Sign-In
Cart
The Economic Integration Trap: Rules, Money, and Political Failure from Europe to Latin America
Paperback
Series: Geopolitical Shifts & Integration Trap
EconomicsGeneral Political ScienceInternational Relations
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Feb 8 2026
Pages: 128
Weight: 0.40
Height: 0.27 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Economic integration is widely assumed to produce stability, discipline, and convergence. Yet across regions and decades, integration projects repeatedly generate crisis, political backlash, and fragmentation. Why?
The Economic Integration Trap argues that the failure of integration cannot be explained by ideology, globalization, or poor leadership alone. The problem is structural-and largely misunderstood. Integration transforms economic governance faster than political systems can adapt, shifting conflict into monetary institutions, legal frameworks, and welfare regimes ill-suited to carry it.
Rather than offering a single grand theory, this book dissects integration through its most fragile fault lines:
central bank independence, fiscal constraint, welfare expectations, migration pressures, crisis management, and institutional credibility. It shows how rules designed to stabilize markets can amplify instability when political adjustment mechanisms are weak-or absent.
Europe and Latin America provide contrasting but complementary cases. Europe built integration by constitutionalizing economic rules, suppressing political discretion in the name of credibility. Latin America retained discretion but failed to sustain commitment. Both paths produced instability-but through different mechanisms that are rarely analyzed together.
The book goes beyond familiar debates about austerity, sovereignty, or globalization. It examines how integration reshapes political incentives, how crises are reinterpreted as rule violations, and how economic governance increasingly operates through enforcement rather than coordination.
This is not a manifesto for or against integration. It is an analytical examination of why integration, when mismatched with political capacity, becomes a trap-one that disciplines, fragments, and hardens rather than converges.
Also from
Gómez-Mejía, Alberto
Overregulation in Economics: CORRUPTION AND POVERTY: 140 real-life cases from around the world, summarized and referenced
Gómez-Mejía, Alberto
Paperback
The Other Invisible Hand: Bureaucracy and Informality: A Biological Understanding of Economics
Gómez-Mejía, Alberto
Paperback
The Cost of Irrationality: How Bias, Emotion, and Fear Shape History and Politics
Gómez-Mejía, Alberto
Paperback
Also in
General Political Science
Solidarity: The Past, Present, and Future of a World-Changing Idea
Hunt-Hendrix, Leah
Taylor, Astra
Hardcover
Capitalism and the Camera: Essays on Photography and Extraction
James, Daniel
Coleman, Kevin
Paperback
The Craftivist Collective Handbook: Projects, Stories and Methods for Your Gentle Protests
Corbett, Sarah P.
Hardcover
Guerrilleros and Neighbours in Arms: Identities & Cultures of Anti-Fascist Resistance in Spain
Marco
Paperback
Battling the Big Lie: How Fox, Facebook, and the Maga Media Are Destroying America
Pfeiffer, Dan
Hardcover
Urban Revolutions: Urbanisation and (Neo-)Colonialism in Transatlantic Context
Kipfer, Stefan
Paperback
Nonstate Warfare: The Military Methods of Guerillas, Warlords, and Militias
Biddle, Stephen
Hardcover
By the Light of Burning Dreams: The Triumphs and Tragedies of the Second American Revolution
Talbot, Margaret
Talbot, David
Hardcover
An Enemy Such as This: Larry Casuse and the Fight for Native Liberation in One Family on Two Continents Over Three Centuries
Correia, David
Hardcover
Turning the Tide: U.S. Intervention in Central America and the Struggle for Peace
Chomsky, Noam
Paperback
Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism
Wolin, Sheldon S.
Paperback
The Persuaders: At the Front Lines of the Fight for Hearts, Minds, and Democracy
Giridharadas, Anand
Hardcover
Grassroots Rising: A Call to Action on Climate, Farming, Food, and a Green New Deal
Cummins, Ronnie
Paperback
Everyday Life and Politics in Nineteenth Century Mexico: Men, Women, and War
Wasserman, Mark
Paperback
Broken News: Why the Media Rage Machine Divides America and How to Fight Back
Stirewalt, Chris
Paperback
With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful
Greenwald, Glenn
Hardcover
Doing History from the Bottom Up: On E.P. Thompson, Howard Zinn, and Rebuilding the Labor Movement from Below
Lynd, Staughton
Paperback
China Wakes: The Struggle for the Soul of a Rising Power
Wudunn, Sheryl
Kristof, Nicholas D.
Paperback
The Clash of Globalizations: Neo-Liberalism, the Third Way and Anti-Globalization
Kiely, Ray
Paperback
Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump
Haberman, Maggie
Swan, Jonathan
Hardcover
Separation of Church and Hate: A Sane Person's Guide to Taking Back the Bible from Fundamentalists, Fascists, and Flock-Fleecing Frauds
Fugelsang, John
Hardcover
The U.S. Constitution: A Comprehensive and Annotated Guide for the Modern Reader
Murray, Melissa
Hardcover
The College Scam: How America's Universities Are Bankrupting and Brainwashing Away the Future of America's Youth
Kirk, Charlie
Hardcover
American Struggle: Democracy, Dissent, and the Pursuit of a More Perfect Union: An Anthology
Meacham, Jon
Hardcover
American Scoundrel: Roy Cohn's Dark Journey from Joe McCarthy to Donald Trump
Bird, Kai
Goldmark, Susan
Hardcover
The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017
Khalidi, Rashid
Paperback
Ordinary People, Extraordinary Times: How to Reclaim Your Power, Fight for Freedom, and Reimagine Democracy
Perryman, Skye
Paperback
The Elijah Mandate: A Call to Courageous Faith in a Hostile World
Tsarfati, Amir
Piflaks, Tolik
Paperback
Live Laugh Love: The Secret History of White Christian Women and the World They Made
Kobes Du Mez, Kristin
Hardcover
The Crooked Places Made Straight: Reflections on the Moral Meaning of America
Warnock, Raphael G.
Hardcover
Into the Wood Chipper: A Whistleblower's Account of How the Trump Administration Shredded Usaid
Enrich, Nicholas
Hardcover
The Invisible Coup: How American Elites and Foreign Powers Use Immigration as a Weapon
Schweizer, Peter
Hardcover
The Lost Founder: James Wilson and the Forgotten Fight for a People's Constitution
Wegman, Jesse
Hardcover
Last Branch Standing: A Potentially Surprising, Occasionally Witty Journey Inside Today's Supreme Court
Isgur, Sarah
Hardcover
The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program That Shaped Our World
Bevins, Vincent
Paperback
There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America (Pulitzer Prize Winner)
Goldstone, Brian
Paperback
If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us All
Yudkowsky, Eliezer
Soares, Nate
Hardcover
Country of Lords: Neo-Aristocrats, Social Darwinists, Tech Utopians, and the Long Fight Against Equality in America
Phillips-Fein, Kim
Hardcover
There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America (Pulitzer Prize Winner)
Goldstone, Brian
Hardcover
Fear and Fury: The Reagan Eighties, the Bernie Goetz Shootings, and the Rebirth of White Rage
Thompson, Heather Ann
Hardcover
The Origins of Totalitarianism: With a New Introduction by Anne Applebaum
Applebaum, Anne
Arendt, Hannah
Paperback
Alito: The Justice Who Reshaped the Supreme Court and Restored the Constitution
Hemingway, Mollie
Hardcover