This book addresses the question of how the American continent engages with various forms of interregionalism, including how different regions within the Americas deal with other regions of the world as well as how they relate among themselves. The presence of different political, economic, and cultural sub-regions within the Americas makes the continent a perfect setting to explore differences and commonalities in the western hemisphere’s relationship with other regions across the globe. Interregionalism and the Americas tackles three unifying questions. First, what type and understanding of interregionalism characterize the Americas’ way to interregionalism, if any? Second, is summitry ultimately the major visible feature of interregionalism in the Americas and beyond? Third, is there anything typical or characteristic in the way in which the Americas engage with interregionalism? This book contributes both to the theoretical debates about interergionalism and to the empirical understanding of the phenomenon and makes a compelling case to strengthen the inter-American system and to advance a “trilateral interregionalism” mechanism between North America, Latin America, and Europe to stand up for their common values, norms, and preferred international order.

This volume presents the state of the art of the new phenomenon interregionalism examining both empirical observations and theoretical explanations.

This volume is a collection of essays presented at the 20th annual Eugene Scassa Mock Organization of American States conference, which is the nation’s only “hybrid” conference including an inter-collegiate competition and simulation of the Organization of American States, a moot court simulation of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and a traditional academic conference for faculty and graduate students centered on the study of Inter-American relations and politics within the Western Hemisphere. The conference invited recognized authorities and promising new scholars in the vastly varied fields associated with Latin American studies. Taking a broad view of the academic study of the Western Hemisphere, the conference and, subsequently, this volume includes research from fields as diverse as international law, spatial geography, literature, religion, political science, and history. Taken together, these essays provide a fascinating multi-dimensional look at the intricate relationships between the polities and cultures of the Americas.

This book focuses on interregional relations across the Atlantic and the possible evolution of a new, distinctive Atlantic space for international relations. It provides a comprehensive insight into the overlapping linkages of interregionalism in the wider Atlantic space. Additionally, it raises the question of relevance, currently the main question in this field of research: Is interregionalism important because it brings about something new that really matters or is it simply a (perhaps unavoidable) by-product of regionalism? The book conducts an analysis of six interregional relations criss-crossing the Atlantic space, accounting for the multitude of interregional connections within a potential Atlantic macro region and analysing the differences, conflicts and convergences between regional organizations. It engages with the issue of agency in interregional relations, and argues that interregional processes and agendas are always driven and constructed by certain actors for certain purposes.

This book seeks to develop our understanding of the contemporary geopolitical reconfigurations of two regions of the world system with high cultural affinity and traditional close relations: Latin America and Europe. Relations between Latin America and Europe have been interpreted generally in the social sciences as synonyms of interstate relations. However, although States remain the most important actor in the geopolitical scene, they have been deeply reconfigured in recent decades, impacted by transnational dynamics, politics and spaces. This book highlights interregional relations and transnational dynamics between Latin America and Europe from a critical geopolitics perspective, promoting a new look for interregional relations which encompasses international cooperation and development, global policies, borders, inequalities and social movements. It brings attention to the relevance of interregionalism in the current geopolitical reconfiguration of the world system, but also argues for systematic inclusion of relevant new social actors and imaginaries in this traditional sphere of states. These social actors, particularly social movements and practices of contestation, are developing not only "international" bonds but a new "transnational" field, where networks defy traditional territorial orders. This volume seeks to generate a new discussion among scholars of geopolitics, international relations, social theory and social movement studies by encouraging a development of an interregional and transnational perspective of the two regions.

This book has two mutually reinforcing aims/parts. The first aim is to contribute to a more productive debate between different theoretical standpoints. There is surprisingly little theoretical and conceptual debate in this burgeoning field, which is one major reason for the failure to fully grasp the diversity of today’s interregionalism. Too often theorists speak past each other, without really engaging with alternative theoretical perspectives or competing research results. Indeed, this book constitutes the first systematic attempt to bring together leading theories and theorists of interregionalism. Leading scholars from around the world develop their own distinctive theoretical perspectives on interregionalism, with a particular emphasis on the dynamic relationship between regionalism and interregionalism. These highly acclaimed theorists have all been associated over the years with a variety of disciplines, institutions, schools and debates and so bring a rich set of insights and connections to this pioneering project. The second part of the book ‘unpacks’ and problematises the region, the driving actors and institutions that are engaged in interregional relations. There is a strong tendency in the field to treat regions as coherent units actors in an interregional relationship, and such simplified notions about ‘regions’ and ‘regional organisations’ necessarily result in superficial and misleading understandings of interregionalism. This part of the book connects the theoretical discussion in the first part with a manageable empirical object.

Is the EU isolated within the emergent multipolar world? Concentrating on interregional relations and focussing on the European Union’s evolving international role with regards to regional cooperation, this innovative book collects a set of fresh empirical analyses of interregional ties binding the EU with its Eastern and Southern neighbourhood, as well as with Asia, Africa and the Americas. The 25 leading authors from 5 continents have contributed original and diverse chapters and the book advances a novel theoretical ‘post-revisionist’ approach beyond both the Eurocentrism of ‘Europe First’ perspectives, as well as the Euroscepticism of those advocating to simply move ‘Beyond Europe’.