Decision-making in developing countries regarding participation in regional economic organizations: Comparison of an Andean pact, ECOWAS and ASEAN case

Over the past twenty-five years, there have been several efforts by developing countries to establish regional economic institutions to address their problems of poverty, underdevelopment, and external dependency. Economic imperatives and the rationales for economic cooperation intuitively seem sufficient to ensure that the national political leadership would elect to engage in whatever give-and-take necessary to achieve their stated economic goals. Yet, the historical record reveals a faltering pattern for most regional economic organizations. Most of these cooperative entities have experienced uneven results. Many are now defunct. Why is this the case?; This study attempts to answer this question by examining the causes and processes associated with three decisions made by Chile, Nigeria and the Philippines the outcomes of which were at odds with the interests of the regional economic organization in the Chilean and Nigerian cases, and coincided with the interests of the regional economic organization in the Philippine case. The literature confirms that the 1976 Chilean decision to withdraw from the Andean Pact, the 1983 Nigerian decision to deport alien workers, and the 1977 Philippine decision regarding territorial claims over the Sabah region had long-term implications for the well-being of the regional organizations of which they were a part.; Decisions made within the individual nation-states determine the viability of collective organizations. An attempt is made to identify in the three cases the systemic/external, governmental/role, societal, economic and idiosyncratic factors within each of the countries which tended to encourage a decision in support of or against regional organization interests. It is the thesis of this study that the national decision makers' estimation of the usefulness of the regional economic organization to meeting immediate and specific political, economic, societal, and security needs determines whether they elect to cooperate within the regional economic organization on a given issue or project.