Theorising the relationship between social law and markets in regional integration projects

This article explores regional integration projects in the global South and constraints upon them. Its focus is on the use of economic sociology of law as a methodological approach through which to rethink the relationship between law, markets and state – and to explore how these interact in the context of one regionalisation project (the European Union) as well as interrogating whether economic sociology can similarly cast light on another regionalisation project (the African Union). The article examines the role of the ‘social state’ and of labour market institutions as part of an array of adjustment mechanisms responding to the liberalisation of trade and the opening of national borders: to what extent can social law and social rights mediate the operation of markets, and what does this mean when viewed from the perspective of developing as well as industrialised countries?