POL 5032 Week IX

Compare the EAC to the EU.  Will politics or economics determine the EAC’s future?

As a point of departure I would like to draw your attention to the work of Candice Moore on regional integration in Africa.  Writing in 2004, Moore argues that Africa suffers acutely from a democratic deficit, not only because of problems arising from representation in government domestically, but also within the regions themselves. Moreover, she asserts that Africa also faces severe problems with underdevelopment and that poverty persists despite Africa’s attempt to model its regional structures on other regions.

Today, while states within the EAC may be showing significant growth, financial inflows, and may appear to be bounding through Balassa’s levels of integration, reality for many of the citizens in the member states is far less positive. Why would this be so?  I think the answer can be found in the nature of the institutions within the member states.   On arriving in Nairobi, I was rather shocked at the capacity of the bureaucracy there, and this feeling certainly did not fall away on my entry into Tanzania.  Institutions within the EAC are young, and remain state-driven or state-centric, which will negate any hope of relocating identity to the regional body in terms of Haas’ notion of ‘political spillover’.  The institutions that have been established mimic those established within the EU, but lack the power those institutions wield.  As a result, the EAC’s attempts to head in the same direction as the EU are fairly hollow and there is a significant gap between theory and practice within the region.

Thus when we review theories on regionalism in Africa in general and the EAC in particular, we should first understand that there are some acute deficiencies within the theories themselves and they may not reflect or predict regional development within the EAC very accurately.  At best, regionalism within the EAC will probably devolve into a collective structure to develop the infrastructure within the region, but the region will remain very frail politically.

Candice Moore, “Regional Integration and Regional Governance Under the New African Initiatives: A Critical Appraisal,” Centre for Political Studies, Vol. 17, No. 3, 2004.