Description
This paper seeks to contribute to the English School’s (ES) understanding of the European Regional International Society (ERIS) through a critical political economy lens. With specific focus on sugar, the paper aims to address a puzzle at the heart of the European sugar complex. Contributing only a fraction of regional GDP, and dwindling employment shares, the inefficient (and protected) production of European beet sugar (compared to cane sugar) incurs enormous costs to consumers in the North and producers in the South. Vigorously contested by other states through the WTO, ERIS’ sugar industry eventually underwent liberalisation, seemingly solving the paradox of the global sugar regime. Yet European capitals continue to prosper while developing countries fall behind. This contradictory story of sugar aims to provide a much needed political economy approach to the ES tradition. Revealing the hidden foundations of production and power within and between international societies at a variety of scales (regional/global) allows for a more sociological understanding of how specific actors shape primary institutions, contest the norms of free trade, and seek to maintain (or alter) the global hierarchy of wealth that has underpinned the evolution of modern international society from its inception.
