African regionalisms: exploring the drivers and actors

Abstract

The literature on comparative regionalism has grown substantially over the past decades, mainly because of the realization that the European history of regional cooperation and integration is just one among various experiences with regionalism, and that the study of different regionalisms is necessary to overcome the ethnocentric bias that characterizes much social science practice (Acharya 2014: 649‒650). In particular the rise of the so-called ‘new regionalism’ since the beginning of the 1990s has led to increased attention to varying forms of regional order, increasingly also in a comparative perspective. Many scholars have published on regionalisms in Africa, either at the continental or the sub-regional level, and have thus contributed to our understanding of the specificities of the African context, as well as of how African experiences are similar to those elsewhere. While some scholars have paid attention to the role of asymmetries across African regions and regionalisms (see the earlier discussion in the introductory chapter), current analyses have generally not given much weight to how political, economic and social asymmetries influence regionalisms and, conversely, how patterns of regional interaction impact on asymmetrical development. In the context of this book, the purpose of this chapter is to offer an overview of the way in which scholarship on comparative regionalism may contribute to an understanding of the drivers of and actors in regionalism and their impact on asymmetrical development in Africa.1 We start with a conceptual discussion, which is aimed at distinguishing various notions associated to the discussion of regionalism. The following sections discuss the ontology of regions and regionalisms, and the drivers of and actors in regionalism.