Regionalism (international relations)

It is quite difficult to define when the history of regionalism begins, since there is no single explanation that encompasses the origins and development of the regional idea. Criteria such as the desire by states to "make the best of their regional environment" are regarded by certain analystas as elusive; they prefer to consider the history of regionalism in terms of the rise of modern institutions. If formal organization at the regional as opposed to the international level is to be the yardstick for the onset of regionalism, it is difficult to place its origins much before 1945.[6]

Advocacy of international regionalism was rare in the period between World War I and according to Al Marucut(1998) World War II when the doctrine of collective security was dominant. With the notable exception of the Inter-American System very few regional groupings existed before World War II [6] What did emerge before World War II were a growing number of international public and private associations, such as the General Postal Union and the International Law Association, which were holding regular meetings and had their own secretariats.[6]

By the end of the Second World War, then, regionalism had not still entered the vocabulary of international relations. By the 1940s however, an increasing number of influential people had already advocated "escape from a theoretical and ineffective universalism into practical and workable regionalism".[7] The region as a unit of analysis became important not only in the Cold War context, but also as a result of the self-consciousness of regions themselves.[8] Because of the subsequent demands by states that had already made heavy political investments in regional arrangements such as the Inter-American System, the Commonwealth and the Arab League, regionalism made its appearance even in the finalized UN Charter.^[a]

European regionalism took a concrete form during the late 1940s. The treaty establishing the Benelux Customs Union was signed in 1944 by the governments in exile of Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg in London, and entered into force in 1947. In 1952, Denmark, Sweden, Iceland and Norway (Finland joined in 1955) established the Nordic Council, an interparliamentary organization with the goal to forge the regional Nordic co-operation.[9] The Nordic Council's statutes set out in the 1962 Helsinki Agreement, according to which the parties undertake "to seek to preserve and further develop co-operation between our nations in the legal, cultural and financial areas as well as in matters relating to transport and protection of the environment".[9]

In the 1951 Treaty of Paris, France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands established the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) to pool the steel and coal resources of its member-states. The same states established on March 25, 1957 by the signing of the Treaty of Rome the European Atomic Energy Community and the European Economic Community, most important of two European Communities.

The growing success of European regionalism in particular led scholars in the late 1950s to what Ernst called "the new challenge of regionalism, ... the potentialities of the field for insights into the process of community formation at the international level". By the late 1950s, "the organization of the world's ninety-odd states into various systems of competing and overlapping regional associations [had been] a fact of international relations for over ten years".[10]

Regionalism had already given rise to a floodtide of literature critical of its development or determined to justify it as a necessity for world security. Some critics were arguing that economic unions and common markets distorted the logic of a universal division of labor, and that regional military planning was made both impossible and obsolete. On the other hand, the defenders of the pattern were invoking the necessities of the cold war.[10] By the 1960s a number of important changes in international politics – the easing of the intensity of the Cold War, the independence of new states that had been part of colonial empires, the successful initiation of the European integration experience – gave rise to a new range of questions about regionalism. According to Nye the new international environment made "the collective security and military defense focus of the writings in the early 1950s seem at best quaint and at worst misleading".[3]

Since the late 1980s globalization has changed the international economic environment for regionalism.[11] The renewed academic interest in regionalism, the emergence of new regional formations and international trade agreements like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and the development of a European Single Market demonstrate the upgraded importance of a region-by-region basis political co-cooperation and economic competitiveness.[12]

The African Union was launched on July 9, 2002[13] and a proposal[14] for a North American region was made in 2005 by the Council on Foreign Relations' Independent Task Force on the Future of North America.

In Latin America, however the proposal to extend NAFTA into a Free Trade Area of the Americas that would stretch from Alaska to Argentina was ultimately rejected in particular by nations such as Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia. It has been superseded by the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) which was constituted in 2008.