Question

1. Does regionalism support, or undermine, globalisation?

Answer 1

In today’s scenario, Globalization can be referred to as the consistent growth of the international market, that allows the easy penetration of national economies and along with that essentially & arduously trans-nationalizes economic, financial, environmental, and political problems whether a state likes it or not. As criticized by Political Scientist Toshiro Tanaka, “Globalization is inherited by exclusion, where actual benefits are evenly balanced by violence, misery and conflict”. The sources of globalization are detected in the mode of capitalist production, technological development, and/or the deregulation of financial markets. The process of globalization as has been argued by many as a weakly-regulated world system that favors the few and tortures the majority with transnational problems.

Unlike the old regionalism, that revolved around nations with dominant powers & implementation of protectionist policies, New Regionalism that has been generated the multi-polar world order, is a more impulsive process from within the regions, where constituent states require the cooperation in order to tackle new global challenges. This kind of regionalism is a more comprehensive and multidimensional. It is characterized by not only trade and economic development but also environmental, social, and security issues.

As far as the economic sphere is concerned, regionalism has proved to be significantly effective in securing markets and providing great economic strength through RTA’s – Regional Trade Agreements. In global institutions such as IMF and WTO, there are agreements binding governments to liberalization of markets that restrict their ability to implement macroeconomic policies. But RTA’s promote greater stabilization and consistency of policies which cannot be violated by a member country such as provoking some kind of sanctions from other participants. One of important example of this is NAFTA - North American Free Trade Agreement’s stabilization process and increase of Mexico’s political and economic policies.

Globally interlinked markets experience tremendous amounts of investment and disinvestment in the short-run, which makes the state lose control over exchange transactions as well as economic development that results holding a reduced role in its own country’s economy. RTA’s provides a nation an incentive to smoothly work towards free international trade by allowing them to increase the level of competition slowly and give domestic industries time to adjust. Few of the real world evidence that testify the economic stability of regional economic institutions are - the increasing membership of less developed countries within the European Union, Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR) & Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC).

The inability to effectively address transnational security and political issues, could be considered as another major weakness of the process of globalization due to which, regional blocs have been formed to address more local problems and to restrict foreign intervention. One of the example that can be cited here is the formation of Organization of African Unity, that focused on preventing external manipulation and even reacted to the eleven conflicts on the continent. This regional organization has been successful in reducing a number of inter-state wars and quickly responding to peace negotiations related to the genocide in Darfur, Sudan.

Due to increased globalization, many states experience loss of control over the external relations of their societies – as and when they are exposed to mutual cultural influences. However, occurrence of both - interstate and sub-state regionalism –results into preserving distinct cultural attributes of each nation/state. The response of regionalism to “cultural globalization” has been in the form of increased cultural identity and emergence of regionalist parties. For example, creation of Parti Quebecois Bloc and the general cultural identity the region of Quebec holds. One can even observe the occurrence of cultural regionalization in European-based North America, Europe, Northeast Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America, which makes it more clear cultural regionalism, has resulted from a resistance to a global identity.

As per Tanaka, regionalism should be considered as a world order concept – he meant to say that “since one type of regionalization effects other regions of the world – it is shaping the way in which the new world order is being organized”. Unlike globalization, which promotes global identity, regionalism centers on the generation of regional identity, for example one of the main focus of European Union has been is to create a unique European identity. It is argued that by promoting political and economic stability, regionalism can help the nation towards peaceful future interregional relations.

It can be concluded that most of the regionalism have resulted out of the inability of the current global system’s to address ad hoc situations occurring in different fields throughout the world. A part of it is also a result of the unpredictable future which globalization offers in the form of its varying economics, political motivations, and cultural migrations. Hence, one can argue regionalism is a process that places the international system at much wider scale and the kind of stability as well as regulation it provided is incomparable. Thus, it can be argued, that regionalization can be considered as a building bloc of achieving global peace and coherence via much more specified and regulative approach.