Regional economic integration in Southern Africa: SADC's Protocol on Trade and South Africa's big fingerprint.

Abstract

"With the end of the Cold War, a new wave of regionalism emerged in the shadow of an accelerating globalisation. This so-called 'New Regionalism' (...) can be observed in various parts of the world and manifested in several more or less promising regional integration projects, notably among less developed countries in the southern hemisphere. All of them have a major focus on regional market integration. This paper will try to answer the question why and for what purpose member states of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) pursued the path of regional economic integration and decided to negotiate and adopt a common 'Protocol on Trade'. It has rather strong focus on theory but the empirical part will not be marginalised as I will particularly look at the underlying motivations and preferences of the states and additionally try to illustrate the design, function, and added-value of the Protocol." (excerpt)