SECTION 1: INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUNDPERSPECTIVES ON REGIONAL CO-OPERATION
Regional organisations are a major feature of the global economic system. The basic purpose of regional organisations, recognised within the framework of the UN, is to ‘make use of deliberate governmental and private efforts to strengthen South-South trade and economic links more rapidly than would be the case if such links were to be created only by market forces.’ 1
The rationale for such co-operation among developing countries is the fact that it takes cognisance of their varying degrees and stages of development, their low industrial and resource base and at the same time, significant amounts of unutilised productive power and resource endowments. The challenge of globalisation has given governments a strong justification for undertaking reform in pursuit of such co-operation. The institutional opportunity allows countries to organise themselves into regional co-operation schemes, seen as an important element of their globalisation policy. In essence, regional co-operation helps its participants to take part in global economic integration more effectively as a group of regional economies.
It is of no surprise, therefore, that in West Africa, ECOWAS and ASEAN, APEC and AFTA are widely seen as representing the globalisation phenomenon. However, most of these organisations proved to be stillborn, and only a few made some headway. Apart from the overall economic backwardness and lower degree of complementarity, the regions in general are politically underdeveloped with strife-torn inter-state relationships. Power configuration in the respective regions also impinges on the co-operation process. Moreover, it is observed that developing countries are (individually as well as a group) too weak within the existing trade arrangements of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to exert meaningful pressure to their benefit.
One cannot possibly talk about Southeast Asia without referring to ASEAN. I will be using the terms interchangeably as ASEAN encompasses the Southeast Asian region. When ASEAN started in the late 1960s, the Vietnam War was at its peak and confidence in the future of Southeast Asia was low. It was believed by sceptics that the region would become the ‘Balkans of Asia’ – a source of instability rather than a peaceful and prosperous region. But against expectations, the region stabilised and boomed. The countries liberalised their economies, encouraged foreign investment and promoted export-oriented growth, and became the most dynamic and fastest growing region in the world. The phenomenal economic growth of the Southeast Asian countries in the 1980s and 1990s brought about a new discourse on ‘development’ in the Third World. Why is, say, Singapore more successful than most West African countries? Not because of its population, but because of two principal factors, well-qualified human capital and political stability, which in turn resulted in a favourable climate for investment. Singapore is one of the few non-European countries to be admitted into the OECD. One could concede the basic argument that ASEAN trade liberalisation and industrial co-operation formed the core of development in Southeast Asia. 2
It must be recalled that a sense of external threats to the Southeast Asia region from China and the Vietnam War combined to allow the creation of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in August 1967 through the Bangkok Declaration. 3
On the other hand, ECOWAS was formed in 1975 with 16 of the Anglophone, Lusophone and Francophone countries in West Africa (see table 1) to promote co-operation and integration, eventually leading to the establishment of an economic union which would raise the living standards of its people, enhance economic stability and contribute to the progress and development of the African continent.4
However, 25 years later, ECOWAS has spent a substantial part of its existence on resolution of crises in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea Bissau, without much economic integration being achieved. Manufacturing is the fastest expanding opportunity area for developing countries, as America, Japan and Europe advance into the post-industrial high-tech economy, but, unfortunately, this is the sector of the ECOWAS economy which is least developed. The problem with intra-ECOWAS trade is that member states mainly produce the same things; thus, you have, for example, Ivorian plastic goods competing against their Nigerian counterparts in the Nigerian market and Nigerian plastic products competing against Ivorian ones in Côte d’Ivoire. It is also disheartening that there is little or no linkage between the manufacturing sector and other sectors such as agriculture. This explains why regionally available intermediate goods and primary materials used in the manufacturing sectors are imported from overseas.
Presently, ECOWAS affords manufacturing only marginal advantages, since the similarity of products manufactured throughout the Community precludes a broad range basis for inter-state trade. However, the potential for ECOWAS is tremendous. The Industrial Master Plan (IMP), adopted by ECOWAS at the 17th Session of the Authority in 1994, provides a strategy for optimising industrial integration. It has essentially created an avenue for the industrial sector becoming normative by creating more forums for business people and professionals to communicate, congregate and generally interact. Despite the IMP, programme implementation has been difficult, mainly because of paucity of funding, apathy of member states and insufficient information.
There is also the problem of intra-ECOWAS trade and level of investment (See table 2). This is further compounded by the relative inconvertibility of currencies; scarcity of foreign exchange and the high cost of imported capital goods from Europe and the Americas. All ASEAN economies are trade-oriented; each having a large external sector provided by the ASEAN Preferential Trade Agreements (PTA). The ASEAN currencies – the baht (Thailand), peso (Philippines), ringgit (Malaysia), dollar (Singapore) and rupiah (Indonesia) – however, faced an excruciating financial crisis in July 1997. These are lessons to be learnt by ECOWAS.
Another observation on integration may also be made, in a bid to explain why most of the regional organisations have not made much headway in intra-regional co-operation although they started off with great promise. Integration as a penultimate step in trade liberalisation involves industrial complementation and opening up of the domestic markets which, although primarily an economic issue, requires a bold and substantive political decision. Empirically, however it has been found that this is not always possible because of the prevailing socio-economic realities at home. Viewed in this perspective, integration requires major economic and political preparation that does not come overnight.
Against this backdrop, it was thought appropriate that the experience of ASEAN, which was set up in 1967, be studied. Mistakes learned in Southeast Asia could serve as important lessons for West Africa. The question then concerns the nature of the ASEAN economic success. What lessons does West Africa need to learn? A major objective for the establishment of these organisations was to raise the economic well being of their citizens and promote the goals of security, democracy and development, therefore, regional stability. This have become manifest following the adoption and implementation of the ECOWAS Treaty and its protocols, and especially the fast-track approach being pursued to speed up the integration process.
Regional Dynamics
Since our overall concern is with regional security and integration, it is necessary to examine what a region is. A region is a political-spatial identity consisting of a group of states, which are proximate and interdependent. It is generally characterised by geographical relatedness and other affinities. A region may be defined as ‘a set of contiguous states with a level of interaction between them, such that a lack of security within or between individual states in the region affects the security of the set of states as a whole.’ 5
Ghana for example, has obvious common interests, and somewhat similar problems to face, as Nigeria or Senegal, which she does not have as compared with Malaysia or Argentina.
Moreover, there exist certain ethno-cultural and economic similarities within each region, which are far more remarkable than the differences. These are enhanced by cross-border trading and free movement of people, which in West Africa pre-date ECOWAS. This does not preclude the members of the organisation having areas of conflicts – for example over the artificial borders inherited from the colonial powers, and the rivalry over the relative weight and influence of member states, especially Côte d’Ivoire, the most prosperous of the West African Francophone states, and Nigeria as the largest of the Anglophone states. Analysts 6
suggest that Côte d’Ivoire’s relations with Nigeria are based on rivalry because the country has a leadership aspiration in the sub-region and, therefore, sees Nigeria as a stumbling block.
From this detailed background, the most important features of a regional configuration are the relative degree of balance and complementarity and the extent to which the component states are oriented to integrative behaviour. 7
It is argued that a relatively balanced distribution of economic capabilities ensures genuine equalities and breeds mutual confidence while unequal capabilities cause apprehensions – real or perceived – among the weaker states because of their disadvantaged position economically and politically. In regions where there is a high degree of balance and complementarity, as in Western Europe, usually there are a number of core members and a graduation of economic power levels and a regional unanimity that protects the interests of the smaller members.8
On the other hand, marked contrast in economic power levels, degrees of complementarity and extent of integrative orientation to the region are observed in regions like Latin America, South Asia and West Africa as this study indicates. In each of these regions there is typically one strong core member (Brazil in Latin America, India in South Asia and Nigeria in West Africa). The degree of complementarity is also very low.
Apart from balance and complementarity, level of domestic political development and foreign policy orientations are important determinants of integrative or co-operative behaviour in a region. Moreover, since conflicts with a predominantly bilateral and local relevance easily can escalate to the regional level, settlement of such conflicts is foremost a question of state-to-state relations. Thus, regional defence agreements or pacts are concomitant with regionalism as they are aimed at protecting the expected gains of their mutual co-operation and interests from being undermined militarily or through other, more subtle means.
Approaches to Regional Co-operation
Regionalism as it applies to our study may be defined as attempts by neighbouring nation-states, reinforced by a sense of common purpose or predicament within a definite region or defined area, to foster economic or political co-operation among themselves in order to lessen their dependence on others outside the region. It can be deduced from the above definitions that regional groupings are a continuum of three stages – co-operation, co-ordination and full integration with an ulterior motive in accommodating local conflicts. Economic integration, according to the functionalist model, contains a certain dynamic logic that bargaining collectively will fulfil the background functions of a ‘pluralist political structure, similarities in economic and industrial development and ideological political structures with their inherent spill over.’ 9
Spill-over implies that success in one integration sector will then lead to advances across a much broader front, just as the economic achievements of the European Union have since then generated additional political and strategic co-operation.
It should be pointed out that the functionalist approach looks at the regional co-operation process as a transitional stage of regional integration, rather than an end in itself. However, some important deductions follow from these premises. In the first place, the approach appears to be an oversimplification in the sense that it ignores the primacy of politics in the co-operation process among the developing countries. It has been observed that even if co-operation starts in a few discrete and non-controversial areas, it soon gets over-politicised negating the validity of a gradual politicisation process.
Secondly, the functionalist approach also implies surrender of some elements of sovereignty to the regional body, which in turn, gradually attains some amount of autonomy and decision-making role. Empirically, however, it has been found that the member states are unwilling to share even the smallest degree of sovereignty with these regional institutions excepting where the member states explicitly agree to do so within an integration framework. Concrete examples of these exceptions are hard to come by except in the case of the EU. In effect, the real decision making power lay with the government representatives rather than the bureaucrats of these organisations. This amounts to inter-governmentalism; that is government to government relations rather than what is known as ‘supra-nationalism’.
Thirdly, the transitional status of regional co-operation as conceived in the very approach of functionalism may be questioned in the context of the developing countries. A regional co-operation process in most cases is an end in itself, intentionally stopping short of integration. Moreover, hardly any organisation in the Third World has been able to achieve economic integration, let alone political integration, even if it was so desired.
As opposed to functionalism ‘communication theory’ takes a bottom-up approach in terms of development of a sense of community, defined in a much broader sense than the economic focus of functionalism, to include social perceptions, values and sentiments and articulation of these values, and a sense of community in formal and structured forms. 10
According to this view, co-operation could be measured empirically in terms of frequency and nature of border-crossing communications like mail flows, people-to-people contact, electronic media, student travels, tourism and intra-regional trade.
At the regional or continental level, attempts at fostering a strong economy and security situation in Africa have been exemplified with a series of treaties from the OAU’s 1980 Lagos Plan of Action (LPA), to the 1990 African Charter for Participation in Development, and the Abuja Charter of July 1991. Within the different sub-regions in Africa, the ECOWAS in West Africa, SADC in Southern Africa, Maghreb in North Africa, the COMESA for Eastern and Southern Africa, and CEEAC/ECCAS for Central African States, were to translate these socio-economic and security issues of the OAU into operational programmes at the sub-regional level. This is against the background of the social, political, economic, ideological, geographical spread and external commitments and diplomatic problems encountered at the continental or regional level (OAU). 11
Given the precarious environment facing ECOWAS members, particularly under the World Trade Organization agreement and the current globalisation agenda, questions have variously been raised by some African bureaucrats about the ultimate importance of regional economic integration. The examples of Malaysia and Singapore – members of ASEAN – are cited as proof that it is not impossible for a compact of body politics to reach the sky on its own, with the latter accounting for more than half its $111 billion intra-community trade (see table 3). Indeed, Singapore, considered as a first-tier Newly Industrialised Country (NIC), has joined the ranks of the ‘developed’ countries, with a per capita income in excess of US$25,000. 12
On a more theoretical level this paper seeks to investigate whether the intra-regional trade has been of benefit to ECOWAS or the ASEAN, and whether these initiatives draws us near any development ‘model’ and hence illuminate another aspect of development strategy in the ‘New World Order’. The direct application of the ASEAN model is problematic. This means, of course, that the ASEAN experience can not automatically be transplanted to West Africa and other developing countries. It is self-evident that every region sets a specific regional agenda, which is a product of its time and place and cannot be emulated exactly elsewhere. The key element (and missing link in the African case) is the capacity of the people to manage change in a dynamic world: to understand ongoing changes in the world, predict as yet inexperienced future changes and to respond flexibly, effectively and in good time to them. 13
The key therefore, lies in ECOWAS’s ability to write its own agenda for sustained economic growth and development in West Africa through mutually supportive facilitating conditions and operational factors.
The research project was sponsored by the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD), London. It was a pioneering study in so far as review of existing literature and other secondary data on ASEAN/ECOWAS economic co-operation are concerned. It was complemented by extensive and interesting primary information generated through five weeks field survey conducted among the academics, professionals and other opinion making sections in some ASEAN/ECOWAS countries, notably in Malaysia, Indonesia and Nigeria. In addition, telephone conversations were had with scholars in Singapore and Brunei. It is hoped that the outcome of the project would be useful to all those who would be interested not only in ASEAN and ECOWAS as two Third World regional groupings, but also in the dynamics of inter-state relations in the two regions and their interactions with the problems and prospects of regional and inter-regional co-operation.
OBJECTIVES AND METHODOLOGY
Objectives: The basic purpose of the study was to examine and assess:
- Conditions for effective intra-ECOWAS trade.
- ASEAN experience of regional co-operation, both successes and failures, taking the economic, strategic and political elements of the co-operative experience into consideration;
- The ASEAN policy and experiences of inter-regional co-operation-areas (i.e. co-operation with other regions), institutional mechanism and problems faced;
- Lessons for the ECOWAS, if any, from ASEAN experiences in regional and inter-regional co-operation; and
- Academic views and opinions regarding the possibilities of benefits of intra-regional trade.
Methodology: The study was based on consultation and analysis of both secondary and primary data. Available literature, documents and statistics on both the ASEAN and the ECOWAS protocols and treaties were collected at Institute of Strategic and International Studies (ISIS) Malaysia, Sarawak Development Institute (SDI), the ECOWAS Secretariat, Abuja, ASEAN Secretariat, Jakarta and reviewed. Discussion of the study objectives and extensive consultation of the available literature enabled the author to identify the data gap, which in turn, helped prepare the checklist of information to guide the collection of primary data. For this purpose, visits to the ASEAN and ECOWAS countries were necessary. Whilst there, the first hand views of scholars, and other opinion-formers and policy decision-makers of ASEAN countries were obtained. At places such as Ministry of African co-operation, Abuja, Nigeria, ECOWAS Secretariat, ASEAN Secretariat, Malaysian Institute of Diplomacy and Foreign Affairs Ministry, the respondents included a cabinet minister, senior counsellors, director-generals and directors.
The respondents were interviewed in an informal way. The focus of the informal discussion was on perception of the goals, benefits and problems of regional and intra-regional co-operation, decision-making mechanisms, organisational issues, and politico-strategic issues impinging on the co-operation process. Attempts were made to obtain a country perspective as far as possible from the interviews within the limited time and resources. At a number of places, specifically, in university faculties and research institutions this was mainly in the form of informal discussion in a small impromptu or prearranged gathering that helped cover a broader spectrum of issues. The interviews were recorded, where possible. In other cases notes were taken. In some cases, the respondents volunteered to offer written replies in accordance with the questions submitted to them. My visit to the ASEAN Secretariat, Jakarta/ Indonesia in May 2000 was hampered by coinciding with the political unrest in Jakarta, related to the removal of the Prime Minister. However, I gained a first hand assessment of the economic and political situation in Indonesia.
Analysis: As the primary data were being collected a preliminary report was prepared on the basis of secondary data to arrive at some tentative conclusions after my field trip to the ECOWAS headquarters in Abuja, Lagos. However, this helped in the collection and analysis of the primary data. Since the focus of this study was on the experiences and lessons thereof and as such was mainly perceptional in character, care was taken not to cram the report with statistics. Qualitative arguments, indication of trends and assessment perspectives were made while dwelling on various issues involved in the study.
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