Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 August 2014
This article demonstrates the utility of comparative historical approaches and tools for temporal analysis in comparative regional integration. Over three decades Australian and New Zealand policymakers constructed a Trans-Tasman Single Economic Market that, like the Single European Market, creates supra-national authority and removes administrative barriers to free movement of goods, services capital and people. Like the Single European Market, the Trans-Tasman Single Economic Market regulates internal movements of people liberally. In Europe, some argue, liberal regulation of people movements has led to politicization of integration. In Australia and New Zealand integration has no mass political salience. This article compares European and trans-Tasman integration to explain these divergent outcomes. It shows how differing sequences of events can explain varying levels of mass mobilization around integration in the two cases. In Europe ‘economic integration’ preceded the liberalization of people movements. Trans-Tasman integration reversed this sequence.
John Leslie is a Lecturer in Political Science at Victoria University of Wellington. In 2014 he is on academic leave, acting as Trade Officer in the European Union Delegation to New Zealand. Research for and writing of this article were completed before he took up his current role. All views expressed are his own and do not reflect those of the European Union. Contact email: [email protected].