Core and Periphery

A rough distinction can be made between three structurally different types of regions: core regions, peripheral regions and, between them, intermediate regions. How do they differ from each other?

The core regions are politically stable and economically dynamic. They organize for the sake of being better able to control the rest of the world, the world outside their own region.

The intermediate regions are closely linked to the core regions. They will be incorporated as soon as they conform to the criterion of "core-ness", that is, economic development and political stability.

The peripheral regions, in contrast, are politically turbulent and economically stagnant. Consequently they must organize in order to arrest a process of marginalization. Their regional arrangements are at the same time fragile and ineffective. Their overall situation makes "security regionalism" and "developmental regionalism" more important than the creation of free trade regimes. They are necessarily more introverted.

The core regions are those regions which are politically capable, no matter whether such capability is expressed in the form of a political organization or not. So far only one of the three core regions, namely Europe, aspires to build such an organization. The other two, that is North America and East Asia, are both economically strong, but so far they lack a regional political order.

Structurally close to core are the intermediate regions, all in preparation for being incorporated in the core, the speed depending on their good, "core-like", behaviour. They are:

Central Europe, obediently waiting first in line for membership in the European Union,

Latin America and the Caribbean, in the process of becoming "North Americanized",

China, South-East Asia and the "European Pacific", or Oceania (Australia, New Zealand), all now being drawn by Japanese capital into the East Asia economic space.

Remaining in the periphery are thus the following five regions:

the post-Soviet area, the major parts of it now in the process of being reintegrated in the form of Commonwealth of Independent States (perhaps laying the ground for a future core region),

the Balkans, where the countries have lost whatever little tradition of cooperation they once might have been involved in,

the Middle East, a region defined from outside and with a most unsettled regional structure,

South Asia, with a very low level of "regionness", because of the "cold war" (sometimes getting hot) between the two major powers, India and Pakistan, and finally, Africa, where in many countries the political structures called "states" are falling apart.

Levels of Regionness

Thus, the peripheral regions are "peripheral" because they are stagnant, turbulent and war prone. The only way for these regions to become less peripheral is to become more regionalized, i.e. to increase their levels of "regionness". Otherwise, their only power resource would rest in their capacity to create problems for the core regions ("chaos power"), and thereby inviting some sort of external engagement. What shall we then understand by "regionness"? It means that a region can be a region more or less. There are five degrees of "regionness":

1. Region as a geographical unit, delimited by more or less natural physical barriers and marked by ecological characteristics: "Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals", "Africa south of the Sahara" or "the Indian subcontinent". This first level can be referred to as a "proto-region", or a "pre-regional zone", since there is no organized society. In order to further regionalize, this particular territory must, necessarily, be inhabited by human beings, maintaining some kind of relationship. This brings us to the social dimension.

2. Region as social system implies trans-local relations between human groups. These relations constitute a security complex, in which the constituent units, as far as their own security is concerned, are dependent on each other, as well as the overall stability of the regional system. Thus the social relations may very well be hostile. The region, just like the international system of which it forms a part, can therefore be described as anarchic. The classic case of such a regional order is 19th century Europe. At this low level of organization, a balance of power or some kind of "concert", is the sole security guarantee. This is a rather primitive security mechanism. We could therefore talk of a "primitive" region.

3. Region as organized cooperation in any of the cultural, economic, political or military fields. In this case, region is defined by the list of countries which are the formal members of the regional organization in question. In the absence of some kind of organized cooperation, the concept of regionalism does not make much sense. This more organized region could be called the "formal" region. It should be possible to relate the "formal region" (defined by organizational membership) to the "real region" (which has to be defined in terms of potentialities and through less precise criteria) in order to assess the relevance and future potential of a particular regional organization.

4. Region as civil society takes shape when the organizational framework facilitates and promotes social communication and convergence of values throughout the region. Of course the pre-existence of a shared cultural tradition in a particular region is of crucial importance here, but culture is not only a given but continuously created and recreated. However, the defining element here is the multidimensional and voluntary quality of regional cooperation and the societal characteristics indicating an emerging "regional anarchic society", that is something more than anarchy, but less than society.

5. Region as acting subject with a distinct identity, actor capability, legitimacy and structure of decision-making. Crucial areas for regional intervention are conflict resolution (between and particularly within former "states") and creation of welfare (in terms of social security and regional balance). This process is similar to state formation and nation building, and the ultimate outcome could be a "region-state", which in terms of scope can be compared to the classical empires, but in terms of political order constitutes a voluntary evolution of a group of formerly sovereign national, political units into a supranational security community, where sovereignty is pooled for the best of all.

The five levels may express a certain evolutionary logic, but the idea is not to suggest a stage theory but to provide a framework for comparative analysis. Since regionalism is a political project it may, just like a nation-state project, fail. This, similarly, means peripheralization and decreasing regionness for the region concerned. Changes in terms of regionness thus imply changes of the structural position in the centre-periphery order.

Date: 2015-01-11; view: 1385