Explores the linkage between trade, peace and conflict in South America, Southern Africa, South Asia, and South East Asia. Highlights the significance of regional trade agreements for peace building between the countries.

Regional cooperation is increasingly important as a means to create peaceful relations and improve economic development. The problem today is not to initiate cooperation but rather how to handle disputes and maintain good relations. This is done through conflict management mechanisms (CMMs) in most regional cooperation structures. However, the interaction between such structures and regional conflict management mechanisms is not sufficiently examined and, as a result, no coherent theoretical model that could explain this interaction has been constructed. This has meant that in many cases the interaction is incorrectly assumed, with negative social and economic outcomes.

This book provides a comprehensive study into the promotion of regional integration as a central pillar of European Union (EU) relations with the rest of the world. It is a strategy to deal with a core security challenge: the transformation of conflicts and, in particular, regional conflicts. Yet to what extent has the promotion of regional integration been successful in transforming conflicts? What can we regard as the core mechanisms of such an impact? This volume offers a comprehensive assessment of the nexus between promoting integration and conflict transformation. The authors systematically compare the consequences of EU involvement in eight conflicts in four world regions within a common framework. In doing so, they focus on the promotion of integration as a preventative strategy to avoid conflicts turning violent and as a long-term strategy to transform violent conflicts by placing them in a broader institutional context. The book will be of use to students and scholars interested in European foreign policy, comparative regionalism, and conflict resolution.

South Asia today is among the most unstable regions in the world, riddled by both intra- and inter-state conflict. This book presents a comprehensive technical analysis of the trade-conflict relationship within the region, and explores how South Asia demonstrates underperformance of its potential for economic integration. Using the gravity model framework, the book highlights quantitative estimates of the cost of conflict in terms of loss of trade for South Asia. Other variables representative of political and economic regimes are also included to make the model comprehensive, and the book goes on to discuss how the analysis reveals the overriding significance of the India-Pakistan relationship in the regional landscape. It looks at how the results of the econometric exercise reveal the extent to which a common border, when disputed, becomes a barrier rather than a facilitator to trade and, additionally, the extent to which long standing and persistent conflict can debilitate trade relationships. The book is a useful contribution for students and scholars of South Asian studies and international political economy, and assists in formulating policy to correct the anti-home bias that is evident in trade patterns of the South Asian economies.

South Asia today is among the most unstable regions in the world, riddled by both intra- and inter-state conflict. This book presents a comprehensive technical analysis of the trade–conflict relationship within the region, and explores how South Asia demonstrates underperformance of its potential for economic integration. Using the gravity model framework, the book highlights quantitative estimates of the cost of conflict in terms of loss of trade for South Asia. Other variables representative of political and economic regimes are also included to make the model comprehensive, and the book goes on to discuss how the analysis reveals the overriding significance of the India–Pakistan relationship in the regional landscape. It looks at how the results of the econometric exercise reveal the extent to which a common border, when disputed, becomes a barrier rather than a facilitator to trade and, additionally, the extent to which long standing and persistent conflict can debilitate trade relationships. The book is a useful contribution for students and scholars of South Asian studies and international political economy, and assists in formulating policy to correct the anti-home bias that is evident in trade patterns of the South Asian economies.

Economic integration fosters regional peace