We live in a boundary-less global world where the barriers are diminishing owing to the mutual interdependence of states, and of course the technological advancements. However, the whole concept of globalization does have its fair share of limitations as well. In response to these faults, we have also witnessed a rise of new form of regionalism which has offset the weaknesses of the globalization in political, socioeconomic and cultural spheres, and how it can be viewed as a building block for a globalized world rather than a threat
Globalization is a product of increased interaction and mutual interdependence between different people, companies and even governmental and inter-governmental organizations – sharing a similar vision and goals. The growth fosters an increased penetration among economies which results in transnational issues like political, environmental, financial and economic issues which the state is indirectly a part of. The concept of globalization has faced serious criticism for it lacking a strong regulation in the worldly order and favoring only selective players and burdening everyone else with transnational problems.
On the contrary side, initially the whole concept of regionalism was somewhat vague. Regions cannot be solely confined on the basis of their territories whereas regions aren’t confined to geographical units but also extend to increased cooperation in specific areas like socio-economic factors, mutual concern for security and economic cooperation. The older version of regionalism was build on the narrative of cooperative hegemony resulting in a bipolarity of the world. However with time, regionalism was redefined and reintegrated with a narrative which was based on multipolarity giving a multidimensional approach and not only being confined to security, and economic cooperation among states, but also extends to other areas like environmental, sociocultural, trade, and other social issues. It also allows the non-state actors to actively participate in a specific level of global system promoting inclusion.
As far as economic cooperation is concerned, regionalism has been a powerful tool in economically empowering member-states through regional trade agreements, intensifying competition slowly by giving local industries fair share of time to adjust, lessening the trade
barriers among them, A classic example is that of European Union, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation. Economic policies cannot be violated by other members and they cannot impose sanctions on the other member states. Members states face least influence from external influences. On the contrary, in globalization, global organizational institutions like World Trade Organization (WTO) and International Monetary Fund (IMF) propel liberalization of markets, and imposing restrictions on government to freely pursue their macroeconomic policies without any external influence. Globalized markets have high amount of uncertainty and risks involved as capital can be disinvested/or invested again quickly and the states might lose influence over economic development, and control over exchange, and consequently hold over economy.
Therefore, having regional pacts with the hegemonic powers reaps more benefits for smaller member states rather than hegemonic controlled free markets. It is not only areas dealing with flawed economic policies with external influence, but also other political and security concerns which globalization fails to address. The merits of regionalism are not restricted to economic cooperation through creation of RTAs, but effectively addresses concerns and struggles to bring a positive change in the global worldly order.
Globalization is somewhat selective rather than being inclusive protecting the vested interests of stronger states only, and make less developed states scapegoats in the hands of neo-liberalist values. Therefore, it led to regional organizations becoming more popular as they are specifically directed towards addressing the local issues and preventing external foreign influence. For instance, the reason for formulating Organization of African Unity (OAU) was to safeguard it African members by the hands of being manipulated by foreign invaders (something which globalization advocates). Despite the establishment of global organizational institutions, a deaf ear was turned to Somalian Crisis, and Rwandan Genocide. The formation of OAU has resulted in significant decline in interstate wars, and peace negotiations are being held in Sudan.
It is not just pertinent security matters which globalization has failed to address, but it has also failed in enforcement of a multilateral political legislation in the global system. For instance, Kyoto Protocol, Climate Change Conference came up with stringent regulations in a world where pollution has been made transnational by globalization. The state has no control over the residents health raising questions over the legitimacy of the government. Exposure to multicultural influences results in states losing control over external relations of societies. Standardization
through education, language, and in some cases, values, have received a great backlash as it threatens the cultural values.
As a response to cultural globalization, interstate and sub state regionalism has emerged to preserve cultural attributes by placing increasing in distinct cultural identity and the concept of regionalist parties. For instance, Parti Quebecois Bloc have retained the cultural values of Quebec as it is the only French speaking region in America. We have also witnessed Cultural regionalization in European based North America., Sub Saharan Africa, Northeast Asia and even Latin America preserving shared cultural values over shared global identity.
Globalization’s limitations have been offset by Regionalism’s strengths. However, that does not mean that the world is moving away from global unity and regionalism poses a threat to the global world order. New regionalism is a world order concept which builds upon globalization. Regionalism does advocate a regional identity over global identity, but could not replace the system in which it exists. Multilateral institutions hold regulations over the regional institutions, making it difficult for international multilateral systems and globalization to be abolished. Moreover, the fruits of regionalism have had positive impact rather than negative. For instance, European Union has initiated formal interrogational talks with East Asian countries, and held Asia-European Meetings – promoting cooperation, economic and political stability through regionalism.
Hence, Regionalism is building bloc of achieving global peace, and could act as a supplement to globalization and creation of a cohesive global order rather than posing threat to it.
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