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 and multidimensionality of contemporary regionalism gives rise to a number of new puzzles and challenges for comparative politics. Cumulative knowledge has grown within the study of regionalism and regional integration during the last two decades, especially on aspects of European integration, the institutional design of regional organizations, the problems of collective action on the regional level, and the relationship between globalization and regionalism. However, the challenges and weaknesses in the study of regionalism and regional integration are primarily related to the fragmented nature of this research field, in particular the weak debate around comparative analysis. Despite a growing number of specific comparisons of selected aspects of regionalism (especially regarding regional institutions and the role of power) in selected regions (particularly in the Triad: Europe, East Asia and North America), there is virtually no systematic debate regarding the fundamentals of comparison, such as ‘what to compare’, ‘how to compare’ or ‘why compare’. Consequently, the purpose of this chapter is to contribute to the general discussion about ‘the problem of comparison’ in the study of regionalism and regional integration. It does not attempt a detailed empirical comparison of a set of pre-defined 26