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The economic-institutional construction of regions:

conceptualisation and operationalisation

KATHY POWERS and GARY GOERTZ

Review of International Studies / Volume 37 / Issue 05 / December 2011, pp 2387 - 2415

DOI: 10.1017/S0260210510001762, Published online: 02 June 2011

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0260210510001762

How to cite this article:

KATHY POWERS and GARY GOERTZ (2011). The economic-institutional construction of
regions: conceptualisation and operationalisation. Review of International Studies, 37, pp
2387-2415 doi:10.1017/S0260210510001762

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Review of International Studies (2011), 37, 2387–2416  2011 British International Studies Association
doi:10.1017/S0260210510001762 First published online 2 June 2011

The economic-institutional construction of

regions: conceptualisation and
operationalisation
KATHY POWERS AND GARY GOERTZ*

Abstract. The international relations literature on regionalism, both in economic and

security issues, has grown dramatically over the last 15 years. One of the ongoing issues
discussed in most articles and books is the conceptualisation of ‘region’. Instead of thinking
about regions using notions of interdependence and interaction we take a social construc-
tivist approach, whereby states themselves define regions via the construction of regional
economic institutions (REI). We explore how a conceptualisation of region based on REIs
contrasts with various related concepts such as regional system, and regional IGO.
Empirically, we show that most all countries belong to at least one important regional
economic institution, REI, (for example, EU, Mercosur, ASEAN, etc). In short, the world
is dividing itself into regions by the creation of regional economic institutions. We contrast
our economic-institutional approach to regions with Buzan and Wæver’s ‘regional security
complexes’ which is based on security dependence. There are interesting agreements and
disagreements between their approach and our economic-institutional approach to defining
regions. It is perhaps not surprising that many REIs have taken on security roles, which we
briefly show by looking at military alliances embedded in REIs. This suggests that
policymakers are creating regions through institutional innovations that link economic and
security issues.

Kathy Powers is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the

University of New Mexico. Her research focuses on international cooperation, specifically
institutional design in world politics. Dr. Powers is interested in the determinants of
institutional creation, change, effects and termination. She specifically examines the
consequences of economic institutions transformation into military organisations on conflict
and how the design of the institutions of justice like war crimes tribunals, truth commissions
and international courts influence whether victims of human rights violations seek
reparations and are awarded them. Dr. Powers has published her research in journals such
as the Journal of Peace Research and International Interactions. The National Science
Foundation has supported her research.

Gary Goertz teaches political science at the University of Arizona. He is the author or
co-author of eight books and over 50 articles and chapters on issues of international conflict,
institutions, and methodology. His books include Contexts of International Politics (1994),
Social Science Concepts: A User’s Guide (2006), International Norms and Decision Making:
A Punctuated Equilibrium Model (2003), and with Paul Diehl, Territorial Changes and
International Conflict (1992) and War and Peace in International Rivalry (2000). He and
Diehl are currently analysing the process of conflict management, termination, and peace
within rivalries. He is also currently working on a book on the evolution of regional
economic institutions and their involvement in conflict management.

* We would like to thank Carolina Garriga-Phillips, Peter Katzenstein, Ulrich Krotz, Ashley Leeds,
Doug Lemke, Edward Mansfield, Sara Mitchell and Charles Ragin for their comments on earlier
versions.
2387
2388 Kathy Powers and Gary Goertz

Introduction

One of the long-standing issues in the literature on international regionalism1 is the

concept, definition, and measurement of ‘region’.2 Typically international regions
are defined in part through geographical proximity and often partly via common
attributes, levels of interaction, or dependence. As we shall see, the ideas of
interaction and dependence are critical for many scholars when they think about
forming and conceptualising international regions.
More recently many scholars have taken a social constructivist approach
to regions arguing that regions are social constructions. For example, Peter
Katzenstein3 stresses that the ‘north Atlantic’ as a region is really created by the
North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.4 In the economic realm, Jeffrey Frankel5
defines regional trading blocs in institutional terms, that is, regional free trade
institutions, not in terms of trade relationships. Our proposal develops and extends
this basic social constructivist insight because we conceptualise regions as
constituted by regional economic institutions (REIs). These important, multifunc-
tional, regional institutions, for example, ASEAN, EU, MERCOSUR, etc., are the
creations of states, not of (academic) observers. As such international regions are
political constructions of states. We also draw on another long tradition starting
with Karl Deutsch et al.6 continuing through his student Bruce Russett7 and taking
social constructivist turn with the work of Emanuel Adler and Michael Barnett.8
As we discuss below Katzenstein sees his work as continuing in this tradition.
Some scholars in this tradition focus more on material factors (for example,
Russett) others stress values (for example, Adler and Barnett). We stress the
institutional in our approach. Institutions are not material in the sense of
realpolitik or levels of trade. Institutions are certainly social constructions. If one
wants to label our approach it would be institutional social constructivism.
We propose that the world is in the process of dividing itself into regions based
on the creation of multifunctional, multipurpose regional economic institutions.
Regions are not defined by geography per se, but through the decisions of state
leaders to create institutions within a limited geographical area, typically contigu-
ous states, to deal with a variety of economic, social, and political problems. We
1
We shall limit ourselves to the literature on international regions.
2
See William R. Thompson, ‘The Regional Subsystem: A Conceptual Explication and a Propositional
Inventory’, International Studies Quarterly, 17:1 (1973), pp. 89–117 for a comprehensive survey and
not much has changed since; see also Edward D. Mansfield and Etel Solingen, ‘Regionalism’, Annual
Review of Political Science, 13 (2010), pp. 145–63.
3
Peter Katzenstein, ‘Regionalism in Comparative Perspective’, Cooperation and Conflict, 31:2 (1996),
pp. 123–60; Peter Katzenstein, A World of Regions: Asia and Europe in the American Imperium
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005).
4
One reviewer asked if there are no regional organisations before 1945, are there no regions? Our
answer would be no, because we argue for a view of regions created by institutions. The same
question could be asked of (Weberian) ‘states’. There were no states until that institutional form was
invented. This is a standard social constructivist view of the world: there is no North Atlantic region
until states create one.
5
Jeffrey Frankel, Regional Trading Blocs in the World Economic System (Washington, DC: Institute
for International Economics 1997).
6
Karl Deutsch, et al., Political Community and the North Atlantic Area: International Organization in
the Light of Historical Experience (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969).
7
Bruce Russett, International Regions and the International System (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1967).
8
Emanuel Adler and Michael Barnett, (eds), Security Communities (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1998).
 Economic-institutional construction of regions 2389

shall show that the world has in large part already divided itself into economic-
institutional regions via REIs. We shall ask for all countries of the world if there
is a regional economic institution(s) of which it is a member. Our data show that
the economic-institutional organisation of regions has progressed quite far as of
2005.
Rick Fawn9 has persuavively argued that one cannot understand many aspects
of international politics without understanding their regional context. More
specifically, within the international relations literature regionalism has been in
large part motivated by concern for regional integration and institutions. For
example, Russett’s analysis and interest in regions was motivated by how they
might be the sites of regional integration:
Political integration at the international level, particularly the union of formerly
independent states, has been the subject of extensive research in recent years. We still know
little enough about the necessary prerequisites for successful integration, or in what
sequence they need to occur, but various authors have identified several conditions as very
important. Perhaps among others they include a degree of culture homogeneity,
interdependence, and the existence of formal institutions with substantial ‘spill-over’. The
first two of these conditions coincide closely with two of our suggested definitions of a
region.10
Russett focused his attention on homogeneity and interdependence; we follow up
on his third alternative of ‘existence of formal institutions with substantial
spill-over’. We see our proposal lying directly in the tradition of Deutsch, Russett
and others who think about regions in terms of political and economic integration.
Our analysis of the concept, operationalisation, and data on regions follows
standard practice in the analysis of concepts and numeric measures.11 Our analysis
of regions has some important methodological lessons. In particular we focus on
the issue of whether the number of regions should be based on standard notions
of mutually exclusive typologies. We argue that thinking about the regions in terms
of choices made by states, as opposed to criteria imposed by scholars, produces a
more natural typology of regions. Importantly, it allows for states to be members
of multiple regions.
Another step in an analysis of concepts is to explore the content of the concept
against the background of existing concepts. In our case, this means exploring
various concepts of region. Regions are typically conceptualised as ‘geography plus
something’. This ‘something’ could be externalities,12 economic integration,13
security relationships,14 etc. In our case, this something is regional multifunctional
institutions. We show that our concept of REIs is significantly different from

9
Rick Fawn (ed.), Globalising the Regional: Regionising the Global (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2009).
10
Bruce Russett, ‘Delineating International Regions’, in J. David Singer (ed.), Quantitative Inter-
national Politics: Insights and Evidence (New York: Free Press, 1968), p. 312.
11
Gary Goertz, Social Science Concepts: A User’s Guide (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005);
Robert Adcock and David Collier, ‘Measurement Validity: A Shared Standard for Qualitative and
Quantitative Research’, American Political Science Review, 95:3 (2001), pp. 529–46.
12
David A. Lake, ‘Regional Hierarchy: Authority the Local International Order’, Review of
International Studies, 35: S1 (2009), pp. 35–58.
13
Deutsch, et al., Political Community and the North Atlantic Area.
14
Barry Buzan and Ole Wæver, Regions and Powers: The Structure of International Security
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
2390 Kathy Powers and Gary Goertz

various concepts of ‘important IGO’. So we have sections below discussing regions

and IGOs as relevant to our conception.
Typical in a conceptual analysis, particularly if it produces data or coding, is
a comparison of how the new concept relates to existing ones in empirical analysis.
For example, various concepts of democracy15 have a lot of common content, but
it remains an open question about the extent to which numerical measures based
on these concepts are correlated. So we examine how our list of regions compares
with lists of important IGOs and related concepts. We conduct a more extensive
analysis of Barry Buzan and Ole Wæver’s notion of a Regional Security Complex.
This is interesting because they use region plus security issues, whereas we use
institutions. We see that there is in fact quite a bit of overlap between our REIs
and their RSCs.
Concepts are important because they form a core part of causal theories and
explanations. For most of the article we focus on the concept and not the various
ways our concept of region might be part of a causal explanation, theory, or
hypothesis. However, if our concept does not suggest new hypotheses, the revision
of old hypotheses, etc., then the concept is clearly of much less value. The last two
sections argue that the concept of region based on political-economic institutions
has important causal implications. While we are not certain about the direction of
the causal arrow, we show that classic security policies in the form of military
alliances are now embedded in REIs. This is a natural follow-up of our comparison
between REIs and RSCs, where there is significant overlap in practice despite
major conceptual differences.
In the Conclusion we engage in more general speculation about the causes of
regionalisation, and in particular strong regions.16 We focus our speculations on
variations on what we call the Weberian hypothesis. Max Weber famously defined
the state as the authoritative control over territory. We suggest that the states of
the world are doing the same thing for regions: they are creating REIs which serve
as a forum, organisation, and institution for dealing with regional problems,
including free trade, common services, environment, human rights, etc. Just as
Weberian states competed, REIs compete with each other. Regionless states are
potential members of existing regions; geographical areas without REIs are places
where institutional creation is now permanently on the agenda. We also propose
that strong regional institutions are built on strong, stable, democratic, and liberal
economic regimes.

Conceptualising regions: some methodological considerations

While it is beyond the scope of this section (or article) to survey all the ways to
conceptualise an international region, we would like to briefly discuss major
approaches, and in particular, those that have generated an actual division of the
world into regions.

15
See Gerardo L. Munck and Jay Verkuilen, ‘Conceptualizing and Measuring Democracy: Evaluating
Alternative Indices’, Comparative Political Studies, 35:1 (2002), pp. 5–34, for a nice survey.
16
We thank an anonymous reviewer for encouraging us to do this.
 Economic-institutional construction of regions 2391

An important criterion for evaluating various concepts of international region

is the extent to which they provide procedures for actually constructing regions.
For example, if we want a systematic theory of regional security, for example, we
need to be able to define our universe of cases, that is, regions.
One critical methodological point is whether we should allow countries to be
members of more than one region. For example, David A. Lake17 and Buzan and
Wæver18 disagree on this point. Buzan and Wæver construct mutually exclusive
regions while Lake allows a country to be a member of multiple regions. While this
might not seem like such an important point (for example, Lake treats it in a
footnote) this decision has important ramifications. Buzan and Wæver follow
typical advice that regions, like typologies, should be mutually exclusive and
exhaustive.19 There are important reasons why this is often not good advice.20 In
the case of regions one is forced to make difficult decisions about countries that lie
on the boundary. For example, should Turkey be part of Europe or the Middle
East? Should the USA be a part of the Middle East regional security complex or
not? Our solution is to say that a country can be a member of multiple regions.
In contrast, Buzan and Wæver are led by the mutually exclusive criterion to
various special categories or concepts. They have ‘insulator’ states, which lie on the
boundaries between RSCs. They have the concepts of ‘overlay’ and ‘penetration’
which allow major and superpowers to be involved in a RSC, but not be members.
It also leads them to emphasise a certain level of analysis, typically higher, which
allows boundaries to be more clearly drawn. One needs the ‘Middle East’ RSC
because lower level RSCs within this geographical area would involve overlapping
membership.
By far the most popular way to define a region is via some large, geographical
and continent-sized areas, such as Africa, Europe, Latin America, etc. In large-N
quantitative studies where region is a pretty common independent variable this is
almost always the concept of region used. There is some variation because some
would have a region ‘Asia’ while others would have ‘Southeast Asia’, ‘East Asia’,
and ‘South Asia’. Similar problems arise with the Americas; for example, does the
Caribbean count as part of Latin America?
This way of doing international regions is quite popular in books and
anthologies on regional security. Often the first chapters deal with general
theoretical issues, which are followed by chapters devoted to regions as big,
geographical areas. Prominent anthologies such as Fawn, Patrick M. Morgan and
Lake, or Amitav Acharya and Alastair Iain Johnston use this structure.21 This not
a problem per se and it is not necessary to formally define regions.

17
Lake, ‘Regional Hierarchy’.
18
Buzan and Wæver, Regions and Powers.
19
David Collier, Jody LaPorte, and Jason Seawright, ‘Typologies: Forming Concepts and Creating
Categorical Variables’, in Janet M. Box-Steffensmier, Henry Brady and David Collier (eds), The
Oxford Handbook of Political Methodology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 152–73.
20
Gary Goertz and James. Mahoney, ‘Concept Asymmetry and Non-Mutually Exclusive Typologies’,
in A Tale of Two Cultures: Contrasting Qualitative and Quantitative Paradigms (Princeton University
Press, forthcoming).
21
Fawn, Globalising the Regional; David A. Lake and Patrick M. Morgan (eds), Regional Orders:
Building Security in a New World (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997);
Amitav Acharya and Alastair Iain Johnston (eds), Crafting Cooperation: Regional International
Institutions in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
2392 Kathy Powers and Gary Goertz

From a conceptual point of view one can ask what are the basic organising
principles for this view of an international region. First, it is based purely on
geographical contiguity. It does not allow, for example, superpowers to be
members of distant regions. Second, it looks for ‘natural’ boundaries to draw lines.
These are often quite large continents. Third, implicitly one uses the mutually
exclusive and exhaustive guidelines to construct the regions. This means that
every country is a member of some region and it cannot be a member of two
regions.
The Correlates of War (COW) produced perhaps one of the first official lists of
‘states’. These were given numbers roughly corresponding to regions, for example,
numbers 2–99 are the Americas. While we are not aware of any explicit discussion
on the matter, the EUGENE software22 does have an option for giving the user
a region variable. It is important that this is just one variable; this means that a
country cannot be a member of two regions. COW divides the world into five
regions: (1) Europe, (2) Americas, (3) Middle East, (4) Africa, (5) Asia. Having
fewer regions means there are fewer hard choices to make about countries on the
border. Here the tricky ones are the boundaries between Africa and the Middle
East (for example, Algeria is put in the Middle East) and between the Middle East
and Asia (for example, Pakistan is in Asia).
To take another popular dataset, the Polity data on regime type23 has a region
variable as well. For this project the world is divided into Western Europe, Eastern
Europe, Europe-settled, South America, Central America/Caribbean, South and
Southeast Asia, Middle East/North Africa, and Sub-Saharan Africa. Again, Polity
follows the rule of exhaustiveness and exclusivity.
Typically the region variable is not a controversial one, and usually not a
critical one in the large-N theoretical or empirical analysis. As a result variation in
these categorisations is not important. The rule of exhaustiveness and exclusivity
is automatically followed because alternatives are not on the methodological map.
We argue that the region variable is theoretically important and should be regarded
as more than just a control variable.
In conceptualising region one needs to consider what is the opposite of a
region. In most of international relations literature, the opposite of regional is
global. We contrast three quite different levels: (1) region; (2) macro-region; and
(3) global. At all levels we see institution construction and competition between
institutions. While many define region in large, often continent-wide, geo-
graphical terms, we define regions for our purposes at the level below that, in
large part, because this is the level of the most intense institutional activity. For
example, Africa is a macro-region for the purposes of this article, and it has the
African Union as its macro-regional institution. However, Africa is divided into
about 10 regional economic institutions, such as ECOWAS, SADC, COMESA,
etc.24

22
D. Scott Bennett and Allan C. Stam, ‘EUGene: A Conceptual Manual’, International Interactions,
26:2 (2000), pp. 179–204.
23
Keith Jaggers and Ted R. Gurr, ‘Tracking Democracy’s Third Wave with the Polity III Data’,
Journal of Peace Research, 32:4 (1995), pp. 469–82.
24
What we call regions are sometimes called subregions when region in those studies lies at what we
are calling the macro-regional level.
 Economic-institutional construction of regions 2393

Regions in the literature of the 1960s and 1970s

The analysis of concepts typically involves comparing the new proposed concept
against what Robert Adcock and David Collier call the ‘background concept’,
which they define as ‘the broad constellation of meanings and understandings
associated with a given concept’.25 Our case is a bit unusual since we have two
separate conceptual universes to consider, the literature on ‘regions’ and the
literature on regional institutions and organisations. In this section we consider
the background concept of region, below we consider our alternative vis-à-vis the
literature on IGOs.
There was significant work in the 1960s and 1970s on international regions,
both in terms of security and economic integration. This was clearly motivated by
the formation across the world of REIs. Led as always by Europe, regional
integration institutions were formed in many areas, which naturally produced work
trying to explain and theorise them. When regional integration schemes failed or
stalled in the 1970s scholars lost interest in them until things got going again in the
1980s. For example, Joseph S. Nye, a major contributor to the regional integration
and regional security literature, defined a region as ‘a limited number of states
linked together by a geographical relationship and a by a degree of mutual
interdependence’.26 He argued that regional economic institutions affect conflict
involving member states differently than regional security institutions. We argue
that multifunctional regional economic institutions serve both economic and
security functions in order to more effectively manage conflict.
Bill Thompson conducted an extensive survey of the concept of region. He
surveyed 21 authors and found 21 different attributes used to define region. By far
the most popular of the twenty-one were: (1) ‘proximity or primary stress on
geographic region’ and (2) ‘actors’ pattern of relations or interactions exhibit a
particular degree of regularity or intensity’. Criterion (1) is clearly geography,
while criterion (2) is some form of interdependence or interaction. Thompson
summarises and synthesises the literature on regional subsystems with the following
concept:
In concluding this exercise in explication, I have proposed that the necessary and sufficient
conditions for the regional subsystem are as follows:
1. The actors’ pattern of relations or interactions exhibit a particular degree of regularity
and intensity to the extent that a change at one point in the subsystem affects other
points.
2. The actors are generally proximate.
3. Internal and external observers and actors recognize the subsystem as a distinctive area
of ‘theatre of operations’.
4. The subsystem logically consists of at least two and quite probably more actors.27
As we shall see this has not changed much in the intervening decades and the
regionalism literature of the post-Cold War can be seen as a variation on these
themes.

25
Adcock and Collier, ‘Measurement Validity’, p. 531.
26
Joseph S. Nye, ‘Comparative Regional Integration: Concept and Measurement’, International
Organization, 22:4 (1968), p. xii.
27
Thompson, ‘The Regional Subsystem’, p. 101.
2394 Kathy Powers and Gary Goertz

The one approach that Thompson does not really cover uses the homogeneity
of countries as the central means for defining a region. Russett’s work provides a
good example of this: ‘How do we define a region? One possibility is simply to
identify an area divided from another by geographic barriers [. . .] But virtually all
social scientists, including geographers, would reject this definition. A region, they
might say, must be composed of units with common characteristics. Regions
should be areas of relative homogeneity.’28
Homogeneity becomes in practice the use of factor analysis to look for
countries correlated on some number of variables. For Russett this means dozens
of characteristics of countries, such as language, religion, economic characteristics,
etc. The factor analysis generates latent variables, which can be used to assign
countries to regions. The key thing with the homogeneity approach is that it does
not usually rely (at least directly) on interactions or dependence.29
When the regionalism literature gets going again in the 1990s it has a clear
intellectual debt to those who worked in the 1950s through 1970s. Katzenstein has
been one of the most prominent contributors to this resurgence and he makes his
debt to Deutsch quite clear: ‘Together with Karl Deutsch this article defines a
region as a set of countries markedly interdependent over a wide range of different
dimensions. This is often, but not always, indicated by a flow of socio-economic
transactions and communications and high political salience that differentiates a
group of countries from others (Deutsch 1981, p. 54).’30 Here we see that
interdependence remains core to conceptualising regions, and it is not surprising
that the literature on regional security adopts some version of interdependence to
define regions.31

REIs and the construction of regions

Our concept of international region relies on states themselves organising territory

and space. We believe that Lake32 is on the right track with his emphasis on
externalities. One classic response to negative externalities is to gain efficiency
through internalising some aspects of production. Similarly, states can try to deal
with various problems via regional institutions. They may try to increase trade,
provide common services, deal with standardisation, or address environmental
problems via regional institutions. These regional institutions have a geographic
basis in part because the problems themselves have a geographic dimension, but
also because states see other regions dealing with problems via regional inter-
national institutions.
This article claims that international regions are being constructed via
institutions mostly devoted to economic development and integration, but which

28
Russett, ‘Delineating International Regions’, p. 318.
29
Russett, International Regions uses trade as only one of a variety of attributes of states to construct
regions.
30
Katzenstein, ‘Regionalism in Comparative Perspective’, p. 130.
31
David A. Lake, ‘Regional Security Complexes: A Systems Approach’, in David Lake and Patrick
Morgan (eds), Regional Orders: Building Security in A New World (University Park: Pennsylvania
State University Press, 1997); Buzan and Wæver, Regions and Powers.
32
Lake, ‘Regional Security Complexes’.
 Economic-institutional construction of regions 2395

then form the platform for institutional expansion into a wide variety of areas such
as human rights, democratisation, environment, and eventually security. In an
interesting contrast with the Weberian state, which was created by war to
wage war, economic issues drive the core of the institutional organisation of
international space.
We focus on REIs as the institutional basis of the region. Economic integration
comes in the form of REIs that can include free trade agreements, customs unions
and economic unions.33 Free trade agreements specify that member states pledge
not to place tariffs on each others? goods but are free to do so at any level with
non-member states. Customs unions are free trade agreements that include a
commitment to place the same tariff on the goods of non-member states. Finally,
economic unions are rare but include a commitment to completely integrate
economically. The EU comes the closest to fulfilling the requirement for this
category.
These multifunctional regional economic institutions facilitate economic inte-
gration across a range of issue areas. According to economists, REIs facilitate
trade cooperation as well as other forms of economic integration among a limited
number of states.34 We employ, however, a much broader definition than that of
economists. REIs are economic institutions that specify rules for trade liberalisa-
tion in the form of reduced tariff barriers, tariff policy harmonisation (for example,
uniform custom policy), economic development (sustainable development policy,
loan funds), the economic implications of shared natural resources (commercial
fishing, hydroelectricity) and integration in infrastructure (maritime transport,
immigration).
States join REIs for a plethora of reasons, such as improved access to foreign
markets, removal or reduction of tariff barriers among member states, restrict
members ability to raise trade barriers, insure against future disruptions in trade,
insulate from the effects of hegemonic decline and global recession as well as to
promote economic growth and development.35
During the 1990s, economists debated the nature of regions as well. They
agreed that the world was transforming into a global economy based on trade
flows generated by trading blocs. The debate centered on whether these blocs were
competitive thus dividing the world into massive regional trading blocs that stifled
globalisation or complementary thus being stepping-stones to multilateral trade
liberalisation.36 We argue that this debate overlooks the institutional basis of such
trade as well as the multifunctional nature of REIs. Our argument focuses on how
the world is moving toward regions defined largely by regional economic
institutions that serve a range of economic purposes.

33
Frankel, Regional Trading Blocs.
34
Beth V. Yarbrough and Robert M. Yarbrough, Cooperation and Governance in International Trade
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992).
35
Edward D. Mansfield, ‘The Proliferation of Preferential Trading Agreements’, Journal of Conflict
Resolution, 42:5 (1998), pp. 523–43; Carlo Perroni and John Whalley, ‘The New Regionalism: Trade
Liberalization or Insurance’, National Bureau of Economic Research (Working Paper No. 4626,
Cambridge, MA 1994); John E. Whalley, ‘Why Do Countries Seek Regional Trade Agreements’, in
Jeffrey Frankel, (ed.), The Regionalization of the World Economy (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1998); Yarbrough and Yarbrough, Cooperation and Governance in International Trade.
36
Frankel, Regional Trading Blocs.
2396 Kathy Powers and Gary Goertz

Concept and operationalisation of a regional economic institution (REI)

We show below that most of the world’s territory has been regionalised via
institution creation in the form of REIs. REIs deal with a wide range of problems
and they are often the go-to place when new problems arise. For example, when
Zimbabwean elections in 2008 proved controversial, there were wide-spread calls
for SADC to get involved. REIs are typically the most important regional
organisation (though perhaps not strong in an absolute sense). They are ‘regional’
because they group together proximate and usually contiguous states. They are
‘institutions’ because they have formal legal status; they are constituted by binding
treaties, and often have large numbers of treaties, protocols and agreements that
constitute the institution itself.
We focus on economic institutions because regional integration has typically
started from dealing with economic problems and issues. While security issues are
not absent, and in fact, many REIs do eventually become involved in security,
economic integration is the core. REI member states view economics and security
issues as inherently linked. It seems like the normal evolution has been to focus on
economic integration first even if this economic integration has some security
motivations, as illustrated by the history of the EU. It is certainly conceivable that
security organisations and alliances could move into economics, but that seems
quite rare.37 Thus in an interesting contrast with the Weberian state which was
formed for and by war, the political organisation of regional space is mostly
informed by economic issues of various sorts.
To be included as an REI there must be a clear document (or usually set of
documents) that provides the binding legal foundation for the institution. The
requirement of international legal status, that is, treaties signed by member nations,
distinguishes ‘institution’ from informal forms of interaction, which we call
‘discussion forums’. As with all concepts there is a gray zone.38 This is not to say
that these forums are not important, but that they constitute a kind of
proto-institution, they lie in the institutional grey zone. APEC, for example, has
regular meetings of its member states, but it has no legal status; there are no legally
binding agreements signed by its members. ASEAN+3 (South Korea, China, and
Japan) is also a discussion forum. APEC could become a REI; ASEAN could
expand to include South Korea, China, and Japan. Discussion forums are often
formed quite explicitly because states are not willing to formalise the institution.39
We are interested in the multifunctional regional institutions. As such we
exclude from our list all IGOs that are single-issue in nature. If one takes, for
example, the Correlates of War database of IGOs40 the vast majority are excluded

37
Andrew G. Long and Brett Ashley Leeds, ‘Trading Alliances for Security: Military Alliances and
Economic agreements’, Journal of Peace Research, 43:4 (2006), pp. 433–51.
38
Goertz, Social Science Concepts.
39
While in principle an IGO has a legal founding document, most datasets rely on the Union of
International Organisation yearbook and do not verify this. ‘Forums’ are included in many datasets
but do not have a clear legal, institutional basis, that is, one cannot find a founding treaty. So while
APEC is in most IGO datasets on IGOs we exclude it because of its lack of legal foundation, along
with other discussion forums, for example, G8, which are often not in such datasets.
40
Jon C. Pevehouse, Timothy Nordstrom and Kevin Warnke, ‘The Correlates of War 2 International
Governmental Organizations Data Version 2.0’, Conflict Management and Peace Science, 21:2 (2004),
pp. 101–20.
 Economic-institutional construction of regions 2397

on this basis. We exclude purely security organisations as well, such as NATO or

the CSCE on this basis. We are interested in the creation of institutional
governance in regional space. We thus limit ourselves to those IGOs and REIs that
might assume governance over a variety of economic activities.
States create and design international organisations to perform particular tasks.
Kenneth Abbott and Duncan Snidal41 argue that formal IOs perform administra-
tive, information-gathering and dispute settlement functions among other tasks for
states. For instance, they can help small and developing states pool together scarce
resources to attain mutual ends. We argue that important REIs are more than just
treaties. They possess an organisational structure that includes at least an executive
body composed of heads of state that meets regularly, a secretariat and permanent
headquarters. Such structure is necessary to implement, monitor, and eventually
enforce treaty rules that govern REIs.
The basic criteria for an REI to be included in our analysis are the following:
(1) multi-functional, economic integration; (2) treaty-based; (3) basic IGO structure
(for example, executive body that meets regularly, secretariat, headquarters); and
(4) active between 1980 and 2005, though we only include those active in 2005 in
this article.

REIs: criteria for importance

We have proposed using regional institutions to identify how states have

constituted regions. So another ‘background concept’42 of relevance is IGO, or
more specifically the subset of important regional IGOs. Are we just picking out
some important IGOs and then calling them regions? If our concept has important
substantive importance then it should differ in some important ways from just
equating regions with IGOs?
We are interested in the institutional construction of regions, which means we
are interested in the ‘important’ IGOs. At an intuitive level these are not hard to
identify. For example, in an anthology on regional economics or security these are
the institutions that actually get discussed in the case study chapters. These are the
ones that have well-known acronyms, such as NAFTA, ASEAN, MERCOSUR.
This is important because often the IGO variables are independent variables that
are hypothesised to influence state behaviour. The logic is that only important
international institutions with some resources will have influence, and it seems
reasonable to exclude small, functional IGOs from consideration.
One fairly popular approach to defining, implicitly, an important IGO is to use
some yearbook or data source likes Arthur S. Banks43 as the selection device. For
example, Jon C. Pevehouse44 uses Banks and Beckfield’s45 the Stateman’s yearbook

41
Kenneth Abbott and Duncan Snidal, ‘Why States Act through Formal International Organizations’,
Journal of Conflict Resolution, 42:1 (1998), pp. 3–32.
42
Adcock and Collier, ‘Measurement Validity’.
43
Arthur S. Banks and Thomas Mueller, Political Handbook of the World (Binghamton: CSA
Publications, 1988).
44
Jon C. Pevehouse, Democracy from Above: Regional Organizations and Democratization (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2005).
45
Beckfield, ‘The Dual World Polity’.
2398 Kathy Powers and Gary Goertz

and the Europa yearbook. It is not very clear what the reference books’ criteria are
but they are certainly related to perceptions of importance of the IGO. In Table
1 we have a columns for Pevehouse and Beckfield to illustrate the extent to which
our REIs are included in their lists compiled in this manner.
Frequently the criteria for inclusion of important IGOs in a study are not
clear.46 For many scholars it is easier to include all IGOs (typically as defined by
COW) than to come up with explicit criteria for the inclusion of some and the
exclusion of others. In this article, we construct criteria for important IGOs and
apply it to one class of institutions, REIs, in order to isolate the ones that matter
most in different regions. This initial step allows us to better understand the
institutional basis of regions. Since we make an argument that regions are created
via economic institutions, identifying and evaluating the important IGOs that
constitute a region is important.
We propose various criteria that allow us to identify the most important
regional economic institutions. If most of these institutions are absent then an IGO
or PTA would not be considered important in a general sense (though it might be
important in a given issue area). However, not all important REIs will have all
these characteristics, but certainly will have two thirds or three quarters of them.
We think that these include most of the implicit criteria used by reference books
that discuss individual IGOs, which form the basis of the choices made by scholars
like Pevehouse and Beckfield. These characteristics are: (1) treaty-nesting and
linkage; (2) international legal personality; and (3) primary or important IGO used
in region as identified by scholars or international bodies (4) emanations; and (5)
annual or more frequent meetings of Presidents, Prime Ministers and/or cabinet
level officials.
Treaty nesting and linkage is a characteristic of important REIs. International
treaties are often linked in different ways. Linked and nested treaties constitute
literally what we, and others, mean by an international institution. REIs, as
institutions, can essentially be described as interconnected sets of treaties that
bridge numerous concerns. One treaty may be nested or connected to other
treaties. For instance, Treaty B may implement the treaty obligations in Treaty A
while Treaty D can change the scope of treaty obligations in Treaty C.47 Most
regional economic institutions are composed of dozens of treaties (for example,
CIS, EU, ECOWAS, CARICOM). These nested and linked treaties are closely
related to the multifunctional character of important regional institutions, since an
individual treaty might deal with only one issue area.
International legal personality is a key characteristic of an important REI. It is
the legal right and capacity to possess rights and duties as a legal person under
international law. International legal personality affords IOs the right to make and
challenge international law through signing treaties and bringing claims to
international courts.48 States automatically possess such status because they have
sovereignty. It is this right to legal personality, inherent in sovereignty, that has

46
Thomas Volgy, Elizabeth Fausett, Keith A. Grant and Stuart Rodgers, ‘Identifying Formal
Intergovermental Organizations’, Journal of Peace Research, 45:6 (2008), pp. 849–62, is an exception.
47
John P. Willerton, et al., A Methodology for Nested Treaties and Institutions: Nested Bilateralism in
the Commonwealth of Independent States (Manuscript, University of Arizona 2009).
48
Mark W. Janis and John E. Noyes, International Law: Cases and Commentary (St. Paul:
Thomson/West, 2006).
 Economic-institutional construction of regions 2399

allowed states to be the sole creators of international treaties and therefore

international law. Now, international organisations either acquire such a status on
their own or states grant it to them via delegation.49 Examples of REIs that have
signed trade agreements with states and other IGOs are the EU, MERCOSUR and
ASEAN.
Various actors by their actions and policies identify the important regional
organisations. For example, the UN Charter talks about regional peacekeeping. So
if the UN or other macro-regional organisations decide to engage a regional
institution that implies that it is an important one. The African Union Charter
gives special attention and importance to some REIs. Scholars as well by their
studies and analyses informally vote on which are the most important regional
institutions. Buzan and Wæver50 when discussing regional security bring some
regional organisations into the analyses which they think are relevant. In
anthologies on regional economics or security, these are the organisations that are
discussed. These are the organisations often included in reference books, such as
Banks.51
Because important REIs are engaged a wide variety of substantive areas, they
create specialised organisations, bureaucracies, etc. Just as the UN has specialised
agencies so do important REIs. In IGO literature these are often called
‘emanations’ and many datasets, for example, COW, exclude them because they
are not independent entities. However, for us the existence of numerous emana-
tions is a clear signal of importance.
Another way that states vote and give importance is via the attention devoted
to the IGO by key government leaders, either presidents, prime ministers or cabinet
level officials. If the presidents of the member countries meet every year, make
decisions, etc., that signals to domestic and international audiences that an
institution is important. If regular meetings just involve lower-level bureaucrats
then that signals the organisation is less important.
One could certainly come up with additional criteria of importance. However,
we think that these six are more than enough.52 Typically, unimportant, single-
issue IGOs have none of these characteristics. At the same time, important REIs
do not need to have all characteristics. For example, NAFTA is clearly an
important REI, but it has few treaties (only three).

The economic-institutional regions of the world

One of our main goals is to investigate the extent to which there has been an
economic-institutional organisation of international space. That space has already
been organised via the creation of states. So we take that existing organisation as
a starting point: to divide the world’s states into regions first requires a list of states
49
Kathy Powers, Scraps of paper or signs of IO autonomy? IO treaties and international legal personality
(Manuscript. University of New Mexico, 2011).
50
Buzan and Wæver, Regions and Powers.
51
Banks and Mueller, Political Handbook of the World.
52
Liesbet Hooghe and Gary Marks, ‘Does Efficiency Shape the Territorial Structure of Government?’,
Annual Review of Political Science, 12 (2009), pp. 225–41, have a project similar to ours and their
criteria for ‘Type I, multipurpose, authoritative’ IGOs are very similar.
2400 Kathy Powers and Gary Goertz

of the world. We take the popular COW list of nations.53 This excludes very small
microstates but includes all states of any size, for example, most of the small Pacific
island states are on the COW list. We also exclude a few small European
territories, Monaco, Liechtenstein, Andorra, and San Marino (which are not
considered independent members of the EU). We have thus an international system
with 188 members. These states can belong to no REI, one REI, or multiple ones,
that is, from our perspective they can belong to 0, 1, or multiple regions.
Table 1 then provides our list of economic-institutional regions as constructed
by the states of the world for 2005, in other words Table 1 is our list of REIs.
Hence, we find the world divided into 34 regions.
The data in Table 1 show that regions as constituted by REIs are not just a
relabelling of existing concepts such as PTA, RTA, RIA, FIGO, etc. Typically only
about half of our REIs are to be found in these other datasets. The case of the
most overlap is Volgy et al.s FIGOs. This is not surprising given that they have
by far the most organisational set of requirements. Of course they have many
FIGOs, which are not REIs – only about 15 per cent of their FIGOs are REIs.
Conceptually they stress the organisational and administrative dimensions while we
stress legally-binding treaties, protocols, etc.
Table 1 also includes a comparison of REIs with other studies that only include
‘important’ IGOs or more generally all preferential trade agreements (PTAs). The
zeros in the table indicate that the REI is not included in the study. Given that our
criteria for inclusion seem quite strong compared to others it is interesting to note
the relative lack of overlap. Notably, most of the central Asian REIs are not
included in these various datasets. Some of the less important African ones are also
commonly excluded. However, the most rigorously defined dataset, Volgy et al.,
includes almost all of REIs with only a couple of exceptions. Of course, it is
beyond the scope of this article to investigate these differences further; the key
point is that our conception of region based on REIs is not just a relabelling of
related concepts such as IGO, PTA, etc.
Liesbet Hooghe and Gary Marks have a project very similar to ours. They
distinguish between general purpose and specialised IGOs and focus on what they
call ‘authoritative’ IGOs: ‘Some 50 of these [COW IGOs] can be described as
authoritative, having a formal constitution, a supreme legislative body, a standing
executive, a permanent professional administration, and some formal mechanisms
for enforcing decisions and settling disputes. Of these, 13 are responsible for a
range of policies and might be described as general-purpose.’54 Clearly this sets the
bar significantly higher than we do. But what is relevant is that their criteria are
very similar to ours.
Weak and small REIs might be quite vulnerable to more dynamic REIs. At one
point in time the EU and the European Free Trade Area had roughly the same
number of members. Today the EFTA is on life-support. Venezuela has recently
applied to join MERCOSUR, and there may be a natural attraction of states
toward stronger REIs. Part of the dynamics of regions is how weak REIs may get

53
Correlates of War Project (2008), ‘State System Membership List, v2008.1’, available at:
{http://correlatesofwar.org}.
54
Hooghe and Marks, ‘Does Efficiency Shape the Territorial Structure of Government?’, p. 236.
 Economic-institutional construction of regions 2401

REI M MS H P B V HM

Arab Maghreb Union (AMU) 1 1 1 0 1 1 0

Common Market for Eastern and Southern 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Africa (COMESA)
Council of Sahel and Saharan States (CEN-SAD) 1 0 0 1 0 1 0
Southern African Customs Union (SACU) 0 0 1 0 0 0 0
East African Community (EAC) 1 1 0 1 0 1 0
Economic Community of Central African States 0 0 1 0 0 1 0
(ECCAS)
Economic Community of Great Lakes Countries 0 1 1 0 0 1 0
(CEPGL)
Economic Community of West African States 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
(ECOWAS)
Indian Ocean Commission (COI) 0 1 1 1 0 1 0
Intergovernmental Authority on Drought and 0 0 0 1 0 1 1
Development (IGAD)
Mano River Union (MRU) 1 1 1 1 0 1 0
Southern Africa Development Community 1 0 1 1 1 1 0
(SADC)
West African Economic and Monetary Union 1 0 1 1 0 1 0
(UEMOA)
Association of Southeast Asian Nations 1 1 1 1 1 1 0
(ASEAN)
Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) 0 0 0 1 1 1 0
South Asian Association for Regional 0 1 1 1 1 1 0
Cooperation (SAARC)
Association of Caribbean States (ACS) 0 0 0 0 1 1 0
Caribbean Common Market (CARICOM) 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States 0 0 1 0 1 1 0
(OECS)
Central European Free Trade Agreement 0 0 0 0 0 1 0
(CEFTA)
European Free Trade Agreement (EFTA) 1 0 0 1 1 1 1
EU (EU) 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
GUAM 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Black Sea Economic Cooperation (BSEC) 0 0 0 1 1 1 0
Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) 0 1 0 1 1 1 1
Eurasian Economic Community (EAEC) 0 0 0 0 0 1 0
Central Asian Cooperation Organisation 0 0 0 0 0 1 0
(CACO)
Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) 0 0 0 0 0 1 0
Andean Pact (ANDEAN) 1 1 1 1 1 0 1
Central American Common Market 1 0 1 1 0 1 0
(SICA-CACM)
North American Free Trade Agreement 0 1 1 0 1 1 1
(NAFTA)
Southern Cone Common Market (MERCOSUR) 0 1 1 1 1 1 1
Economic Cooperation Organisation (ECO) 0 0 1 1 1 1 0
Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) 0 1 1 1 1 1 0
Proportion of REI total (34) .41 .43 .60 .63 .54 .91 .29
Note: M-Mansfield (1994), MS-McCall Smith (1995), H-Haftel (1992), P-Pevehouse (1992), B-Beckfield
(2000), V-Volgy (2004), HM-Hooghe and Marks (2009).The year is the most recent year included in the
dataset.1= included dataset, 0=not included in dataset.
Table 1. Political-economic construction of regions: REIs as regions
2402 Kathy Powers and Gary Goertz

weaker as states jump to stronger REIs. One might predict that states in weaker
REIs will eventually join MERCOSUR.
We have already discussed the issue of whether a country can be a member of
more than one region. Since the states themselves select into REIs we let them
decide. In some cases, particularly big countries, it is quite likely that they belong
to multiple regions. For example, Russia is a member of the CIS, the Eurasian
Economic Community, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). There
are a number of hypothesis one might make about countries and REIs where there
is significant overlap. Sometimes countries form a new REI because they want
further integration, this was the case for Russia and the Eurasian Economic
Community. A good number of CIS member states are not happy with the CIS
and Russian dominance, they are looking to join other REIs (for example,
Moldova and Ukraine looking westward) or even can create competitive REIs,
such as the creation of GUAM by states unhappy with the CIS.
One interesting aspect of the REI membership data as of 2005 is that the world
has already gone quite far in constituting regions on an institutional basis. Out of
the 188 states, only 15 are not members of an REI. We think it is quite amazing
how far the institutional construction of regions has gone in just a few decades.
This suggests a number of hypotheses about why states have been active in region
creation over the last 20 years. We engage in some speculations on this point in
the Conclusion.
We call those states that are members of no REI, such as Israel or North Korea
‘regionless’ states. It is interesting to note that these are usually regionally
concentrated and not randomly scattered around the globe. There are some
geographic areas that have no REI, such as East Asia, for example, Japan, South
Korea, Taiwan and the Middle East. While it might seem obvious that serious
conflict has prevented the formation of regional institutions in the Middle East, if
one looks comparatively it is worth noting that other regions such as Africa with
serious conflicts have experienced significant institutional creation.
Many analyses of regional security explicitly have an underlying dimension of
anarchy to institutionalised, or even to security community.55 The degree of
institutionalisation of a region has wide-ranging implications for almost all policy
areas. Our economic-institutional map of the world has some clear frontier regions,
which are unstable and which are often the sites of serious conflict. For example,
the EU has been successful in internalising many of the security externalities
produced by Balkan countries as they have become members of the EU. The EU
has in fact occupied countries like Serbia and Kosovo. ASEAN+3 has the potential
to become a REI for Japan, China and South Korea.
In contrast with the staticness of traditional geographic definitions of regions,
a social constructivist view of regions is quite dynamic. We see a range of regions
from those that are weakly organised to those who have security communities. In
other words, the organisation of space can vary from strong to weak. Similarly, we
see stronger institutions growing and taking over more space particularly in the
frontiers.

55
Patrick M. Morgan, ‘Regional Security Complexes and Regional Orders’, in David A. Lake and
Patrick M. Morgan (eds), Regional Orders: Building Security in a New World (University Park:
Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997).
 Economic-institutional construction of regions 2403

Security-based approaches to conceptualising regions

The standard methodology of concept analysis typically involves two stages. The
first stage explores the theoretical issues involved in choosing the specific factors
used to define the concept. In the context of regions, one can look at Thompson’s56
list of 21 different factors scholars have used to define region. It could be
Russett’s57 analysis that looks at various criteria of homogeneity to define regions
such as culture, language, trade, etc. The second stage, if possible, compares
empirically the results of different conceptualisations in practice. For example, in
the literature on democracy one correlates the various democracy scores to
ascertain how different the concepts are in practice.
Unlike most analyses, which involve closely related notions of the same
concept, for example, democracy, we compare our institutional view of regions
with one, which on the face of it is quite different. With very few exceptions,
scholars of regional economic integration or security have used some kind of
interaction, dependency, or externality approach. The only major exception to this
is work like Russett’s that uses factor analysis on attributes of states. Hence it is
of interest to compare how a social constructivist view of regions which is based
on the states’ own behaviour in institution creation with regions that are
constructed by the analyst based on some substantive criteria.
Adler and Patricia Greve stress the importance of ‘overlap’ in the analysis of
regional mechanisms of security governance. Instead of seeing regional governance
as an either-or, they argue that we see different mechanisms working within the
same region. Our comparison of regions based on institutions versus regions based
on security dependencies works in an analogous way. When they argue that
‘“regions” boundaries are determined by the practices that constitute regions’58 we
can see this in terms of institution construction as well as security practices. Our
contrast of institutions versus RSC thus finds a close parallel in their contrast
between security communities and balance of power systems.
As we suggested in the introduction, perhaps the strongest contrast is between
an economic-institutional view of regions and a conflict-security notion. Given that
conflict and trade are both strongly geographically-based it is not implausible that
there is significant overlap.59 This overlap might have implications for economic as
well as conflict relationships. It might mean that REIs might take on conflict
management roles.60
In this section we focus on the regional security literature in general, and in
particular, on those few works that have moved to an operationalisation of region
based on security criteria. For example, while Lake’s work is central to a
theoretical analysis of regional security, he does not produce a list of regions.
Wæver and Buzan61 have been perhaps the most prominent researchers in regional

56
Thompson, ‘The Regional Subsystem’.
57
Russett, International Regions and the International System.
58
Emanuel Adler and Patricia Greve, ‘When Security Community Meets Balance of Power:
Overlapping Regional Mechanisms of Security Governance’, Review of International Studies, 35
(2009), p. 59, in abstract.
59
Solomon Polachek, ‘Conflict and Trade’, Journal of Conflict Resolution, 24:1 (1980), pp. 55–78.
60
Willerton et al., A Methodology for Nested Treaties and Institutions (2009).
61
Buzan and Wæver, Regions and Powers.
2404 Kathy Powers and Gary Goertz

security, and have divided the world into regional security complexes. In addition,
we discuss more briefly Douglas Lemke’s62 analysis of local hierarchies (which
excludes the developed areas).
The literature on RSCs takes the core notions of interdependence and
geography to work out a notion of region that is based on security. Buzan and
Wæver have worked out the regional security complex idea in a series of important
books.63 The formal definition has shifted a bit over time, and they have described
RSCs in somewhat different terms in different places, but the core has remained
pretty constant. We take their 2003 book as the current statement of their concept:
The original definition of a security complex (Buzan 1983, 106) was: ‘a group of states
whose primary security concerns link together sufficiently closely that their national
securities cannot reasonably be considered apart from one another’.64 In our 1998 book
(Buzan and Wæver 1998, 201), the definition of RSCs was reformulated to shed the
state-centric and military-political focus and to rephrase the same basic conception for the
possibility of different actors and several sectors of security: ‘a set of units whose major
processes of securitisation, desecuritisation, or both are so interlocked that their security
problems cannot reasonably be analysed or resolved apart from one another’.65
RSCs are defined by durable patterns of amity and enmity taking the form of
subglobal, geographically coherent patterns of security interdependence.66
In order to qualify as an RSC, a group of states or other entities must possess a degree
of security interdependence sufficient both to establish them as a linked set and to
differentiate them from surrounding security regions.67
To summarise, we see four attributes of the Buzan and Wæver conceptualisation
of regions: (1) interdependence; (2) security-based; (3) geographic proximity; and
(4) separation from other regions and the global system.
Lake has engaged in a dialogue with Buzan and Wæver regarding regional
security and has proposed his own definition of a RSC:
I define such a regional [security] system as a set of states affected by at least one
transborder but local [security] externality that emanates from a particular geographic
area.68
Geography is clearly present with the requirement of a ‘local’ security externality
in a ‘particular geographic area’. The concept of ‘security externality’ replaces the
popular idea of interdependence. By definition if there is a security externality,
countries are interdependent.
Externalities can be generated across big distances. For example, the election of
Barack Obama is a security externality for the countries in the Middle East.
Conversely, the success of the Taliban in Pakistan is an externality for the USA.
It is not unreasonable to include all states active in a region as members of the
region. If these geographically distant states are excluded from the definition of the
region then they will have to be brought into the framework via some other means.

62
Douglas Lemke, Regions of War and Peace (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
63
Barry Buzan, People, States, and Fear: The National Security Problem in International Relations
(Brighton: Wheatsheaf Books, 1983); Barry Buzan, Ole Wæver, and Jaap De Wilde, Security: A New
Framework for Analysis (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1997); Buzan and Wæver, Regions and Powers.
64
Buzan, People, States, and Fear, p. 106.
65
Buzan and Wæver, Regions and Powers, p. 44.
66
Ibid., p. 45.
67
Ibid., p. 46.
68
Lake, ‘Regional Security Complexes’, p. 48.
 Economic-institutional construction of regions 2405

This is the theoretical role of penetration and overlap for Buzan and Wæver. One
way or another the framework has to be able to allow for the participation of
major and superpowers in regions outside their geographic home.
Lemke69 is another effort to conceptualise regions on security grounds and
provide operational criteria. He is interested in developing a regional version of the
power transition theory,70 which was originally only a system-level theory. His
‘local hierarchies’ are close to RSCs. He defines region via the idea of the
possibility of military interaction between states: ‘Specifically, rather than proxim-
ity and observed interaction being central, the essential characteristic of interstate
relations assigning states to the same local hierarchy is the ability to interact
militarily.’71 He first constructs dyads that are able to interact militarily. Then he
constructs regions based on all those countries that can interact militarily with the
local, dominant powers.72
Buzan and Wæver73 provide an extensive analysis of the RSCs of the world.
They have a rough scale of RSC size, from ‘mini’ complexes to ‘super’ ones. In
general, they tend to privilege what we call the macro region. They do not provide
an explicit list of RSCs and their member states. However, they do construct a
series of maps that we have used to code states into RSCs, (available from the
authors on request). Most of the time this is not too difficult, but there are
occasions when the boundary lines in their maps go through the middle of
countries, for example, in Africa. For purposes of illustration we have reproduced
one of their maps as Figure 1.
In terms of scale, a RSC generally corresponds to our macro-region. Our REI
regions fit most often with what they call a subcomplex. The left column of Table
2 gives the Buzan and Wæver RSC and the right column gives the REIs which
correspond to that RSC. If either column is empty that means there is no
corresponding RSC or REI. Of course the matches here are not necessarily perfect,
there may be individual countries that are in an RSC but not an REI, or vice versa.
For example, Chile is a member of the Southern Cone subcomplex, but not a
member of MERCOSUR.
What are the criteria of comparison between regions defined by REIs and those
defined as RSC? The comparison is tricky between the various kinds of RSC. High
overlap is when the RSC subcomplex matches the REI. In a significant minority
of cases we find this, such as in Central America or the southern cone
(MERCOSUR). A less good match is when the RSC has boundaries that match
quite well with two or more REIs, often this occurs in areas where there is complex
but no subcomplexes. The North American Complex includes both NAFTA and
the Caribbean REIs. This suggests that one might want to break the complex into
two subcomplexes.
More common, and probably more interesting, is when the complex includes
several REIs in a position of competition, such as the Western European complex
or the Central Asian subcomplex. Here is where the methodological point of
allowing states to be members of multiple regions has real substantive impact.

69
Lemke, Regions of War and Peace.
70
A. F. K. Organski and Jacek Kugler, The War Ledger (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981).
71
Lemke, Regions of War and Peace, p. 69.
72
He too uses the mutually exclusive criterion for his third world regions.
73
Buzan and Wæver, Regions and Powers.
2406 Kathy Powers and Gary Goertz

Figure 1.
 Economic-institutional construction of regions 2407

REIs with a high degree of overlap with RSCs are probably unstable in various
ways, we might expect to see significant movement in terms of institutional strength
and membership. It is the rule allowing multiple memberships that helps us see that
some macroregions might be quite different dynamics than others.
In many cases the match between REIs and RSCs is very good, notably in the
Americas. In some cases it is quite bad, for example, the Balkans subcomplex
(Albania, Macedonia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Slovenia, Greece, Romania) is
composed of half EU countries and half CEFTA countries. At the same time the
expressed purpose of the CEFTA is to prepare countries for EU membership.
Sometimes the overlap is quite good, but a few notable countries are not members
of the REI. For example, the Gulf subcomplex overlaps to a large degree with the
Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), however Iran and Iraq are members of the
subcomplex, but not members of the GCC.
Another form of mismatch is when the same REI appears in multiple RSCs.
Central Asia and the post-Soviet space, along with Central Africa, provide a good
example of this. Our institutional analysis of regions suggests then that the RSC
boundaries are unstable since one has institutions covering more than one RSC.
Finally, we have 15 states, which are regionless. It is perhaps not surprising also
that our regionless states of the Middle East, that is, Israel, Lebanon, Syria and
Iraq form a subcomplex as do the regionless states of North Asia, that is, Koreas,
and Japan. It would be a useful study to see when conflict prevents the creation
of REIs versus when conflict is an incentive for institutional creation and

Buzan-Waever RSC REI(s)

North American complex NAFTA, ACS, CARICOM, OECS

Central American subcomplex CACM
South American complex Andean Pact, MERCOSUR
Andean north subcomplex Andean Pact
Southern Cone subcomplex MERCOSUR
South Asian complex SAARC
Southeast Asian subcomplex ASEAN
Northeast Asian subcomplex —
Southern Africa complex SADC, COMESA, CEPGL, SACU
West African protocomplex ECOWAS, CEN-SAD, MRU
Horn precomplex IGAD
Central African complex ECCAS, COMESA, CEPGL
Western European complex EU, EFTA, CEFTA
Balkan subcomplex CEFTA, EU
Caucasus minicomplex CIS, BSEC, GUAM
Central Asian subcomplex CIS, EAEC, ECO, SCO
Post-Soviet complex CIS, EAEC, ECO, SCO
Maghreb subcomplex AMU
Levant subcomplex —
Gulf subcomplex GCC
Middle Eastern complex —
Unstructured complexes COI
— PIF
Note: see Table 1 for acronyms. We do not include RSC supercomplexes in this table.
Table 2. Comparison of REI and RSC approaches to regions
2408 Kathy Powers and Gary Goertz

development. A second group of regionless states are those that have nearby
regional institutions, which they will probably join. This includes states such as
Chile or East Timor (likely to join ASEAN).74
In summary, there is important overlap between REIs and RSC and some
important differences. While it is beyond the scope of this article, these both
suggest some important hypotheses both about the dynamics of REIs as well as
RSCs. In general, one might propose that when there is significant overlap between
REIs and different RSCs that the boundaries of both would be likely to change.
When the match is quite good between REIs and RSCs one might expect the
regional system to be more stable. In some RSCs with multiple REIs there is
clearly a dominant one, which one might expect to grow at the expense of the
weaker ones, such as in the history of Western Europe.

Concepts of region and causal relationships

As we briefly discussed in the Introduction, new concepts prove their value, in part
at least, by producing new hypotheses, theories, and ideas about causal relation-
ships. Regions as purely geographic entities rarely incited new theoretical or
empirical hypotheses. In contrast, regions as defined in terms of interactions or
dependencies have proved quite influential. For example, the functionalist literature
on the EU along with the work of Deutsch, Nye, Russett and others has had an
important impact the analysis of international regions.
The previous section explored two quite different ways to think about regions.
Buzan and Wæver have used security dependence to construct RSCs. We propose
REIs as an alternative. While the previous section looked at the two in terms of
the empirical comparison of two different concepts, in this section we very briefly
explore one possible causal connection between the two.
Is there a causal relationship between REIs and RSCs? To put it more generally
is there some sort of causal relationship between security dependence and the
development of REIs? One way to think about this is to ask to what extent security
issues were central to the founding of the REI, or were central to major changes
in the institution. For example, while the initial European common market was
economic in content, security issues were clearing a motivating factor. European
countries moved to economic integration after the failure of the European defense
community proposal in the early 1950s. As we saw in the previous section, there
is significant overlap between RSCs and REIs; this suggests that security might be
casually related to the development of institutionalised regions.
A classic realpolitik strategy involves using military alliances to manage security
affairs. Alliances as traditionally defined include defense pacts, ententes, non-
aggression pacts and neutrality agreements. Classic realist scholarship has not
linked regional institutions with alliances in a general way, beyond what is seen as
the special case of NATO. However, NATO suggests that alliances might be
incorporated into a regional institution. REIs are multifunctional institutions so it
74
There are a few outlying regions that do not really appear in the Buzan and Wæver maps. The
Indian Ocean states along with the South Pacific states do have REIs, but do not figure in RSC
maps.
 Economic-institutional construction of regions 2409

Constitutive nested
Nesting Institution treaty Year Signatories

EU Maastricht Treaty 1992 All EU countries

CIS Collective Security 1992 CIS members minus Georgia,
Treaty Moldova, Turkmenistan and Ukraine
CIS CIS Charter 1993 All CIS members
EU Treaty of Good 1993 Andorra, France and Spain
Neighbourliness
Dayton Peace 1995 Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia and
Accords Yugoslavia
CARICOM Caribbean 1996 Antigua, Dominica, Grenada,
Common Market St. Kitts/Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint
Vincent, Barbados
SCO Agreement on 1996 China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,
deepening military Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan
trust
SADC Alliance treaty 1999 Angola, Democratic Republic of
Congo, Namibia and Zimbabwe
COMESA Economic 2000 Angola, Burundi, Cameroon, Central
Community of African Republic, Congo Democratic
Central African Republic of Congo, Sao
States Tome-Principe, Gabon, Equatorial
Guinea, Rwanda, Chad
SADC Southern Africa 2001 Angola, Botswana, Democratic
Development Republic of Congo, Lesotho, Malawi,
Community Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia,
Seychelles, South Africa, Swaziland,
Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe

Table 3. Military alliances in REIs, 1989–2002

is quite possible that they move into the security sphere, just as states have moved
over time into new functional areas, such as the environment. To make the
hypothesis more concrete we ask about the extent to which multilateral alliances
signed since 1989 fall within REI regions. Table 3 lists all multilateral alliances
signed since 1989. These have been coded by one of the standard databases of
military alliances75 which use conventional concepts and definitions of alliances.
It is quite stunning to see that virtually all of the multilateral alliances since
1989 have been formed within REI regions. REIs have gotten involved in other
kinds of security behaviour as well, such as peacekeeping, drug-related security,
small arms control, etc. While many have focused on the USA’s global campaign
against armed Islamic groups, there has been much security cooperation on other
issues as well as within regional institutions. It seems quite possible that these
REI-based alliances are motivated by different concerns than power- or threat-
balancing alliances. Our analysis implies that alliance, and potentially other
security, policies have become quite regionalised and institutionalised.76

75
Brett Ashley Leeds, Jeffrey M. Ritter, Sara McLaughlin Mitchell and Andrew G. Long, ‘Alliance
Treaty Obligations and Provisions, 1815–1944’, International Interactions, 28:3 (2002), pp. 237–60.
76
Powers, ‘Dispute Initiation and Alliance Obligations in Regional Economic Institutions’.
2410 Kathy Powers and Gary Goertz

If one looks at the many security problems of Africa, the connection between
REIs and conflict management is quite clear. African REIs have extensive treaties
dealing with conflict management, peacekeeping, and the like. There is a clear sense
in which the African Union is supposed to coordinate with regional bodies in
peacekeeping activities. Africa is not alone, the CIS has been involved in the
conflicts in Caucasus, and ASEAN has played a role in dealing with various
conflicts in Southeast Asia.77
This very cursory analysis suggests that alliance behaviour has changed in
important ways since 1989, and has taken a strong regional, institutional focus.
The point of this little analysis is to suggest that an institutional conceptualisation
of regions can lead to new hypotheses about alliance behaviour.

Conclusion: some Weberian speculations

The study of international regions has not surprisingly been the domain of
international relations scholars. Even those who have looked at regional integra-
tion in the Deutsch, Haas tradition as well as those more recently who have looked
at security communities78 have approached regional institutions with the inbred
scepticism of scholars deeply influenced by realist theories. We propose that much
can be gained by looking at regional institutions from the perspective of a
comparative-historical-institutional scholar,79 in other words taking inspiration
from Max Weber80 and others of the comparative-institutional school.81
A comparative institutionalist would ask questions about institutional design.
We have outlined some of what we consider the core parts of REIs. Much more
needs to be done to explore regional institutions as a distinctive type of institution,
with distinctive decision-making procedures, etc. Just as comparativists have
studied the evolution of the state or democracy, so international relations scholars
can look at the evolution of regions from an institutional perspective. While the
literature on the EU is extensive it is only recently that comparativists have begun
to systematically do comparative analyses of international governance in general.
Hooghe and Marks82 for example look at what they call ‘authoritative’ IGOs,
which can be non-regional, global, or issue specific. Nevertheless, the project is
fundamentally concerned with international governance and the structure of the
international institutions that conduct such governance. It is perhaps not an
accident that it is EU comparativists that are doing this and not international
relations scholars.

77
Of course, another set of hypothesis involves how effective or influential these institutions have been,
but we focus on institutional change.
78
Adler and Barnett, Security Communities.
79
James Mahoney and Dietrich Rueschemeyer (eds), Comparative Historical Analysis in the Social
Sciences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
80
Max Weber, The Theory of Social and Economic Organizations (New York: Free Press, 1947).
81
Barrington Moore, The Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the
Making of the Modern World (Boston: Beacon Press, 1966); Charles Tilly (ed.), Building States in
Western Europe (Princeton: University of Princeton Press, 1974); Theda Skocpol, States and Social
Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1979).
82
Hooghe and Gary Marks, ‘Does Efficiency Shape the Territorial Structure of Government?’.
 Economic-institutional construction of regions 2411

Going back to Kant and the Enlightenment, international law and organisation
have always been core to the liberal political project. As a rule, states that have
strongly embraced these projects domestically have been those who have promoted
international institutional creation. Within the USA those who have promoted the
expansion of the state into various new realms, have also been those who have
supported international institutions. In contrast, right-wing parties within democ-
racies and authoritarian regimes have been less supportive, if not hostile, to
international institutions and organisations (for example, the Republican party
within the USA for virtually the whole 20th century). Few studies look at the
relationship between domestic political structures, governing parties, etc. and
international institutions in general;83 however, we propose that such analyses will
be critical in the explanation of the evolution of regional institutions.
Certainly many REIs listed in Table 3 were formed by authoritarian regimes.
So that per se does not prevent some level of international collaboration. However,
it is not clear that authoritarian or nonliberal regimes can push regional
institutions very far. While these states may have serious security or functional
needs, that is, they are poor, for economic cooperation, that does not seem to be
enough to get beyond modest levels of regional governance.
We propose that the strength of a regional institution is in large part a function
of the strength, stability, and political homogeneity of the member states. If either
of these three factors is largely absent then we think that there will be little
development of regional institutions. If states disagree strongly on the basic
political and economic institutions of domestic governance, they are unlikely to
find common ground internationally. If some of the member states are fragile or
‘failed’ then the regional institution will not be able to function as well. One needs
to keep in mind a fundamental difference between regional institutions and states.
Regional institutions do not have means of coercion and taxation; their success
depends to a large extent on the level of political and economic development of
their member states. For example, we think that many scholars have unrealistic
expectations of African REIs. Given that most African states are weak, one cannot
expect regional institutions to somehow overcome the hurdles defined by the
domestic politics of the member states. This is not to say that these institutions do
not matter, but one must think about the appropriate counterfactual: would things
be worse in the absence of such institutions.
In short, we suggest that the surge in REI creation and evolution since 1989 is
directly related to the surge in democracies world-wide, and the parallel surge in
liberal economic policies. So from the world polity perspective84 as we see domestic
convergence on a particular political-economic model within states we might expect
to see some convergence in terms of REIs as well.
These various speculations can be seen as an elaboration of the EU’s view
about itself and its requirements for new members. The EU poses major political,

83
Etel Solingen, Regional Orders at Center’s dawn: Global and Domestic Influences on Grand Strategy
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998); Etel Solingen, ‘Mapping Internationalization:
Domestic and Regional Impacts’, International Studies Quarterly, 45:4 (2001), pp. 305–37; Etel
Solingen, ‘The Genesis, Design and Effects of Regional Institutions: Lessons from East Asia and the
Middle East’, International Studies Quarterly, 52:2 (2008), pp. 261–94.
84
John W. Meyer, John Boli, George M. Thomas and Francisco O. Ramirez, ‘World Society and the
Nation-State’, American Journal of Sociology, 103:1 (1997), pp. 144–81.
2412 Kathy Powers and Gary Goertz

economic, and human rights requirements for entry. The EU is clearly a club
whose members have high levels of institutional, political, and economic isomor-
phism.85 One can see this in the debate about European expansion. The entry of
developed, stable, democratic, capitalist countries such as Sweden or Finland is not
problematic. The entry of these countries makes the EU stronger. The first
ex-communist members, such as Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, also scored
high on the necessary institutional characteristics. It is countries like Romania,
Bulgaria, Turkey, etc., that are seen as sources of weakness for the EU. This is also
clear in South America. While the Andean Pact has been around for a long time
its membership consists of poor and unstable countries. Once Argentina and Brazil
made the transition to liberal economic politics and democracy MERCOSUR has
easily surpassed the Andean Pact in its level of institutional development.
Much of the literature on regional institutions has been dominated by
international relations and security scholars, we propose that much can be gained
by looking at regional institutions from the comparative-historical-institutional
framework, that is, in the theoretical tradition of Max Weber.

85
Frank Schimmelfennig, The EU, NATO, and the Integration of Europe: Rules and Rhetoric
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
 Economic-institutional construction of regions 2413

REI Member states

Arab Maghreb Union Mauritania, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya

Common Market For Eastern DRC, Uganda, Kenya, Burundi, Rwanda, Djibouti,
& Southern Africa Ethiopia, Eritrea, Angola, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi,
Swaziland, Madagascar, Comoros, Mauritius, Seychelles,
Sudan, Egypt
Community Of Sahel And Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Senegal, Benin, Niger, Ivory Coast,
Saharan States Burkina Faso, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Togo, Nigeria, Central
African Republic, Chad, Somalia, Djibouti, Eritrea,
Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, Sudan, Egypt
Southern African Customs South Africa, Namibia, Lesotho, Botswana, Swaziland
Union
Economic Community Of Sao Tome Principe, Equatorial Guinea, Cameroun, Gabon,
Central African States Central African Republic, Chad, Congo Brazzaville, DRC,
Burundi, Rwanda, Angola
Economic Community Of Burundi, Rwanda, DRC
Great Lakes Countries
Economic Community Of Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Gambia, Mali, Senegal, Benin,
West African States Niger, Ivory Coast, Guinea, Burkina Faso, Liberia, Sierra
Leone, Ghana, Togo, Nigeria
Indian Ocean Commission France, Madagascar, Comoros, Mauritius, Seychelles
Intergovernmental Authority Uganda, Kenya, Somalia, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea,
On Drought And Sudan
Development
Mano River Union Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone
Southern Africa Development DRC, Tanzania, Angola, Mozambique, Zambia,
Community Zimbabwe, Malawi, South Africa, Namibia, Lesotho,
Botswana, Swaziland, Madagascar, Mauritius, Seychelles
Association Of Southeast Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Malaysia,
Asian Nations Singapore, Brunei, Philippines, Indonesia
Pacific Islands Forum Australia, Papua-New Guinea, New Zealand, Cook Islands,
Niue, Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, Kiribati, Tuvalu, Fiji,
Tonga Islands, Nauru, Marshall Islands, Palau, Federated
States Of Micronesia, Samoa
South Asian Association For India, Bhutan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Maldive
Regional Cooperation Islands, Nepal
Association Of Caribbean Bahamas, Cuba, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Jamaica,
States Trinidad, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, St. Lucia, St.
Vincent-Grenadines, Antigua & Barbuda, Saint Kitts &
Nevis, Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador,
Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Venezuela,
Guyana, Suriname
Caribbean Common Market Bahamas, Haiti, Jamaica, Trinidad, Barbados, Dominica,
Grenada, St. Lucia, St. Vincent-Grenadines, Antigua &
Barbuda, Saint Kitts & Nevis, Belize, Guyana, Suriname
Organisation Of Eastern Dominica, Grenada, St. Lucia, St. Vincent-Grenadines,
Caribbean States Antigua & Barbuda, Saint Kitts & Nevis
Central European Free Trade Croatia, Bulgaria, Romania
Agreement
European Free Trade Liechtenstein, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland
Agreement
2414 Kathy Powers and Gary Goertz

REI Member states

EU United Kingdom, Ireland, Netherlands, Belgium,

Luxemburg, France, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Poland,
Austria, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Italy, Malta,
Slovenia, Greece, Cyprus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania,
Finland, Sweden, Denmark
Black Sea Economic Albania, Serbia, Greece, Bulgaria, Moldova, Romania,
Cooperation Russia, Ukraine, Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Turkey
Commonweath Of Moldova, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Armenia, Georgia,
Independent States Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan,
Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan
GUAM Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Moldova
Eurasian Economic Russia, Belarus, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan
Community
Central Asian Cooperation Russia, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan
Organisation
Shanghai Cooperation Russia, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan,
Organisation China
Andean Pact Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia
Central American Common Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica
Market
North American Free Trade USA, Canada, Mexico
Agreement
Mercosur Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina, Uruguay
Economic Cooperation Azerbaijan, Iran, Turkey, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan,
Organisation Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Pakistan
Gulf Cooperation Council Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrein, Qatar, United Arab
Emirates, Oman
States with no REI Chile, Macedonia, Bosnia-and-Herzegovina, Iraq, Syria,
membership Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, Yemen, Mongolia, Taiwan, North
Korea, South Korea, Japan, East Timor

Appendix A. REIs and their member states, 2005

Author Term Definition Criteria for Inclusion Criteria for Exclusion

Powers and Goertz REI Are multifunctional economic (1) treaty nesting and linkages; (1) single issue
(2009) institutions that simultaneously (2) international legal personality; REIs/IGOs; (2) not
manage trade, economic (3) primary or important IGO used treaty based; (3) created
development, natural resource in region as identified by scholars before 1970s and after
management and infrastructure. or international bodies; 2005
(4) emanations; (5) annual or more
frequent meetings of Presidents,
Prime Ministers and/or cabinet level
officials
Volgy et al. (2008) FIGO (1) IGO: Entities created with (1) Three or more states and

Economic-institutional construction of regions

sufficient organisational structure predominantly states as members;
and autonomy to provide formal, (2) member states meet on a regular
ongoing, multilateral processes of basis and oversee operations of
decision-making between states, IGO, supervision is not by another
along with the capacity to execute IGO; (3) staffing is permanent and
the collective will of their member independent of another IGO or
states. (2) FIGO: formal state; (4) funding is routinised and
intergovernmental independent of another IGO or
organisation-satisfies all criteria for state; (5) sources of information
inclusion varied.
Mansfield and PTA ‘PTAs accord preferential All PTAs between 1952–1994
Pevehouse (1998) commercial access to members’
products and include free trade
areas, common markets, and
customs union’ (Mansfield 1998).
McCall-Smith (200) RTA No clear definition. Trade (1) one sided liberalisation;
liberalisation pacts signed in the (2) narrow or vague agreement;
form of treaties. (1) liberalisation (3) outside defined dates;
must be reciprocal; (2) liberalisation (4) superceded by later agreements
must be comprehensive; (3) signed
between 1957–1995

2415
 2416
Author Term Definition Criteria for Inclusion Criteria for Exclusion

Haftel (2007) Regional ‘RIAs are IOs that promote RIAs extant between 1982 and (1) Bilateral trade
Integration economic policy cooperation among 1998; formed no later than 1992 agreements; (2)
Arrangement their members’. nonreciprocal

Kathy Powers and Gary Goertz

agreements; (3) broad
framework agreements
(that is, lacking
concrete
implementation)
Pevehouse (2005) Regional (1) Limited by physical boundaries, All regional organisations, potential (1) All non-regional
Organisation (2) organisations made up of ability to influence state organisations, (2) weak
geographically proximate states organisations
Beckfield (2008) Prominent IGOs Highly visible IGOs, No definition IGOs from lists compiled by editors
of IGO of international handbooks
Hooghe and Marks Authoritative Formal constitution, supreme
(2010) IGOs legislative body, standing executive,
permanent professional
administration, dispute settlement
mechanism

Appendix B. Comparing criteria for regional organisations in various datasets