European Regional International Society and the Political Economy of the Global Sugar Regime

This paper seeks to contribute to the English School's (ES) understanding of the European Regional International Society (ERIS) through the work of Karl Polanyi. While ES theory has long been interested in regional international societies, its general approach remains limited to a methodologically internationalist frame that fails to capture the dynamism and historical change of regional formations. We therefore aim to better ground the ES account of the ERIS within a more robust political economy framework that incorporates domestic dynamics with international processes. The article first examines the making of the nineteenth-century liberal order and its eventual breakdown during the turn of the century—the “great transformation”, which ultimately informed the rationale for the European Community (EC). We then focus our analysis on the EC's Common Agricultural Policy. With specific examination of sugar production, we explore the tensions and contradictions bound up with the formation of a protected domestic and regional sugar market, the pressures it exerted on the wider international society, and the ways in which European officials skillfully exploited the post-Cold War liberalization of international society as a means of (partially) “disembedding” European sugar. Lastly, we hope that this article begins a new conversation on how the tenets of political economy (Polanyian or otherwise) might, at long last, make an impact on ES theory.