Defensive Integration and Late Developers : The Gulf Cooperation Council and the Arab Maghreb Union

In the late twentieth century, the world economy is experiencing a trend towards regional integration of national economies. Regionalization, or the “promotion by governments of international economic linkages with countries that are geographically proximate,” may be intimately related to the internationalization of trade and financial flows and concurrent pressures for liberalization. In the developing world in particular, integration can be viewed as a direct policy response to mounting pressures from the international economy and the ascendance of neoliberal thinking since the 1980s. Both the internationalization of capital flows and the adoption of liberalization policies threaten to diminish state authority over national development strategies. Conceivably, regional cooperation can mitigate the uncertainties created by global economic pressures and allow states to reclaim a measure of control over economic sovereignty. This essay focuses on the underlying reasons for the formation of two cooperative arrangements among late developers: the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and the Arab Maghreb Union (AMU). The examination of these cases sheds light on the principal bases of the trend towards regionalization in the developing world