

19 Prebisch, Raul, Towards a New Trade Policy for Development, Report of the Secretary-General of UNCTAD (United Nations 1964)Google Scholar; Jalee, Pierre, The Pillage of the Third World (New York 1968).Google Scholar

20 Johnson, Harry G., Economic Policies Towards Less Developed Countries (London 1967)Google Scholar; Green, Reginald H., “U.N.C.T.A.D. and After: Anatomy of a Failure,” Journal of Modern African Studies, v, No. 2 (1967), 243–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21 See, for example, ECAFE, “Towards Integration in Asia,” Journal of Development Planning, No. 2 (1970), 115–53Google Scholar; United Nations, ECA, Report of the West African Industrial Coordination Mission, E/CN.14/246, Report of the ECA Industrial Coordination Mission to East and Central Africa, E/CN.14/247, Report of the ECA Industrial Coordination Mission to Algeria, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia, E/CN.14/248, and later ECA studies.

22 This view is held by, among others, Kitamura, Hiroshi, “Economic Theory and the Economic Integration of Underdeveloped Regions,” in Wionczek, M. S., ed., Latin American Economic Integration (New York 1966), 5963.Google Scholar

23 Economic Theory and Underdeveloped Regions (London 1957), 26. This clustering of economic activity in African capitals and port cities is quite evident within UDEAC where Brazzaville and Douala are the main economic poles, and in the East African Community where Nairobi has historically dominated.

24 The Theory of Economic Integration (Homewood, Illinois 1961), 201. The concepts of “spread” and “backwash” effects were introduced by Myrdal (fn. 23), 27–35. There is, for example, a perfect correlation in rankings of die Central American Common Market and East African Community Countries on two indicators of development—size of the gross domestic product and total number of industries.

25 The notions of “trade diversion” and “trade creation” were developed by Viner, Jacob in The Customs Union Issue (New York 1950).Google Scholar He argued that the major rationale for me formation of customs unions lay in die welfare benefits of trade creation, that is, the shift of imports from a higher-cost producer outside the customs union to a lower-cost producer within die customs union. The importance of static effects has more recently been challenged, widi diose studying integrative systems in the Third World arguing for the formation of customs unions on the basis of dynamic (growdi) effects. See, for example, Mikeseil, R. F., “The Theory of Common Markets as Applied to Regional Arrangements among Developing Countries,” in Harrod, Roy and Hague, Douglas, eds., International Trade Theory in a Developing World (New York 1965), 205–29.Google Scholar

26 Allen, Robert Loring, in “Integration in Less Developed Areas,” KyKlos, xrv, No. 3 (1961), 319Google Scholar, observed that “Great disparities in the stage of economic development or structure of the economies, dominance by one or two countries in the integrated region, or an extremely low level of economic development will tend to keep economic benefits at a minimum.”

27 The reasoning behind the conception of integration for development is largely based on the assumed dynamic effects that will result over time from integration, as opposed to the shorter-run static effects that are generally regarded as negative in third-world integrative systems.

28 For example, the Tan-Zam railroad: although the gains are more political than economic, they are likely to occur within a short period of time following completion of the line.

29 The notion of a minimum winning coalition is borrowed from Riker, William, The Theory of Political Coalitions (New Haven 1962).Google Scholar

30 Or, as Barnard, Chester put it, “The survival and successful functioning of any organization depends on … its ability to satisfy the common group needs which are its reason for being [and] … its ability to provide individual members with a satisfactory balance between costs and benefits of participation…” Barnard, C. I., The Functions of the Executive (Cambridge, Mass. 1945), 56Google Scholar, cited in Manno, C. S., “Majority Decisions and Minority Responses in the UN General Assembly,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, x (March 1966), 120.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

31 Wim respect to certain decisions, industrial location for example, it appears that one party gains the industry at the expense of the others; often such decisions are interpreted in diis fashion by the participants themselves. If such an industry is in tended to supply the enlarged market with a hitherto unsupplied good, if it can be taken as a factor in economic development, if—as the market for this good expands—other such industries can be created in other of the sub-units of the integrative system, then the single decision becomes part of the set of decisions unbound by the zero sum condition.

32 Side payments might include promises of future action, cash payments, and such private goods as personal prestige and titular offices. However, the scarcity of resources, offices, etc. would make side payments something of a sacrifice for those offering them.

33 Olson, Mancur Jr, The Logic of Collective Action (Cambridge, Mass. 1965), 48.Google Scholar

34 Frohlich, and others (fn. 4), Appendix I, 146–47.Google Scholar

35 The decision to extend the trans-Cameroonian railroad northward towards Chad without awaiting Chadian collaboration is one such example.