Sequencing, People Movements and Mass Politicization in European and Trans-Tasman Single Markets

Abstract

This article demonstrates the utility of comparative historical approaches and tools for temporal analysis in comparative regional integration. Over three decades Australian and New Zealand policymakers constructed a Trans-Tasman Single Economic Market that, like the Single European Market, creates supra-national authority and removes administrative barriers to free movement of goods, services capital and people. Like the Single European Market, the Trans-Tasman Single Economic Market regulates internal movements of people liberally. In Europe, some argue, liberal regulation of people movements has led to politicization of integration. In Australia and New Zealand integration has no mass political salience. This article compares European and trans-Tasman integration to explain these divergent outcomes. It shows how differing sequences of events can explain varying levels of mass mobilization around integration in the two cases. In Europe ‘economic integration’ preceded the liberalization of people movements. Trans-Tasman integration reversed this sequence.