New Regionalism

Aspects of New Regionalism

With the advent or reformulation of regional organizations, such the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, the European Union (EU), the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and the Southern African Development Community (SADC), among many others, the mid-1980s and early 1990s saw an increase in such regional political and economic activity. This activity prompted a reinvigoration of academic interest into the phenomenon of regionalism, which led to the argument that what was being observed was a new form of regionalism from the type prevalent immediately following World War II. Scholars identified several contours of new regionalism within the context of the political and economic world order that was emerging.

First, this new form of regionalism was occurring toward or after the end of the Cold War; the bipolar world context had shifted and was becoming increasingly multipolar. This shifting of the balance of power, it is argued, may have provided at least the perceived incentive for the increase in the number of regional organizations and their membership. In addition, the regional organizations formed in the earlier Cold War context were shaped by the interests of the dominant superpowers. In the new context, regionalist projects were increasingly shaped “from below” by [Page 617]the interests of actors, such as domestic civil society, in addition to states themselves.

Next, with regard to the global economy, the old form of regionalism tended toward protectionist economic blocs, where trade between member countries was encouraged but trade with countries outside the bloc was discouraged by external trade barriers. In contrast, the new regionalism was of a more open form, where the preferential treatment accorded to member states was also open to countries from outside the region. In this context, it is argued that this open form offers regional industries exposure to global competition and, together with other means of encouragement, the strategically necessary incentives to compete in the global marketplace. By this argument, scholars have concluded that instead of presenting obstacles to the process of increasing global integration, these new regionalist projects assist in furthering this objective.

New regionalism has also given rise to regional organizations that have a wide-ranging set of stated policy objectives. Whereas previous forms of regionalist projects were concerned with economic or security policies, the policies adopted by regional institutions formed or reinitiated in the late 1980s and early 1990s encompassed environmental and social policy, as well as policy to encourage transparency and accountability in governance. With regard to the regional projects initiated by poor countries, such as the SADC in the southern cone of the African continent, these regional organizations include explicit developmental objectives extending beyond trade and monetary policy, considering the concept of development, instead, as a multidimensional process. As such, organizations like the SADC have included health, education, poverty eradication, and gender equality strategies, for instance, among their stated development objectives.

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