Towards Praxes of the Region: Agential Constructivist Approaches to Regionalisms

While both formal and informal regionalisms examine the political ramifications of economic flows of capital, goods, and people, there is a blurring of such conceptual dichotomies in practice. Hence, in order to offer a more accurate account of the distinctions and overlap between the formal and informal – and to rectify the tendency to overlook the agency of African state actors and non-state actors – this article offers an agential constructivist approach that seeks to advance a praxis – or praxes – of the region. To that end, the article advances the concept of bifurcated interregionalisms as a means of analyzing cases of regional dynamics and regionalisms in Southern Africa and East Africa. The article concludes by offering some reflections on the future of regionalisms in an emerging global order in flux whereby illiberal and xenophobic variants of regionalisms compete with the liberal and cosmopolitan versions.