Regional Integration and Economic Equality: Sociopolitical Perspectives of Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership RCEP Countries

Abstract

The right to non-discrimination and respect for difference have made significant progress at the global level in recent decades. However, there has been slight improvement in terms of economic equity, even with their incorporation into the Millennium Development Goals and the Sustainable Development Goals. The situation is even worse in developing world. In the absence of effective responses from multilateral mechanisms on a global scale, the response of regional integration mechanisms seems to be more directly in tune with the imperative of social justice.

The countries of East Asia and Oceania, through integration mechanisms such as ASEAN, APEC and more recently RCEP, offer valuable expectations in terms of equity, given some advances in terms of objectives and goals that could respond more directly to the current development conditions of the countries that make up the partnership. In this context, the present article proposes to address the following question: how is the RCEP partnership doing in terms of equity and what perspectives can be envisaged from its current situation? Based on an analysis of social complexity, progress and redistributive challenges are evaluated to determine the viability of the process in the future. According to the indicators analyzed and the prospective exercise, integration is likely to deepen if the group can respond to the triple challenge of internal legitimacy, political transformation, and regional security.