An Approach to the Regional Neoliberal Governance in Southern Africa from a Critical Perspective

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''An approach to the regional neoliberal governance in Southern Africa from a critical perspective.''

In order to examine the possible implications of neoliberalism in contemporary Africa, an analysis based on a regional dimension is important. The multiplicity of strategies and methods of governance in a specific regional context can appear merging, mingling or even clashing, since regions can be understood as political and social projects, where different actors act in favour of the maintenance, protection or transformation of prevalent structures. In that way, according to Söderbaum, ''regions can be disrupted from within and from without by the same forces that build them up''. (Söderbaum 2004a, p. 421). The process of economic globalization and the impact of neoliberalism in the contemporary world have affected the context in which regionalism/ regionalization occurs, with new balances and relations and consequent ''implications for the political economy of regionalism'' (Söderbaum 2004b, p. 17).The new regionalism movement comes as an answer to those challenges deriving from transnational actors and those posed to the nation state. Additionally, it appears as an attempt of bringing non-state actors and informal procedures into the attention of scholars (Acharya 2012, p. 9). Furthermore, critical theories can be a useful tool for our understanding of structural and social change and transformations. Following this line, a critical international political economy approach, which moves away from state centrism and towards an examination of the ''state-society complex'' (Söderbaum 2004a, p. 419), can be used while examining the expansion of neoliberal policies and its consequences at South Africa and the broader region of sou...

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...be viewed as bottom-up rather as bottom down.

REFERENCES

Acharya, Amitav (2012) ”Comparative Regionalism: A Field Whose Time has Come?” International Spectator, Vol 47, Issue 1, pp: 3-15.

Alden, C., and Le Pere, G., 2009. ‘South Africa in Africa: Bound to Lead?’, Politikon, 36(1): 145-169.

Alden, C., and Soko, M., 2005. South Africa’s Economic Relations with Africa: Hegemony and its Discontents’,Journal of Modern African Studies, 43(3): 367-392.

Söderbaum, Fredrik, 2004a ‘Modes of Regional Governance in Africa: Neoliberalism, Sovereignty-boosting and Shadow Networks’, Global Governance: A Review of Multilateralism and International Organizations, Vol. 10, No. 4 (November), pp 419-436.

Söderbaum, Fredrik (2004b) The Political economy of Regionalism. The Case of Southern Africa. Chapter 4: “The historical construction of ‘Southern Africa’ ”.

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