Inter-regionalism in the Global South: comparison with extra-, cross-, trans-, and pan-regionalism

Abstract

No region exists in isolation. Regions always have some external linkages. Existing studies on regions’ external relations often emphasise inter-regionalism, namely, a project to link two regionalism projects. The majority of these studies deals with the European Union’s (EU) ties with regionalism elsewhere. However, the EU is very unique, because its external policies are centralised in Brussels, and inter-regionalism naturally plays a dominant role in forming the region’s external relations. This study attempts to analyse inter-regionalism in a comparative manner, using the cases of cooperation projects across regions in the Global South. By looking into the web of cooperation projects across Southeast Asia and South Asia as well as that across Southern America and Southern Africa, this study examines whether inter-regionalism is a substitute or complement to other forms of cooperation including extra-, cross-, trans-, and pan-regionalism.

Notes on contributor

Shintaro Hamanaka is currently Senior Fellow at the Institute of Developing Economies of Japan (IDE-JETRO). Between 2018 and 2020, he was on sabbatical from IDE-JETRO and held visiting fellowship at Johns Hopkins University and Wilson Center in Washington DC. Before joining the IDE-JETRO in 2016, he worked for the Asian Development Bank (ADB) for 8 years, responsible for research on economic cooperation and integration in Asia, including free trade agreements (FTAs) and bilateral investment treaties (BITs). Between 2006 and 2008, he was involved in the Doha Round service trade negotiations at the Japanese Mission to World Trade Organisation (WTO) in Geneva. Prior to this, he worked for Bank of Japan (BOJ) and was involved in policy making on regional financial cooperation in Asia soon after the Asian financial crisis. Email: [email protected]

Notes

1 Baert, Scaramagli, and Söderbaum (2014) use the term quasi-inter-regionalism to refer to the concept of extra-regionalism in this study.

2 States often distinguish cross-regional and intra-regional bilateralism and use the former as the “side-door” to forge extra-regionalism (Lanteigne 2010). In some fields such as investment, cross-regionalism, rather than intra-regional bilateralism, is a common practice (Chaisse and Hamanaka 2014).

3 Hänggi (2006) uses trans-regional when a new group is formed across three or more regions, and bi-regional when a new group is formed across two regions.

4 While the classification in this study is based on membership configuration, the term pan-regionalism is often associated with colonialism, though there are large variations based on historical context (Fawcett 2015).

5 When two regionalism overlap, the concept of projects across those two regions becomes rather complicated. Theoretically speaking, it is possible to argue that, for example, regionalism in Southeast and South Asia overlap. See Rüland and Arndt (2019).

6 http://asean.org/asean-shares-experience-to-saarc-in-setting-up-regional-disaster-response-mechanisms/

7 https://asean.org/?static_post=overview-of-asean-pakistan-sectoral-dialogue-cooperation-2.

8 http://www.thaifta.com/trade/study/pk_execeng.pdf

9 http://www.mauritiustrade.mu/en/trade-agreements/indian-ocean-rim-association.