What are the reasons for the regionalisation of world politics?

How does
regionalism shape world politics?

Despite the revolution in communication technology and resultant shrinking of the 'global'
realm, regional geopolitics has always remained an important subset of global/international
politics, partly because of geo-cultural contiguities and close and shared historical
experiences. Therefore, to say that regionalisation of world politics is more visible now than
before would be a misnomer.

From regionalisation to regionalism, it would take a conceptual jump of some sorts. While
regionalisation would mean localisation of major political interactions among states based on
local reflexes, orientations and socio-historical legacies, regionalism would mean a
perceptible/perceived commonality of vision and consciousness that acts as a centripetal
force for different states to acknowledge commonness and privilege it over differences that
could divide them. Regionalism, even when it is parochially perceived, emphasises a will of
togetherness and a desire to overcome ethno-cultural prejudices in quest of the larger goal of
working with synergy to ensure mutual advantage and prosperity for a region as a whole. In a
major sense, geography determines such localness or 'regionality', and regional groupings like
SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation), BIMSTEC (Bay of Bengal
Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation), ASEAN (Association of
Southeast Asian Nations) and SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organisation) indicate that even
common historical experiences sometimes generate the impulses (for cooperation) that
engender such regionalism.

At the global level, what we mean by 'world politics' is a summation of such regionalised
geo-political developments. A strong sense of regionalism may not necessarily be seen as
antagonistic to the creation of world consciousness, especially at a time when the information
technology revolution and artificial intelligence have made it impossible for regions to wall
themselves off from one another and conduct their politics in an insulated manner. The main
reason for this is cross-regional linkages that bring in yet another dynamic to regionalisation
of politics and mark it as a defining feature of world politics. Many states are thus members
of different regional groupings and blocks that come together to maximise their security and
raise their economic status by all means, in the true tradition of realism, that continues to
define and determine state behaviour, even if one employs different theoretical paradigms to
interpret regional and global politics.
Rather than looking at regionalisation of politics and regionalism as separate and
unconnected phenomena, these should be taken as building blocks for world/international
politics.
Posted on May 20, 2021
Views expressed are of the expert and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Manohar
Parrikar IDSA or the Government of India.