Anja Zorob () (GIGA Institute of Middle East Studies)
Abstract
The effect of ‘locking-in’ economic reform and enhancing its credibility is generally regarded as one of the most important potential effects of regional integration. Based on a detailed review of the theoretical debate, this paper develops a general framework for assessment to evaluate the ability of RIAs to serve as effective mechanisms for ‘commitment’ and ‘signalling’. In the second part, this assessment framework is applied to the case of the Syrian-European Association Agreement (AA). Syria initialled an AA with the European Union in October 2004, but two and a half years later, this agreement is still pending formal signature. The empirical findings of this study show that despite several shortcomings, the Syrian-European AA, if it were to come into force, should be able to deliver an appropriate mechanism for signalling and commitment and thus to improve the credibility of the Syrian process of reform at home and abroad. A major loophole of the agreement, however, is represented by its lack of incentives to increase the ‘rewards for good policy’.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies in its series GIGA Working Paper Series with number
51.
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.: