The Region in International Integration

Abstract

In the early 1970s one of the most central issues in the policy debate on the E.E.C. is whether higher stages of integration will aggravate rather than reduce the regional problem. In fact there are two main dimensions to the issue: (1) the problem of national regions and national regional policies in a Community framework; and (2) the problems and prospects for nations themselves as regions in a single-currency area of the kind which would be created if the Community is successful in implementing its monetary-union proposals. There also now is the question in reverse: i.e. the issue whether a country-region such as Scotland has suffered from integration into the single currency area of the United Kingdom, and should not pressure for economic and monetary disintegration, ‘going it alone’ as a nation-region with autonomous powers. The French government in the early 1970s also was formally committed to monetary union in the E.E.C., without accepting that this should be accompanied by economic union of major national policies administered by a supra-national or federal authority. None the less, the two main cases of international economic integration in modern capitalist economies concern pre-federal and federal systems — the E.E.C. and the U.S. federal economy — and their examination in the light of regional and integration theory respectively can illuminate the kind of regional problem thrown up by international integration.