The applicability of adopting European Union’s integration model in South Asia: A comparative analysis of EU and SAARC

Abstract

The European integration is three decades older than the South Asian integration. At present European Union (EU) stands as an outstanding regional body with huge success in the world. South Asian integration has not yet completed the basic premises of economic integration and the aim of this paper is to comparatively analyze the two regional integration processes and to identify how far is it appropriate to adopt the European integration model to accelerate the South Asian integration in the future. One specific objectives of this paper is to identify the core differences between the two regional settings and next objective is to determine the theoretical relevance of certain existing theories in describing the two integration processes. Another specific objective is to evaluate the suitability of adopting EU model in South Asia and then to recommend the necessary reforms for South Asia to attain better integration. To that end the data triangulation method has been used to accumulate secondary data from multiple sources available in electronic and printed form including books, journals, web, reports, historical records and treaties. Qualitative content analysis has been used since this is a documentary analysis and Content analysis evaluate document texts and to test theoretical relevance to understand data more comprehensively and scientifically. It will test prevailing theories in different contexts when compare the categories of different settings. Key findings depicts that there is a sharp diversity between the EU and South Asian region in terms of trade, economic development, human development, industrialization, urbanization, trade liberalization, income levels, poverty alleviation and political integration. Amidst these differences the applicability of adopting the European model proves to be a failure due to many factors. The democratic nature of the countries and their practice of free market economic policies along with the successful resolutions for political tensions in Europe significantly caused the long term success of European integration whereas South Asian countries are suffering from huge diversities in economic, geographic, cultural, trade and military terms within the region and hesitate to cooperate with one another due to these differences. Indo-Pakistan political tensions blended with smaller states’ fear psychosis of Indian hegemony is the greatest constraint for better integration in South Asia. South Asia required rearranging the structure of its regional organization and opening avenues to discuss contentious issues among member states and needing to establish real democracies in their countries apart from building strong and reliable interactions among people to people contacts while adopting more comprehensive free market economic policies domestically.