Manufacturing development: how transnational market integration shapes opportunities and capacities for development in Europe’s three peripheries

According to the dominating perspective in the literature, transnational market integration has the uniform effect of decreasing the room for development in peripheral economies that do not have the economic and political power of countries like China or Russia. Challenging this perspective, this Special Issue (SI) contrasts different integration strategies yielding dramatically different effects on developmental opportunities and capacities. By exploring various patterns of market integration, we show first, that states in peripheral economies vary in their institutional strengths to exploit developmental opportunities and that the existence of such capabilities depends on domestic political conditions. We also show, second, that depending on their integration strategy, transnational integration regimes (TIRs) can both improve and worsen developmental capacities and political conditions in these countries. The SI examines the different integration strategies used by the largest TIR, the European Union (EU), in its peripheries. The shallow model of integration allows for à la carte trade liberalization and regulatory integration. This model helps to consolidate pre-existing rent-seeking alliances and with it, the conservation of the institutional status quo. The pro-active version of the deep model of integration can promote upgrading in domestic developmental capacities in the period of preparing new countries for membership. Once peripheral economies gain membership, the EU has limited tools to help these countries to synchronize domestic developmental needs and transnational regulatory requirements. Increasing contestation of liberal ideas is the result.