Comparative Regionalisms For Development In The 21st Century

The global 'financial' crisis at the turn of the decade has accelerated changes in the relative standing of major regions. As both the US and Eurozone economies have confronted a series of setbacks and struggles to find their second breath, so Asia, Latin America and even Africa have picked up the slack and have been able to maintain high levels of growth. The resilience of the Global South questions whether we are witnessing an evolution towards a regional rebalancing or even global restructuring. This responding volume has four interrelated topics. It explores the transformation taking place in/with regard to the financing of development in the Global South and the apparition of new players in the field. The emergence of 'New Regionalisms' in the South and the usefulness of these experiences for comparative studies of regional relationship is explicated. It turns its attention to new forms of transnational governance that are emerging and the role that a novelty of actors play in this 'new multilateralism'. Finally, it looks into the implications of this trio of novel directions and players for analyses and policies.

This edited volume explains the importance of regional public goods (RPGs) for sustainable development and shows why they are particularly important in the context of 21st-century international relations. By presenting a new and original data set and by presenting original essays by renowned scholars, this book lays the foundation for what will become an increasingly important focus for both economic development and international relations as well as for their intersection. The volume contains four parts. The first introduces the core issues and concepts that are explored throughout the book as well as a new and original data set on RPGs. The second part further develops specific concepts important for understanding 21st-century RPGs: regional leadership, alliances, networks, and outcomes. The third examines how cooperation takes place worldwide for a range of important RPGs. Finally, the fourth part discusses how public goods are produced in specific regions, stressing that each region has a distinct context and that these contexts overlap in a decentered "multiplex" manner. Global economic cooperation will be different in the 21st century, and this volume will be of interest to students and scholars of global governance, economic development, international political economy, sustainable development, and comparative regionalism.

Comparing Regionalisms summarizes the UNU/WIDER international research project on the formation of world regions, and what implications this process will have for the future world order, particularly as far as the important issues of peace and development are concerned. This last volume in a series of five focuses on comparative research, covering all important regions of the world. Comparative studies are seen as the next step in regional analysis. Acknowledging the enormous variety of regional formations, the contributors nevertheless argue that a comparative approach to the dynamics of regionalization will provide important knowledge not only about the regions in question, but also about the emerging world order.

The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Regionalism - the first of its kind - offers a systematic and wide-ranging survey of the scholarship on regionalism, regionalization, and regional governance. Unpacking the major debates, leading authors of the field synthesize the state of the art, provide a guide to the comparative study of regionalism, and identify future avenues of research. Twenty-seven chapters review the theoretical and empirical scholarship with regard to the emergence of regionalism, the institutional design of regional organizations and issue-specific governance, as well as the effects of regionalism and its relationship with processes of regionalization. The authors explore theories of cooperation, integration, and diffusion explaining the rise and the different forms of regionalism. The handbook also discusses the state of the art on the world regions: North America, Latin America, Europe, Eurasia, Asia, North Africa and the Middle East, and Sub-Saharan Africa. Various chapters survey the literature on regional governance in major issue areas such as security and peace, trade and finance, environment, migration, social and gender policies, as well as democracy and human rights. Finally, the handbook engages in cross-regional comparisons with regard to institutional design, dispute settlement, identities and communities, legitimacy and democracy, as well as inter- and transregionalism.

Much has been said about the driving forces of region-building processes or regionalization worldwide, yet few systematic and comparative studies have been conducted on how regions can contribute to the building of other regions - and more concretely, how the European Union has 'pushed' for regionalization worldwide. This comparative book investigates the impact that the EU has on regionalization elsewhere through its inter-regional relations. Covering agriculture, trade, ASEAN, NAFTA, MERCOSUR and Commonwealth amongst other topics, it investigates whether the EU contributes directly, as well as indirectly, to increased regional integration in different parts of the world.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of the evolution and particularities of regional organizations across Africa, the Americas, Asia and Europe since 1945. The authors analyze the membership dynamics and policy scopes of 76 organizations, and compare their opportunities and challenges in regional governance. They consider organizations’ competencies in eleven different policy areas, including trade, security and environment, and trace patterns in their development. For those with interests in comparative regionalism, international relations, political science and international law, this is an essential companion to some of the world’s most significant organizations.

The author investigates the agenda for transformation in contemporary African development studies: policy studies, strategic studies, international relations and economic diplomacy. With a focus on the capacity dimension, he proposes critical policy and action-oriented recommendations on how to overcome present and future emergencies in Africa.

Harmon focuses on terrorism and insurgency in the lawless expanse of the Sahara Desert and the adjacent, transitional Sahel zone, plus the broader meta-region that includes countries such as Algeria, Mali, and Nigeria, and to a lesser extent, Niger and Mauritania. Covering such issues as Islamist terrorism, border insecurity, contraband, and human trafficking, this book looks at the interrelated problems of political and social pathologies that affect terrorist movements and security in the region. A valuable publication, it treats a series of related problems on the basis of a broadly defined area, with a special emphasis on the role of Islam as both a moderating and exacerbating factor. The book has a broader appeal than more narrowly focused country studies that derive from the perspective of only one problem such as terrorism or border insecurity.

Regionalism has regained momentum in the post-Cold War era. New economic groupings continue to spring up across the globe, while older regional organizations have strengthened their institutional bases and broadened their scope. Explaining the reinvigoration of regionalism requires comparative analyses that not only highlight the commonalities that characterize various regional experiments but also account for the differential outcomes and divergent trajectories such projects exhibit. This collection of seminal articles on regionalism advances theoretical concepts that can stimulate useful comparisons, along with scholarly surveys of important instances of regionalism in the contemporary world. Besides classic studies of the European Union, the volume includes authoritative overviews and case studies of regionalist projects in East Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, the Middle East and Central Eurasia. An introductory essay situates these articles in the context of the five decade-long research program on regional integration theory.