Regional Cooperation in Historical Perspective

Regional cooperation is not a new concept. During the sixties regional groupings were formed in almost all developing regions of the world in the wake of the creation of the European Common Market. However, in recent years interest in regionalism has been revived partly in response to increasing globalization. The new regionalism of the eighties and nineties envisages greater integration among members of both developed and developing countries through the establishment of closer economic and trade linkages. The creation of NAFTA, MERCOSUR and the Central European Free Trade Area, and a renewed interest on the part of ASEAN, SAARC and SADC to create free trade areas (see de Melo and Panagariya, 1993) are all testimony to this new trend. The context of earlier regionalism (that is, import-substituting industrialization) is very different from that of new regionalism (multilateralism and globalization). It is for this reason among others, that the issue of compatibility or conflict between regionalism and multilateralism has come to the forefront of the current debate about the global economy. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.