Chapter 26: Comparative Regional Integration and Regionalism

Fredrik Söderbaum

Comparative regional integration and regionalism Since the mid-1980s there has been an explosion of various forms of regionalist projects on a global scale. The widening and deepening of the European Union (EU) is the most pervasive example, but regionalism is also made visible through the revitalization or expansion of many other regional projects around the world, such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the Southern African Development Community (SADC), and the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). Today's regionalism is closely linked with the shifting nature of global politics and the intensification of globalization. Regionalism is characterized by the involvement of almost all governments in the world, but it also involves a rich variety of non-state actors, resulting in multiplicities of formal and informal regional governance and regional networks in most issue areas. This pluralism ...

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