A WORLD OF

REGIONS
 Governments, associations, societies, and group form regional
organizations & networks as a way of coping with the challenges of
globalization. Globalizations has made people aware of the world in
general.

REGIONALISM is often seen as a political and economic phenomenon,

that encompasses a broader area.
It can be examined in relation to identities, ethics, religion ecological
sustainability and health.
It is also a process, and must be treated as an “emergent, socially
constituted phenomenon.”
COUNTRIES, REGIONS, & GLOBALIZATION
Edward D. Mansfield & Helen V. Milner state that economic and
political definitions of regions vary.
First, regions are “a group of countries located in the same
geographically specified area.
Second, the words regionalization & regionalism should not be
interchanged, as the former refers to the regional concentration of
economic flows”, while the latter is “a political process characterized by
economic policy cooperation & coordination among countries.
Countries respond economically & politically to globalization in various
ways. Some are large enough and have a lot of resources to dictate how
they participate in processes of global integration.
• Singapore & Switzerland compensate for their lack of resources by turning
themselves into financial & banking hubs.
• Singapore developed its harbor facilities transit port for ships carrying
different commodities from Africa, Europe, The Middle East & Mainland
Southeast Asia to countries in the Asia Pacific.
Countries form regional associations for several reason. One is for military
defense.
• The most widely known defense grouping is the NORTH ATLANTIC TREATY
ORGANIZATION (NATO) formed during the COLD WAR when several
Western European countries plus The United States agreed to protect
against the threat of The Soviet Union. The Soviet Union responded by
creating its regional alliance, the WARSAW PACT, consisting of the Eastern
European countries under Soviet domination and it imploded in
December 1991.
Countries also form regional organizations to pool their resources, get
better returns for their exports, as well as expand their leverage
against trading partners.
• The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) was
established in 1960 by:
Iran
Iraq
Kuwait
Saudi Arabia
Venezuela
This regional alliance flexed its muscles in the 1970’s when its member
countries took over domestic production & dictated crude oil prices in
the world market.
Moreover, the presidents of:
Egypt
Ghana
India
Indonesia
Yugoslavia
created the NON-ALLIGNED MOVEMENT (NAM) in 1961 to pursue
*World Peace and *International cooperation, *Human Rights, *National
and Racial Equality, *Non-intervention, & *Peaceful conflict resolution.
• NAM had 120 member countries. Finally, economic crisis compels countries
to come together. The Thai economy collapsed in 1996 after foreign
currency speculators & troubled international banks demanded that the
Thai government pay back it loans.
• The crisis began to spread to other Asian countries as their currencies were
also devalued & foreign investments left in a hurry.
• The International Monetary Fund (IMF) tried to reverse the crisis after the
ASEAN countries along with China, Japan, & South Korea agreed to
establish an emergency fund to anticipate a crisis that the Asian economies
stabilized.
• The crisis made ASEAN more “Unified & Coordinated.” After the Vietnam
War, ASEAN continued to act as a military alliance to isolate Vietnam after it
invaded Cambodia, but there were also the beginnings of economic
cooperation.
Conclusion:
Official regional associations now cover vast swaths of the
world. The population of the countries that joined the Asia-
Pacific Economic Council (APEC) alone comprised 37% of the
world’s population in 2007. These countries are also part of
“smaller” organizations that include the Association of
Southeast Asian Nations, the Shanghai Cooperation
Organization, the North American Free Trade Agreement,
the Caribbean and Pacific Group of States, and the Union of
South American Nations. Even “isolationist” North Korea is
part of the Regional Forum, which discusses security issues
in the region.
• In the same way the countries will find it difficult to
reject all forms of global economic integration, it will also
be hard for them to turn their backs in their regions.
Even if the UK leaves the EU, it must continue to trade
with its immediate neighbors and will, therefore, be
forced to implement many EU rules. None of this is to say
that regional organizations will remain unaltered. The
history of regionalism shows that regional associations
emerge as new global concerns arise. The future of
regionalism will be contingent on the immense changes
in global politics that will emerge in the 21st century.