EU expansion and the strategies of multinational enterprises : a comparative analysis with the east asian and north american continental integration processes

Defraigne, Jean-Christophe;de meulemeester, jean-luc
(2008) ecpr - Standing Group on the European Union-Fourth Pan-European Conference on EU Politics — Location: University of Latvia Riga, Latvia (25.September.2008)

Files

2008-rigaecpr.pdf
  • Open Access
  • Adobe PDF
  • 241.8 KB
Download

Details

Authors
Abstract
Our objective in this paper is to analyze the main underlying microeconomic driving forces that have shaped the European integration process in a comparative perspective. Through both an economic history and political economy perspective, we will highlight the existence of two separate stages in this process of integration (one of the earliest experience of continental integration, beginning just after WWII while the other ones will begin only during the mid 1980s). We will investigate both the political dimension of integration (the choice of nation-states to transfer parts of their sovereignty to supranational bodies) and its economic side (which is consubstantial to the first dimension, as the European political process of integration was in a sense motivated and implemented on economic grounds). In our analysis economic constraints receive special attention, and are viewed as determinant. This is also why we focus on the strategies of the multinational enterprises (MNEs) and on the policies set up and put forward by the various Member States and the Commission to foster their development. We implicitly assume that both the Member States and the Commission pursue a kind of neo-mercantilist agenda or a neo-Listian one (De Meulemeester and Defraigne, 2008), i.e. the desire to maximize the political power of the entities they are in charge of through the fostering of their economic strength, the latter being attained by supporting the main actors of economic growth – the biggest firms (the only ones possessing a sufficient lobbying power to influence the decision-making process). The evolutionary historical analysis will enable us to better pinpoint the specific characteristics of the European integration process (and its likely future evolution). This contribution will highlight the different underlying microeconomic driving forces behind regional integration in Europe, North America and East Asia. The first driving force that affects the European integration process from the late 1950s to the beginning of the 1990s is the search of economies of scale in order to enable the largest European firms to fully benefit from Fordist mass standardized production methods, thereby resisting better to their US competitors. This necessitated the building of an integrated market with homogeneous consumers that were characterized by a relatively low degree of disparity in standard of living. From the mid 1980s until the present time, Europe, but also East Asia and North America, have been experiencing a second type of driving microeconomic force that fosters and shapes these regional integration processes. This integrating force is generated by the regionalization of the production (RPP) process of the MNEs. Contrary to the first driving force, this contribution will show that the RPP of MNEs generates a regional integration process that is based on the inclusion of national economies with very different economic development level and different institutions. This bears serious consequences on the future economic and social cohesion in Europe and the sustainability of the European social model and of the functioning of its supranational institutions
Affiliations

Citations

  • APA
  • Chicago
  • FWB

Defraigne, J.-C., & de meulemeester, j.-l. (2008). EU expansion and the strategies of multinational enterprises : a comparative analysis with the east asian and north american continental integration processes. ecpr - Standing Group on the European Union-Fourth Pan-European Conference on EU Politics, University of Latvia Riga, Latvia. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/201188