Why regionalism rise globally

In: Bertrand Badie; Dominique Vidal. L'Etat du monde Worldwide, against a background growing multipolarity, more and more countries are electing political leaders who are partly inspired by political radicalism. Those political forces are often busy trying to regain some of their authority and power, as well as championing a return to a world where the balance of power dominates.

However, they are also quick to criticise the international liberal order and related institutions, including the multilateral or regional organisations Niblett, NIBLETT, Robin. Liberalism in retreat: the demise of a dream. Foreign Affairs, v. Consequently, regionalism now finds itself confronting a political distaste for globalisation, as well as the twin crises of troubled multilateral organisations and fading global leadership.

Regionalism is also up against a world in which the emerging powers South Africa, Brazil, India, China, Russia, Turkey, Iran or others seek a shift in global power and where international power relations are increasingly multipolarised. The global economy is today challenged by politics, now making a remarkable return to centre stage, as well as geopolitical games among the major global powers Jean, JEAN, Sebastien. Against this background, regionalism is being reassessed and is increasingly at the whim of nations and groups competing for power.

This situation stirs rivalry between the projects for cooperation or regional integration within the same continent. It also spurs competition among regional blocs from different continents, as the blocs strive to shape in their image the standards and rules of the nascent political order and multipolar economy Santander, a SANTANDER, Sebastian ed.

Brussels: Peter Lang, a. All are seeking to shape globalisation to match their societal preferences. China and Russia - alongside other emerging Brics powers - are calling for international political and economic structures that better align with the way that global power is truly divided in the early 21st century. Firstly, they are all working to promote the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation SCO , by giving this project not just a security focus but also an economic, cultural and scientific one.

They are also in talks with many third countries. Secondly, Russia and China alike have ideas for new regional cooperation projects. Moscow is busy developing the Eurasian Economic Union EEU , which would like to create a free trade area and a customs union with countries like Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. China has also been working on its own strategic projects, notably to develop a new Asian economic and political order. In: Sebastian Santander ed.

Brussels: Peter Lang, The Diplomat. In , the AIIB started to shoulder project risks and, along this terrestrial belt and maritime road, to finance the construction of extensive infrastructure and communication routes such as roads, ports, bridges and railways. Recherches internationales, n. The contrary is true, as the Sino-American power struggle taking place through regional projects is ongoing. The Trump administration has substituted an alternative strategy for the TPP's free-trade area.

The next step would be to ensure that the concept of Asia-Pacific region - to which China is highly attached - is no longer mentioned in official speech. According to the Trump administration's national security strategy, this would be an area stretching from the west coast of the United States all the way across the Indian Ocean and on to the eastern coasts of India The White House, The White House.

National strategic strategy of United States of America. Lastly, the US strategy is intended to seal agreements - albeit bilateral ones - with all countries in the Indo-Pacific region, by pursuing a transactional approach to international relations that would put the United States in a stronger position when renegotiating international trade agreements.

Just like the George W. Bush government did, the Trump administration aims to leverage the American market's attractiveness to gain more concessions from trade third-parties. This strategy is not aimed at excluding the United States from globalisation. Instead it seeks to enable the Trump administration - which views a trade surplus as a symbol of strength - to achieve a key goal: reducing the nation's structural trade deficit.

As with the Asian pivot strategy, the Indo-Pacific plan backed by Trump was conceived to counter China's influence and its regional projects. China's grand strategic designs tend to promote state power. Yet large state-owned groups and infrastructure projects, as well as the plans hatched by Obama and Trump, inherently believe more - albeit to different degrees - in the merits of the market, deregulation and private initiatives.

Nonetheless, the Trump administration sees globalisation as a zero-sum game, that is to say a situation where there can only be a winner and a loser.

Europeans are still active in this sphere, with the EU inevitably involved in the competition between large regional and interregional projects. The EU encourages the development and consolidation of regional groups in line with global competition worldwide.

China's plans and the Trump administration have further prompted European authorities to secure interregional trade agreements with regions like Asean, Mercosur or Sadc. In terms of their content, the agreements negotiated by the EU have more in common with those promoted by the United States than with those pushed by China. However, although the EU stands fully behind its guidelines for a barrier-free market economy, the EU-supported projects for regional or multilateral trade agreements must if possible be based on the rules that apply in Europe for intellectual property, services, investments, public tenders or dispute settlement Santander, SANTANDER, Sebastian.

The EU and the shifts of power in the international order: challenges and responses. European Foreign Affairs Review. Like the other players mentioned, the EU is also eager to be a top international rule-maker, so that it can better shape the globalised and multipolar order. Regions typically develop in different ways and at different speeds, because they are driven by diverse political projects. Each regional group has evolved according to its own situation and has a unique history.

There is more than one kind of regionalism, as regional organisations come in many shapes and forms. Each regional initiative follows its own rules and standards, which influence the interaction between public and private players operating in a specific territory. Yet regionalism is clearly affected by political and economic changes in the world - not to mention the actions of leading international powers.

Although regionalism has staying power, it is continually under construction and evolves according to internal political and economic developments. International trends also significantly affect regionalism, especially trends such as globalisation and the world's growing diffusion of power.

As a political phenomenon, regionalism is dynamic and ever-changing. It can benefit from progress or suffer slow-downs and even setbacks. These changes can also result from competition between regional cooperation or integration projects, as they vie to shape the standards and rules of today's global political and economic order.

Competition between the regions is today being intensified by the new realities of the globalised multipolar economy. Abrir menu Brasil.

Abrir menu. Abstract This paper focuses on regional organisations, looking at how they are studied in international relations and especially in international political economy. Keywords: Globalisation; Competing regionalism; Multipolarity. Introduction This paper focuses on regional organisations, looking at how they are studied in international relations and especially in international political economy. Understanding the regional repositioning of international players In the history of international relations, regionalism clearly grew most in the period after the Cold War.

Is globalisation driving regionalism? This first level can be referred to as a "proto-region", or a "pre-regional zone", since there is no organized society. In order to further regionalize, this particular territory must, necessarily, be inhabited by human beings, maintaining some kind of relationship.

This brings us to the social dimension. Region as social system implies trans-local relations between human groups. These relations constitute a security complex, in which the constituent units, as far as their own security is concerned, are dependent on each other, as well as the overall stability of the regional system. Thus the social relations may very well be hostile. The region, just like the international system of which it forms a part, can therefore be described as anarchic.

The classic case of such a regional order is 19th century Europe. At this low level of organization, a balance of power or some kind of "concert", is the sole security guarantee. This is a rather primitive security mechanism.

We could therefore talk of a "primitive" region. Region as organized cooperation in any of the cultural, economic, political or military fields. In this case, region is defined by the list of countries which are the formal members of the regional organization in question. In the absence of some kind of organized cooperation, the concept of regionalism does not make much sense. This more organized region could be called the "formal" region. It should be possible to relate the "formal region" defined by organizational membership to the "real region" which has to be defined in terms of potentialities and through less precise criteria in order to assess the relevance and future potential of a particular regional organization.

Region as civil society takes shape when the organizational framework facilitates and promotes social communication and convergence of values throughout the region. Of course the pre-existence of a shared cultural tradition in a particular region is of crucial importance here, but culture is not only a given but continuously created and recreated.

However, the defining element here is the multidimensional and voluntary quality of regional cooperation and the societal characteristics indicating an emerging "regional anarchic society", that is something more than anarchy, but less than society.

Region as acting subject with a distinct identity, actor capability, legitimacy and structure of decision-making. Crucial areas for regional intervention are conflict resolution between and particularly within former "states" and creation of welfare in terms of social security and regional balance.

This process is similar to state formation and nation building, and the ultimate outcome could be a "region-state", which in terms of scope can be compared to the classical empires, but in terms of political order constitutes a voluntary evolution of a group of formerly sovereign national, political units into a supranational security community, where sovereignty is pooled for the best of all. The five levels may express a certain evolutionary logic, but the idea is not to suggest a stage theory but to provide a framework for comparative analysis.

Since regionalism is a political project it may, just like a nation-state project, fail. This, similarly, means peripheralization and decreasing regionness for the region concerned. Changes in terms of regionness thus imply changes of the structural position in the centre-periphery order.

Regionalization affects and is affected by many levels of the world system: the system as a whole, the level of interregional relations, and the internal structure of the single region. It is not possible to state which of these levels comes first or which is the more important, since changes on the various levels interact.

There are also different dimensions of the process relating to each other. Regional integration was traditionally seen as a harmonization of trade policies leading to deeper economic integration, with political integration as a possible future result. The concept "new regionalism" refers to a transformation of a particular region from relative heterogeneity to increased homogeneity with regard to a number of dimensions, the most important being culture, security, economic policies and political regimes.

The convergence along these four dimensions may be a natural process or politically steered or, most likely, a mixture of the two. A certain level of "sameness" is a necessary but not sufficient condition. Culture takes a long time to change. Of importance here is rather the inherently shared culture which usually is transnational, since national borders in many cases are artificial divisions of a larger cultural area.

A transformation of the security regime from security complex towards security community is perhaps the most crucial factor. Changes in political regimes today typically mean democratization. Changes in economic policies nowadays normally go in the direction of economic openness. The dynamics of regionalization thus constitute the interaction between these dimensions and can, furthermore, be found at different levels of world society: On the global level, the changing structure of the world system provides room-for-manoeuvre for the regional actors, at the same time as the process of regionalization in itself constitutes a structural change towards multipolarity.

On the level of interregional relations the behaviour of one region affects the behaviour of others. European regionalism is, for instance, the trigger of global regionalization, at least in two different ways: one positive in promoting regionalism by providing a model the other negative in provoking regionalism by constituting a protectionist threat.

The regions themselves constitute arenas for sometimes competing, sometimes converging "national interests". If the overall trend within a particular geographical area is convergence of interests, we can speak of an emerging regional actor.

The actual process of regionalization is triggered by events on the sub-national level as well. One example is the "black hole" syndrome or the disintegration of nation states due to ethno-national mobilization. A less violent form of national disintegration is the emergence of economic micro-regions as the geopolitical environment creates a more direct access to the macro economy for dynamic sub-national regions. Although the region is slowly becoming an actor in its own terms, the nation states typically still conceive it as an arena where so-called "national interests" could be promoted, and these interests are, of course, differently conceived by different social groups in society.

Whereas certain groups may find it rewarding to move into the supranational space, others cling to the national space where they have their vested interests to protect. Regionalization thus creates its own counterforces. The Crucial Role of State Behaviour Regionalization does not come about unless the states in a particular region want it.

It may come about through a more or less spontaneous or unintended convergence in terms of political regime, economic policy or security, but often one can identify a triggering political event which sets the process in motion. Naturally, this political event is related to the main players in the region, the policy makers, in contradistinction to policy takers, the smaller players. In order to understand the regionalization in various areas of the world, it is thus wise to observe the behaviour of the policy makers.

We can divide the policy makers into two categories, those whose influence goes beyond a particular region, the world powers, and those whose influence is confined to a particular region, the regional powers. World powers may not be able to achieve hegemony on the world level, which, since the range of their influence is undefined and varying, means that there will be a certain competition among them. The regional powers may be hegemonic in their own regions which implies a general acceptance or at least tolerance of their leadership throughout the region or simply dominant which means that they are looked upon with suspicion and fear among the minor players.

The policy takers can be further subdivided into: those who are supportive of the regionalization process sometimes the smaller players are the main proponents , the "supporters" , those who try to find their own path or, rather, several paths since they would be welcome into more than one regional organization , "the multi-trackers" , and those who are left in the cold since they are seen as liabilities rather than assets , "the isolated".

In some cases regionalism grows from extended bilateral relations, for instance in the Americas, where both Nafta and Mercosur resulted from a situation where third parties Canada and Uruguay became anxious not to be left in the cold. The regional powers in these cases the USA and Brazil usually prefer bilateralism to regionalism. This is also the case in South Asia, where the small players softly imposed regionalism on the regional power. India was always more in favour of bilateralism.

The same behaviour seems to be repeated by China in East Asia. The change from bilateralism to regionalism is thus one crucial indicator of increasing regionness of a region, but as here defined, increasing regionness can also result from overlapping bilateral agreements within a region, since such agreements imply policy convergences in various fields.

It is therefore important to take the point of departure in the geographical area as such, and not from the formal regional agreements. The Impact of Regionalization The final issue I want to discuss here concerns the consequences of regionalization in terms of security and development. What are, first, the security problems to which regionalization may provide a solution?

They can be summarized in the metaphor of "black holes", or what in UN terminology is referred to as "failed states". National disintegration seems to reinforce the process of regionalization via threats to regional security, provoking some kind of reaction on the regional level. It may even form part of the process of regionalization, since the enlargement of political space provides opportunities for different sub-national and micro-regional forces, previously locked into state structures, to reassert themselves.

The collapse of political authority at one level of society tends to open up a previously latent power struggle at lower levels, and in a complex multi-ethnic polity the process of disintegration may go on almost indefinitely. However, sooner or later there must be some reorganization of social power and political authority on a higher level of societal organization, most probably the region.

This is likely to be preceded by some form of external intervention with the purpose of reversing the disintegration process. Again the region may play a role, but there are also other, and so far more important, actors. A distinction can be made between five different modes of external intervention: unilateral, bilateral, pluri-lateral, regional and multilateral. In the bilateral case there is some kind of more or less voluntary agreement between the intervener and the country in which the intervention is made.

The pluri-lateral variety can be an ad hoc group of countries or some more permanent form of alliance. The regional intervention is carried out by a regional organization and thus has a territorial orientation. The multilateral, finally, normally means a UN-led or at least UN-sanctioned operation. These distinctions are not very clear-cut, and in real world situations several actors at different levels may be involved, the number increasing with the complexity of the conflict itself.

However, it is my belief that future external interventions will be a combination of regional and multilateral operations, but with an increasingly important role for the former.

The record of regional intervention in domestic conflicts and regional conflict resolution is a recent one and therefore the empirical basis for making an assessment is weak. However, in almost all world regions there have been attempts at conflict resolution with a more or less significant element of regional intervention, often in combination with multilateralism UN involvement.

Perhaps the future world order can be characterized as regional multilateralism? Secondly, the new regionalism may provide solutions to development problems, which in fact can be seen as a form of conflict prevention, since many of the internal conflicts are rooted in development problems of different kinds. Under the old regionalism, free trade arrangements reproduced centre-periphery tensions within the regions, which made regional organizations either disintegrate or fall into slumber.

Few serious environmental problems can be solved within the framework of the nation state. Some problems are bilateral, some are global, quite a few are regional, the latter often related to water: coastal waters, rivers and groundwater. The fact that regional management programmes exist and persist, in spite of nationalist rivalries, shows the imperative need for environmental cooperation the "resource management" argument ; Regional conflict resolution, if successful and durable, eliminates distorted investment patterns, since the "security fund" military expenditures can be tapped for more productive use the "peace dividend" argument.

In sum, development regionalism contains the traditional arguments for regional cooperation such as territorial size and economies of scale, but, more significantly, add some which are expressing new concerns and uncertainties in the current transformation of the world order and world economy.

During the Cold War a common argument the "common security" approach against nuclear armament was that the destructive capacity of the military establishments was excessive and therefore irrational, and that whatever reduction of the level of armament that could be negotiated might be used for civil development purposes.

Some regions, such as East Asia and Europe and within these regions Japan and West Germany in particular were seen as "free riders" of the security order since they could devote more resources to investment and economic growth. In the post-Cold War order these regions have been encouraged to take a larger responsibility for their own security. At the same time the removal of the Cold War "overlay" permitted latent conflicts to re-emerge, giving rise to costly conventional armaments races.

The security situations differ from region to region, with vacuum problems in East Asia and Europe, eruptions of older conflicts in South Asia and the Middle East, breakdowns of political order leading to "tribal ism" in Africa and the Balkans. The only region experiencing relative peace is Latin America, which now may be said to have a comparative advantage in peace and political stability.

The peace in East Asia seems less stable, but in view of the high degree of economic independence, the states have a high stake in regional security. Here the circle is closed: regional cooperation for development reduces the level of conflict and the peace dividend facilitates further development cooperation. This positive circle can also be turned into a vicious circle, where conflict and underdevelopment feed on each other. Security and development form one integrated complex, at the same time as they constitute two fundamental imperatives for regional cooperation and increasing regionness.

The levels of regionness between regions in the process of being formed will continue to be uneven. Only the future will decide where these levels will be, and where the balance between regionalization and globalization will be struck.

However, political will and political action will certainly play their part in breaking the vicious circle of regional conflict, insecurity and underdevelopment. Regionalism in "the Pacific Age" Asia-Pacific is becoming the new centre of global capitalism. It can also be seen as an emerging trade bloc under the leadership of Japan, its distinctness depending on the relative degrees of cooperation and conflict among competing capitalisms: North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific.

It contains several potential regional formations, the shapes of which, due to unresolved security dilemmas, are still uncertain. It is thus not so easy to tell what is intraregional and interregional in the case of Asia-Pacific.

So far the three regions within the Asia-Pacific area show a low degree of regionness. East Asia lacks any kind of formal regionalist framework. The political rationales for these formations have thus completely changed, much like in Europe, and there are new possible alignments.

The "European Pacific" Australia and New Zealand may turn Euro-Asian, but they may also be seen as regional great powers in a fourth "region" of Pacific micro states: the South Pacific. In the sections below we first describe the historical heterogeneity of the Pacific region, secondly experiences of regional conflict and conflict resolution, and thirdly integrative forces that nevertheless exist.

Pacific Regions and Regional Identity In the first section of this chapter an argument was made that regionalization is a worldwide process forming a part of global transformation. A crucial issue is thus what regional formations can be found in this particular geographical area, and what, if any, shared cultural basis there is to form a regional identity. Under the impact of successive immigrations this heritage is becoming less distinct and economically the region is becoming part of Asia.

Although not seen as "Asian" being far away from the Asian continent , the South Pacific is also becoming part of the East Asian economic space. East Asia is the most dynamic of the world regions, containing a hegemonic contender Japan , an enormous "domestic" market China , three NICs South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong and a socialist autarky North Korea , in the midst of major changes which may fundamentally alter the pattern of cooperation within the region.

A reunification of Korea, a democratization of China and a more independent Japanese role would release an enormous potential. These changes are admittedly not imminent, but on the other hand quite feasible. At present the East Asian region is a region largely in the geographical, economic and perhaps cultural Confucian-Buddhist sense of the concept, while a regional security order is missing. Previous experiences of "regionalism" have been rather imperialistic.

The degree of "regionness" is thus low in spite of the fact that unplanned economic integration is now taking place due to the dominance of the yen. Regional integration thus takes place without much formal institutionalization Palmer , p. The end of the Cold War opened up new possibilities for inter-subregional contacts, widening the potential regional cooperation. The Confucian model provides a dominant pattern of social and political organization, which now frequently is hailed as a cultural alternative to Westernization Herald Tribune, 13 July Many countries are facing internal basic policy options which will have a crucial impact on further regionalization and future regional configurations.

Perhaps the most complex issue in the region is the future role of Japan. Will it remain number two in Pax Americana or take a more independent global or regional role?

The latter, and perhaps more likely option, would imply the accumulation of military strength and a break with the introverted Japanese world view. It also implies reversing the process of "de-Asianization" begun in the 19th century. The former course presupposes that the US itself does not turn to isolationism, which would create great confusion as far as Japan is concerned Tamamoto References to "global partnership" cannot hide the fact that the old security order is defunct, due to the disappearance of the main threat, against which the order was built, and the emergence of new threats which may necessitate new approaches.

There is, as yet, no national consensus in Japan regarding her proper role in the world. The erosion of the hegemonic position of the Liberal Democratic Party LDP implies that different options will be more politically articulated and possibly that future lines of action will be based on a changing pattern of political alliances.

The pressure on Japan from outside also increases, due to the regionalist and protectionist trend in the world economy. Japan, not a great practitioner of but increasingly dependent on free trade, has so far been rather negative or at least neutral to the idea of regionalism. It would, if regionalization were to be the main trend, appear as a regional power in more than one sense, which is bound to create suspicions throughout the region.

Some countries have the Greater East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere in vivid memory, and even today the Japanese attitude towards Asia is not free from arrogance. Japan has, however, a rather weak identity as an Asian power, and the prospect of "re-Asianization" does not seem to be very popular. The latter would necessitate that Japan acted more like a powerful nation state, less like an international trading firm Pyle Much will of course depend on the future behaviour of China in the region. China will continue the long road towards a more open economy in spite of the temporary isolation which followed in the wake of the Tiananmen Square incident.

China's self-reliance-oriented economy built in the Cold War context is in need of transformation, which as in the case of Viet Nam implies a change in the domestic balance of power away from Beijing and towards the south, where foreign investments flow.

China as a centralized empire is probably doomed, but its eventual dissolution could hopefully be less turbulent than the dissolution of the Soviet empire proved to be. This means that previous conflicts have had a strong element of external superpower intervention in accordance with the Cold War pattern. This situation is now changing quite dramatically, and more traditional rivalries are resurging, more similar to a 19th century Europe-type situation.

The larger Asia-Pacific "region" or rather geographical area was most affected by the Cold War, and the recent lifting of the superpower overlay therefore has created a kind of vacuum and a great uncertainty in the security field. Several powers great powers and middle powers have more or less open regional ambitions, which must be related to turbulent and highly unpredictable domestic situations in the countries concerned.

Regarding the China-Japan relation, Barry Buzan has made an interesting comparison with the role of restless Germany, now played by China, in 19th century Europe, whereas the British role as the global power fully satisfied with the status quo is played by Japan Buzan The avoidance of a replay of this drama is obviously necessary for regional peace. Korean unification is another key to real regional cooperation.

Considering the economic superiority of South Korea and the political lag in North Korea, such a reunion may take different forms: war, a spontaneous process of the German type an "Anschluss" or a more organized path through preparatory negotiations.

Regional conflict management is thus an important step towards further regionalization. At the same time the overall regional framework for conflict resolution is weak, hardly existing in East Asia, and so far confined to one of the two subregions in South-East Asia. Stable peace in the larger region would change the basic parameters for the way ASEAN operates at present. As the superpowers pull out, old rivalries are emerging, at the same time as the objective preconditions for a cooperation encompassing the whole region in the longer run are improving.

There is a strong feeling of encirclement and external penetration in the South-East Asian region, coexisting with a tradition of reliance on external security support. Somehow this contradiction must be overcome.

The history goes much further back, actually to the Viet Nam war. The ultra-leftist Khmer Rouge regime pursued an extreme autarkic line which included the physical elimination of urban "cosmopolitan" elements. The first intervention was of the unilateral neighbourly kind.

The Vietnamese intervention led to a sharp polarization both at the regional and the global level. In , when the Soviet veto had disappeared from international decision-making, an agreement in the Security Council permanent five on the "framework for a comprehensive settlement of the Cambodia conflict" was reached and the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia UNTAC was created.

This, the largest UN operation so far, was the beginning of the peace process and included a democratic election. The non-participation of the Khmer Rouge in the elections fueled the fears that the guerrillas planned a division of the country. However, their political strength was much less than generally expected.

They had become "rebels without a cause" Theyer The turnout of the voters, on the other hand, was much larger than expected and was a triumph for the UN. The operation gave an opportunity for Japan to participate in a large international operation, probably indicating a more far-going security interest in the region. For Cambodia several question marks remain, above all the question of how the Khmer Rouge may rejoin the national community and on what conditions.

Only when this problem has found a solution, is it possible to talk about real conflict resolution. So far this is rather a case of multilateral conflict management with a strong regional component.

Cambodia has strongly declared its intention to become a member of ASEAN, and this co-optation which can be compared to the inclusion of Greece, Spain and Portugal in the EEC is also seen by the regional organization as a stabilizing measure. Towards Regional Cohesion? East Asia and South-East Asia are, due to economic linkages, becoming hard to separate from each other, and will be even more converging in the future, as countries such as Malaysia and Thailand apart from Singapore, which is already known as an NIC are more or less successfully trying to apply the NIC strategy.

Thus, the Asian core of the Pacific rim, east and south-east, will probably follow its own economic course. The latter subregion has been under Communist rule, with Viet Nam exercising subregional hegemony. This role is now played down at the same time as market-oriented economic policies doimoi are implemented. This threat was a crucial factor behind the relative cohesiveness of the organization in the Cold War era.

The source of common cause and identity was thus partly an external threat, and there were few incentives for economic cooperation. The planned tariff slopes of the different countries differ according to starting point and speed, which complicates the competitive situation in the intraregional trade of the constituent countries.

The more protectionist countries will probably use AFTA to dump into more open economies. Many therefore doubt that this free trade zone will be realized. ASEAN countries are direct competitors in many areas and it will take a long time for them to develop into complementary economies. Attempts to establish durable regional cooperation among Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan have ultimately failed.

The failure of regionalism in Central Asia is a puzzle. Challenged by the rise of China, Russia uses the EAEU to preserve its hegemonic influence over the former Soviet Republics in Central Asia, and it has been actively pursuing the creation of multilateral organizations with authoritarian institutional designs—a model which it ineffectively tries to force upon its neighbors.

These competing geopolitical visions for regional cooperation projects has hampered any actual progress in establishing a meaningful regional institution. Instead of working towards implementing tangible regional projects, Central Asian states have often instead used official regional structures to try to increase their own influence at the expense of their neighbors. While avoiding structured regional institutions might have helped Central Asian states protect their sovereignty from outside powers such as Russia and China, the region still struggles to enhance regional economic connectivity and development.

This goes to show that empty institutions based the theoretical need for cooperation—rather than actual interest and willingness to work towards cooperation—will not facilitate the development of these structures. However, the build up of regionalism is made only possible by the sheer width of the world that globalization encompasses and thus could not replace the system in which it exists.

With multiple multilateral institutions holding regulations over regional bodies, it is very hard for globalization and international multilateral systems to be overturned. In addition, with the rise of interregionalism, or the pursuit of formalized intergovernmental relations with respect to relationships across distinct regions, the world is able to act cohesively on a larger scale.

Henceforth, with the political and economic stability offered to countries by regionalism, future interregional relations can be presumed to be peaceful. In the face of weakly tamed globalizing world, it has been argued that states have responded through regionalizing in order to preserve economic, political, and cultural stability. Although it could be argued that regionalism is simply placing the international system on a larger scale, the amount of stability and regulation that comes with regionalism is incomparable.

Therefore, it has been properly argued that regionalism is in fact a building bloc of achieving global peace and cohesiveness through its more specified and regulative approach. Odell, ed. Aggarwal and Edward A. Makinda and F. Ali Watson Date: April Before you download your free e-book, please consider donating to support open access publishing. E-IR is an independent non-profit publisher run by an all volunteer team.