Varieties of dis-embedded liberalism. EU integration strategies in the Eastern peripheries of Europe

Abstract:

In contrast to the post-1945 integration of Western Europe in the global economic system, coined by John Ruggie as embedded liberalism, the integration of the Eastern peripheries happens in the framework of a new liberal regional settlement. The latter takes large parts of the management of the economy out of the hands of states and compensates the dis-embedding of markets from national control to various degrees. This contribution compares the European Union’s integration approach taken during the Eastern enlargement with the EU approach towards Eastern neighbourhood countries.

We argue that the EU has different goals and means for the management of its different peripheries resulting in deep, deep-light and shallow modes of economic integration. We show that differences in political and economic interdependencies between the EU and the two Eastern peripheries explain the variation in integration strategies, and that each of them has its own weaknesses in terms of developmental effects.