This is the first of five volumes reporting on the UNU-WIDER study on New Regionalism. It deals with the conceptions and meanings of two processes which probably will have a crucial influence on the shape of the 'new world order' - globalization and regionalization. These studies relate to each other as challenge to response, globalization being the challenge of economic and cultural homogenization of the world and regionalization being a social and political reaction. The leading writers in the field contribute thought-provoking and fascinating articles to this volume.

Theories of New Regionalism represents the first systematic attempt to bring together leading theories of new regionalism. Major theorists from around the world develop their own distinctive theoretical perspectives, spanning new regionalism & world order approaches along with regional governance, liberal institutionalism & neoclassical development regionalism, to regional security complex theory (RSCT) and the region-building approach.

The book critically analyzes the ongoing changes in the regional, intra-regional, and global dynamics of cooperation, from a multi-disciplinary and pluralist perspective. It is based on the insight that in a post-hegemonic world the formation of regions and the process of globalization can be largely disconnected from the orbit of the US, and that a plurality of power and worldviews has replaced US hegemony. In spite of these changes, most existing analyses of current changes in the world order still rely upon Western-centered approaches, and Westphalian thinking. Against this backdrop, the book proposes to advance a truly global IR understanding of the post-hegemonic world, and weaves together the pluralist and multi-disciplinary perspectives of scholars located all around the world.

The European Single Market, NAFTA and Mercosur powerfully shape international relations and economic development; they also symbolize a shift in economic policy towards a world market-oriented and liberalizing strategy. Schirm argues that this new regionalism is essentially aresult of the impact of globalization on domestic politics. The increasing transnational mobility of private economic actors alters the costs and benefits of economic policy options for governments as well as the interests of domestic groups. Globalization stimulates economic reforms whose economic efficiency and political acceptability are increased through regional cooperation. Globalization and the New Regionalism is innovative in three aspects: it offers a new theoretical approach to integration theory; it develops a distinct interpretative model for the impact of globalization on states; and it compares systematically the influence of globalization and the preferences for cooperation cross-regionally in Europe and the Americas. Case studies include the industrialized countries France, Germany, Great Britain and the United States, as well as the newly industrializing countries Argentina, Brazil and Mexico. This book is a timely contribution to the debate on the consequences of globalization and the foundations of regionalism, and has far-reaching implications for theories of international relations and political economy.

Eero Palmujoki examines the regionalist debate in Southeast Asia from the end of the Cold War up to the beginning of the new millennium. He focuses on the organization of the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) and covers the political, economic and security issues characterizing its development. The book compares the theoretical debate with political developments in the region, from the beginning of the post-Cold War period with its rapid economic growth through the Asian economic crisis of 1997 and the resulting restructuring of Southeast-Asian regional systems.