Meaning of Regionalism

Regionalism — the effort by states within a geographic area to seek deeper support and collaboration across the social-cultural, political, military and economic spheres, often crystallising into regional organisations. Also called regional integration.

Condition and process

Condition — a shared basis of affinity: geographical proximity, cultural or linguistic similarity, common historical experience (colonialism in Asia and Africa), shared economic conditions (underdevelopment in Latin America), or a common sense of threat. Process — a blueprint for regional organisation that turns these latent affinities into tighter cooperation.

• Regions are often “imagined communities” — politically and socially constructed, not natural or given. A territory that reads as a “region” economically or culturally (e.g. South Asia) may not cohere politically or on security.
• Neighbourhood-based cooperation is old; its notable modern form emerged in the twentieth century, especially after World War I.
• Syllabus scope: EU, ASEAN, APEC, SAARC, NAFTA — with BIMSTEC and Central America as comparators.

Theoretical Traditions

Three stances gave regionalism its legitimacy as idea and project — functionalist, neo-functionalist, federalist — supplemented by communication and intergovernmentalist approaches.

Evolution

From technical unions to a European model for the world. 19th century (Public international unions — Bureau of Weights & Measures, Universal Postal Union) → Post-WWII Europe (Functionalist cooperation on economic reconstruction) → Council of Europe, 1949 (ECHR (1950), European Social Charter (1961)) → Cold War security (Warsaw Pact & NATO frame European defence) → A model (European bodies copied elsewhere — unevenly)

• Council of Europe pioneered common European norms and rights; the ECHR (1950) was the first legally binding regional human-rights instrument, the European Social Charter (1961) the first regional human-rights framework.
• Replication was uneven: non-European regions lacked Europe’s homogeneity of growth, ideology, culture and religion, so large continents (Asia, Africa, Latin America) produced smaller, sub-continental and sub-regional bodies.

Forms & Features

Membership types (Andrew Heywood): Transcontinental — APEC, BRICS · Continental — Council of Europe · Sub-continental — SAARC

Overlapping membership is common — Mexico shares interests with the Asia-Pacific (APEC), North America (NAFTA) and Latin America (LAIA).

Three primary types

Traditional vs new

• Traditional regionalism followed a fixed economic ladder: free trade area, common market, economic community, economic union.
• Under new regionalism, regional organisations gained a standing distinct from international ones — they “have changed from objects to subjects” (Fredrik Soderbaum and Bjorn Hettne), no longer rigidly state-centric.

New Regionalism

Regionalism peaked in the 1960s–early 1970s, went quiet, and revived from the early 1990s as trade blocs built on preferential rules and exclusive membership — the “second coming.”

Context and content

• Globalisation is the primary driver; neoliberal policy moved regional bodies from passive objects to active agents, rejecting the over-determination of international institutions — regional bodies read as “potentially competing structures” (Hettne and Soderbaum).
• Linked to structural change: end of the Cold War, the bipolar-to-multipolar shift, a post-Westphalian nation-state reduced to a non-dominant role, and the decline of Third World solidarity and NAM in favour of neoliberal development.
• Hettne and Soderbaum: globalisation of finance, trade, production and technology is a New International Division of Labour (NIDL); the multipolar post-Cold War power structure is a New International Division of Power (NIDP).
• New regionalist sentiment is a higher-level extension of nationalism, filling gaps left by the state’s inability to defend interests in a globalised world — “pooling sovereignty” (Andrew Heywood).

Contours and drivers

• Unlike the simple common-market era, new organisations are complete and wide-ranging — converging political regime, economic interest, security and culture; sub-regional blocs and micro-regions proliferate within macro-regions.
• Tracking a state’s path through overlapping deals is hard — J. N. Bhagwati’s “spaghetti bowl” (cited via Heywood).
• Drivers: wider acceptance of export-led strategies (Japan, then the Asian tigers); ex-communist states using integration to consolidate market transition; the rise of the WTO; the USA moving from sponsor to active participant — all under an acceleration of globalisation, with regionalism reborn to manage the effects of globalisation (competitive, not merely protectionist).

Regionalism & Globalisation

Central debate: are the two complementary (mutually reinforcing) or antagonistic (frictional)?

The fault line of the globalisation–regionalism relationship

• Building or stumbling blocks? J. N. Bhagwati asked whether regional blocs are “building blocks” or “stumbling blocks”; regional systems have produced “complex and overlapping bilateral and regional arrangements, each with conflicting and contradictory provisions” (Heywood).
• Open regionalism as a way station. Andrew Hurrell — the region is the most viable level to reconcile global capitalist competition with the need for political regulation (the “one-world/many-worlds” relationship); Richard Stubbs and Geoffrey R. D. Underhill — a “safer” version of globalisation; Mario Telo (citing Larry Summers) — regional liberalisation is the best route to globalisation; Helen Nesadurai — open regionalism as a “way station to globalization” is the dominant model.
• Regionalisation as response. Economic — RTAs secure markets and give stability unilateral policy cannot. Cultural — Niels Lange: cultural influence now appears in commodified form (converging consumption, anglicised languages, shared youth culture); Bennett Collins: cultural regionalism resists a global identity (rise of the Bloc Quebecois). Post-COVID — Peter Enderwick and Peter Buckley: weaknesses of globalisation plus pandemic disruption push a stronger regional focus and a rethink of global supply chains.
• Hirst and Thompson: “regionalization has become the strongest feature of the international economy rather than globalisation,” even undermining it. Thomas Christiansen and Edward Best: regionalism is not a contradiction to globalisation — regions accommodate to it differently.

Regionalism & State Sovereignty

How much sovereignty does integration cost?

• Neo-functionalist / neo-liberal institutionalist — successful regionalism depends on transferring sovereignty to regional institutions; spillover then broadens cooperation as policymakers shift loyalties from national to regional levels.
• Intergovernmentalist — states stay protective of sovereignty (classical = trade-off; instrumentalist = cooperate only when gains outweigh costs).
• Reassertion of sovereignty — US withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (2017) and Brexit; Helen Thompson: “regionalism is out, sovereignty back in.” Yet integration continued despite the exits (remaining TPP states negotiated a successor; the EU deepened after a major power left) — predictions of the nation-state’s demise are overstated.

Regionalism & Global Governance

The UN Charter recognises regional arrangements as a means of maintaining peace and permits regional / collective self-defence until the UN can act effectively.

Merits & Demerits

“It is fair to say that when a scholarly interest in integration became active, it had behind it a good deal of criticism of the sovereign state as an institution.”

J. D. B. Miller

The claim that the nation-state’s age is over is contestable — nationalism and national interest still guide foreign policy despite flourishing regional bodies.

Grounds favouring regionalism (Leroy-Bennett)

• Interaction is easier among fewer states in a limited area than globally.
• Regional economic units are more efficient and competitive than small states alone.
• Local threats to peace are dealt with more promptly by states of that area.
• Confining states into groupings can maintain a global balance of power.

Criticisms

• Universalists — global bodies (UN, WTO) can handle both regional and global issues; regionalism creates insular, inward-looking blocs that entrench dominance by major powers (e.g. China once forbidding outside mediation in Cambodia).
• Regionalism can incite ethnonational conflict when cultural minorities gain external backing (shared Tamil communities across India–Sri Lanka; shared language across India–Bangladesh).
• Regional protectionism undermines free trade and can deteriorate into military alliances, provoke countermeasures and raise tensions.

Consensus- and consultation-based blocs align with the realist concern for a balance of power (Hans Morgenthau).

The European Union

Widely treated as the “gold standard” of regional integration — from a post-war economic pact to a supranational political and economic entity; Nobel Peace Prize, 2012.

The treaty ladder — economics first, then political union. ECSC, 1951 (Treaty of Paris — coal & steel make war “materially impossible”) → EEC, 1957 (Treaty of Rome — common market, barriers removed) → Maastricht, 1992 (EU created; foreign policy, security, justice; the euro) → Lisbon, 2007 (After Single European Act (1986), Amsterdam (1997), Nice (2001))

Robert Schuman, Jean Monnet, Konrad Adenauer* championed the supranational “community method” over the balance-of-power model; Neil Fligstein — integration helped produce a “European society.”***

Seven core institutions: European Council · European Parliament · Council of the EU · European Commission · Court of Justice of the EU · European Central Bank · European Court of Auditors

Achievements

• Single market — the most ambitious element; free movement of goods, services, capital and labour. Euro — used by 20 of the 27 members. Schengen — passport-free travel across most members plus Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, Liechtenstein.
• Human rights and democracy — abolition of the death penalty; Copenhagen Criteria for membership. Enlargement consolidated democracy after communism. Programmes and leadership — Erasmus+, Horizon, the Green Deal (climate neutrality by 2050), CETA with Canada, coordination on the JCPOA.

Why it succeeded

• Visionary leaders and the supranational community method; political will to share sovereignty and build strong, legally based institutions; consensus, solidarity and tolerance — not isolating a member in crisis (Greece), and transfers to help poorer members catch up.

Challenges

Comparative Assessment

The EU remains the benchmark; other regions adapt rather than blindly imitate its model.

Conclusion

Regionalism is here to stay, but its content has changed decisively between its first and second incarnations. New regionalist arrangements are rarely imposed from above; they usually emerge through a bottom-up strategy coordinated by national and regional interest groups defending sectoral, national and regional interests against the disruptions of unchecked globalisation. On this reading, regionalism and new regionalism function as “building blocks” — reconciling the pressures of global competition with the need for political regulation, and serving as a first step toward wider inter-governmental coordination in a world not yet ready for global authority.