Cécile Pelaudeix defends her thesis

The rise of China and its ambition to reform global governance constitute major challenges for regional organisations. This research has compared the responses of three differentiated organisations, the EU, ASEAN and Mercosur with respect to their specific merits in relation to resilience and strategic autonomy vis-à-vis Chinese influence in two policy areas: foreign direct investments and defence and security. The theoretical approach has relied on an innovative framework drawing on differentiated integration theories and the English School to propose three complementary hypotheses to explain how and why differentiated organisations strengthen or are not strengthening their resilience and strategic autonomy vis-à-vis the influence of China. While the strengthening of institutional differentiation through vertical, internal and external differentiation presents one option (H1) – which corresponds to a balancing strategy, other options which consist of establishing external partnerships are developed in parallel: they can be characterised as situations that involve reinforcing the regional organisation through balancing (H1), establishing multiple partnerships through hedging (H2), or aligning with China (3). These strategies are not exclusive and can be used in combination. 

Three models of differentiated regionalism were identified: (1) an expanding centralized differentiated regionalism. This model exemplified by the EU is characterised by a prevailing balancing strategy: increase in supranational integrated instruments, deepening of external differentiation, a new type of differentiation which we label ‘co-differentiation’ and an extended external cooperation. This strategy is conducive to resilience and a moderate degree of strategic autonomy. (2) A lightly institutionalised and encircled regionalism which applies to ASEAN: it relies on a hedging and alignment strategy which results in a high degree of dependence on external cooperation with China and with great and middle size powers. This approach leads to a moderate degree of resilience and the absence of strategic autonomy. (3) A functionally and geographically limited regionalism coexisting with multiple regional organisations, which applies to Mercosur which seems to engage in a hedging strategy in order to enhance resilience and autonomy, but it has no strategic autonomy, and is deepening interdependence with China.

The study shows that vulnerability does not arise from differentiation but from a low level of integration. Furthermore, strategic partnerships – a secondary institution of the international society – do not provide a high level of predictability regarding the behaviour of partners, a limitation which diminishes their potential to be conducive to resilience in the current volatile international context where the primary institution of war is regaining prominence.