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Globalization has recently become a hot topic in popular
discourse, yet through the 1980s and 1990s political
economists have, in addition to globalization, focused
on regionalization, the growth of networks of interdependence
within multinational regions of the world.1
Global ties among all countries are developing, but
the strongest political and economic integration is
being created within a few specific regions of the
world—North
America, East Asia, and Europe. These regional “blocs”
are being developed by governments and societies in
an effort to prevent military conflict, to cooperate
on joint development and environmental protection projects,
and, most notably, to expand free trade. Blocs with
less economic power, such as the different regions of
Africa, are also forming. Regionalization is therefore
creating new geographic patterns of culture, employment,
federalism, and potential military conflict.
One of the most notable aspects of regionalization
has been the creation of strong, regional free trade
agreements,
such as the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA) that lowered tariffs and lifted limitations
on international investments among Canada, Mexico,
and the United States (US). Development of the regionally
oriented NAFTA represented a change of course by the
United States who, until the early 1980s, had primarily
focused on improving global trade, primarily through
the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT),
an
international trade agreement involving most of the
nations of the world. American political scientists
Edward Mansfield and Helen Milner write, “Many
economists . . . maintain that the current wave of
regionalism
was triggered by the U.S. decision to pursue regional
trading arrangements in the early 1980s, once its
economic
power waned and multilateral trade negotiations stalled.”2
Trade agreements tend to change current job markets
by moving work opportunities to countries with lower
wages. For example, NAFTA affected jobs in the textile
industry when manufacturers moved their factories
from
the United States to Mexico. Likewise, NAFTA also affected
Mexican corn farmers who lost their jobs to US farmers
due to higher corn production efficiency in the US.
Canada, Mexico, and the US pledged to uphold basic
labor and environmental standards through two NAFTA
“side agreements,” the North American Agreement
on Labor Cooperation (NAALC), and the North American
Agreement on Environmental Cooperation (NAAEC). NAAEC
created the Commission for Environmental Cooperation
(CEC) to promote communication among the three nations.
CEC Program Manager Sarah Richardson has written, in
respect to the three North American nations, that NAAEC
“appears to affect their behavior in a subtle way
that relates to their commitment to public participation,
transparency, and . . . to cooperate by consensus on
issues where they have determined there is an overall
benefit for regional action.”3 The CEC can investigate
allegations that a nation is not enforcing its own environmental
laws, but NAFTA and its side agreements have not created
any direct changes to national environmental policies
in North America.
Most governments see regional trade as so vital to
their economic interests that additional agreements
are already being negotiated. For example, all North
American and Latin American governments except Cuba
are negotiating a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA)
that would include the countries of the “Common
Market of the Southern Cone” (MERCOSUR), 4 creating
a very strong intercontinental market to compete with
the European Union. Though it is participating in the
negotiations, Brazil has been the leading skeptic of
the FTAA. Brazil has been the largest nation in MERCOSUR,
but would be second in economic power to the United
States in a hemisphere-wide Free Trade Area of the Americas.
For political economists, the most notable aspect of
regionalization is the growth of three powerful global
trading blocs in the Americas, East Asia, and Europe.
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Free
Trade Area (AFTA) was initiated in 1992 by ASEAN, an
organization of ten nations in Southeast Asia.5 In 2000
China initiated discussions to join AFTA, thus broadening
the free-trade area outside of Southeast Asia. Japan
and South Korea are also being considered for AFTA membership.
If all of these nations were accepted into AFTA, it
would create a free trade zone of unprecedented size.
Since the mid-1990s, ASEAN has been building cooperation
among its members through “Plans of Action”
in a variety of areas including social development,
science and technology, and the environment. ASEAN addresses
environmental issues through conferences and common
strategies, but does not politically link these efforts
to free trade. The leaders of ASEAN countries oppose
movements to link trade and environmental policies because
such trade policies are slowing short-term economic
growth in Southeast Asia. Some developed countries have
placed restrictions on imports produced in an environmentally
destructive manner. These trade restrictions have hurt
the developing economies of Southeast Asia, as some
of their products do not meet these environmental requirements.6
Near East Asia, Australia, and the island nations of
the Pacific Ocean also have a well-developed regional
trading bloc. The Pacific Islands Forum is a regional
alliance that coordinates the work of sixteen countries
in development and economic policy, political and international
affairs, and trade and investment.7 The Pacific Islands
Forum administers the South Pacific Trade and Economic
Co-Operation Agreement (SPARTECA), in which Australia
and New Zealand have granted trade preferences to the
fourteen other Pacific Islands Forum countries. The
South Pacific Regional Environmental Programme (SPREP),
another Pacific Islands Forum project, has an action
plan and a variety of projects addressing nature conservation,
pollution prevention, climate change, and other joint
topics of interest.
The farthest-reaching regional project is the European
Union (EU). Unlike the NAFTA treaty and the ASEAN association,
members of the European Union have permanently given
up part of their sovereignty and pledged to implement
future decisions that benefit the federation. The EU
holds the power to pass legislation on a variety of
topics, sometimes without consensus, that is legally
binding for all fifteen member nations.8
Economically, the European Union is integrating much
more than trade policies. Unlike North America and Southeast
Asia, people living in the EU can move to and work in
any member country. Early in 2002 the EU completed the
unification of the national currencies of twelve of
the member nations.9 Now citizens in these twelve nations
use a common currency, the euro.
The Council of the European Union consists of government
ministers from all fifteen member countries. For example,
environmental ministers meet several times each year
to form the Environmental Council. Environmental legislation
is drafted by the European Commission, a twenty-member
body of policy leaders based in Brussels, and is then
presented to the Environmental Council and the European
Parliament, both of whom must pass it in order for it
to be enacted into law. The EU has passed legislation
addressing nuclear safety, waste management, atmospheric
pollution, conservation of flora and fauna, and many
other topics of international significance.
Implementing EU environmental policy in conjunction
with the ongoing national environmental policies of
fifteen countries has been difficult. The European Environmental
Agency (EEA), created by the EU to provide environmental
information and assessments to European policy-makers,
has tried to evaluate the effectiveness of EU environmental
legislation, but ultimately reported great difficulty
in doing so, due to a lack of consistent monitoring
and reporting among the member countries.10 This lack
of clear results bolsters the arguments of some European
conservatives, who oppose the “bureaucracy in Brussels”
as ineffective, meddlesome, and undemocratic.
Thirteen additional nations are currently applying
to join the European Union through the “enlargement”
process.11 Compared
to current EU nations, many of the enlargement candidates
have had weaker national environmental
policies and protections that have allowed higher pollution
levels in those regions. Enlargement countries are
required
to strengthen their national environmental policies
to EU standards before joining the EU. Several advisory
and funding projects have been implemented to assist
candidate countries in achieving such standards. As
the
European Commission notes, “The forthcoming enlargement
of the European Union is also an enlargement of environmental
protection.”12
Regional alliances are developing in all parts of the
world. Africa is the best example of an area experiencing
regionalization but lacking the economic power of the
North American, East Asian, and European blocs.
Until the 1990s, African regionalization had generally
followed the lines of its historically located colonial
ties. For example, the former French colonies of West
Africa comprise the African “Franc Zone,”
and these countries have currencies tied to the French
franc and experience similar economic fluctuations to
each other.13 Now cross-language regional groups are
ascending, most notably the fifteen-country Economic
Community of West African States (ECOWAS), which plans
to issue a common currency in 2004, replacing the French
franc in several Franc Zone nations.14
The countries of Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda form
the East African Community (EAC) and are negotiating
a political
federation much like the one formed in the EU. The
fourteen-member Southern African Development Community
(SADC) recently
restructured itself in order to pursue greater cooperation
among its member nations.15 The
twenty-two member countries of the League of Arab
States, a long-standing regional
organization since 1945, are working toward activating
an Arab free trade zone by 2005.16 French
political economist Daniel Bach explains this trend: “Regionalisation
in Africa is primarily the expression of micro-strategies
which seek to take advantage of the resources of globalization.”17
African regional alliances have focused primarily on
strengthening their trading relationships with the
rest
of the world, not developing stronger environmental
protection.
Many of the developing countries of Africa, the Caribbean,
and the Pacific enjoy advantageous trading relationships
with the European Union through the Cotonou Agreement.
This particular agreement will be phased out by 2008
in order to comply with rules of the World Trade Organization
(WTO) that restrict international trade agreements
that
give preferences to some countries over others. Regional
free trade agreements, such as NAFTA and AFTA, are
generally
still exempt from the World Trade Organization’s
usual rules against selective preferences in trade.
This exemption could be removed in the future, as defenders
of regional alliances clash with proponents of more
open economic globalization.18
Regionalization has also led to greater cooperation
in economic development and environmental planning.
Several regional development banks have been central
in planning and financing major sustainable development
initiatives, such as the Chinese transition away from
coal power plants. The most notable regional development
banks are the African Development Bank Group (ADB),
the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the European Bank
for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), and the Inter-American
Development Bank (IADB).
Where rivers constitute a national border, or marine
fisheries lie within range of several nations’
fleets, national governments are often negotiating
treaties to share and preserve common resources.19 In
areas such as West Asia, regional treaties, such as
the agreement
between Israel and Jordan on the use of the Jordan
River, can be important steps towards defusing military
tension.
Singapore, a member of ASEAN, has made bold initiatives
to negotiate free trade agreements with a wide variety
of partners around the world. The government of Singapore
has also directly encouraged Singaporean companies and
citizens to work throughout the East Asian region. Under
this “go-regional” program, Singaporean workers
often live outside Singapore in order to build business
careers, leading to an intentionally created Singaporean
“diaspora” —a nation of individual people
living throughout many countries.
As the nature of national government changes due to
economic globalization and regionalization, the nature
of what comprises a “nation” of people is
also changing. Many developing countries, from Honduras
to the Philippines, rely economically on the millions
of citizens that work in other countries and send a
majority of their income back to their families in their
country of origin.
Scholars in geography, cultural studies, and urban
planning use the term regionalization for a different
purpose—to describe the strengthening of smaller
regions within countries. In 1994 the European Union
created the Committee of the Regions (COR) to give a
greater voice to the state and provincial governments
representing the small regions within nations of Europe.
European Commission President Jacques Delors has called
for a “Europe of the Regions,” where sub-national
governments would eventually gain prominence over the
current nation-states.
Scholars debate whether globalization and international
regionalization weaken traditional national governments
and thus strengthen regional governments within countries.
COR claims, “The more members the [European]
Union has and the more areas that fall within its
responsibility,
the more the individual Europeans will tend to seek
their roots in their home regions or towns.”20
The transformation of current federal government structures,
by granting political representation in the EU to
state
and provincial governments, is still a distant and
unexplored proposition.21
The American, European, and East Asian trading blocs
are growing to potentially equal sizes and strengths.
This situation is very different than the period dating
from World War II through the 1970s, when the United
States
clearly led the world economically. It is unclear whether
regionalization will support the construction of
a global
free trade community, or whether regional competition
and its subsequent disputes will become entrenched.
Noting that past world wars were partially sparked
by economic conflict among regional empires, US political
economist Robert Gilpin pessimistically predicts dangerous
tensions among the American, East Asian, and European
trading blocs.22 Mansfield and Milner present one of
many counter-arguments, noting that in the past there
had previously been no pre-existing multilateral trading
system to ameliorate regional economic conflict, and
the WTO should be able to handle future disputes.23
Within continents, however, regionalization can be
expected to lead to greater cooperation and less transboundary
conflict. In fact, even after the end of the Cold War,
conflicts between adjacent countries have been notably
few. More common have been wars between far-off
nations (such as Iraq and the United States) and conflicts
within individual countries. Within regions such as
West Asia and Latin America, cultural ties and regional
solidarity have strengthened not only due to increased
trade, but also due to new regional television networks
and greater communication among nongovernmental organizations.
The process of regionalization is transforming international
relations from a large field of nation-states to a much
smaller group of regional blocs. The previously dominant
United States now sees economic competition from East
Asia and Europe. Though the United States and many countries
continue to advance global trade that treats all countries
equally, the reality of regional competition threatens
this economic globalization as regions wage trade wars
to defend their own advantages in the world market.
Some regional blocs, such as the European Union, are
building political federations that enact regional environmental
legislation. In other regions, such as North America,
there are political movements to tie environmental protections
to the growth of free trade. In the South Pacific, countries
are implementing joint environmental initiatives, whereas
in Southeast Asia and Africa, this work has barely begun.
In terms of environmental policy, regional networks
are becoming valuable communication links between
global
environmental conferences, regional development banks,
national environmental ministries, and international
nongovernmental organizations. Greater communication
within regions assists individual countries in adopting
the public policies and technology needed for an environmentally
sustainable future.
For additional information on regionalization, consider
consulting our Regionalization
Links section.
1 This definition is an
analogy with the research on globalization by Robert
O. Keohane
and Joseph S. Nye,
Jr., who define “globalism” as “a state
of the world involving networks of interdependence
at
multi-continental distance” and define “globalization”
as “the increase . . . of globalism.” Robert
O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, Jr., “Introduction” to Governance
in A Globalizing World, edited
by Joseph S. Nye, Jr., and John D. Donahue (Washington,
D.C.: Brookings Institution, 2000) 1, http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/visions/publication/globalizing_intro.doc.
See also the Forum on Religion and Ecology’s Globalization
and Trade page.
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2 Edward D. Mansfield and Helen
V. Milner, “The
New Wave of Regionalism,” in The Politics of
Global Governance: International Organizations in
an
Interdependent World, ed. Paul F. Diehl, 2d ed.
(Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2001) 332.
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3 Sarah Richardson, “Sovereignty, Trade, and the
Environment: The North American Agreement on Environmental
Cooperation,” Canada-United States Law Journal
24 (1998): 183–97.
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4 The Common Market of the Southern Cone (MERCOSUR)
consists of (in order of population) Brazil, Argentina,
Paraguay, and Uruguay.
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5 The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)
consists of (in order of population) Indonesia, the
Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar, Malaysia, Cambodia,
Laos, Singapore, and Brunei Darussalam.
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6 Morten Boas, “The Trade-Environment Nexus and
the Potential of Regional Trade Institutions,”
New Political Economy 5 (November 2000):
415–32.
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7 The Pacific Islands Forum consists of (in order of
population) Australia, Papua New Guinea, New Zealand,
Fiji, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Samoa, the Federated
States of Micronesia, Tonga, the Republic of the Marshall
Islands, Kiribati, the Cook Islands, Palau, Nauru, Tuvalu,
and Niue.
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8 The European Union (EU) consists of (in order of
population) Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Italy,
Spain, the Netherlands, Greece, Belgium, Portugal, Sweden,
Austria, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, and Luxembourg.
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9 The twelve member nations of the European Union (EU)
that unified their currencies are (in order of population)
Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Greece,
Belgium, Portugal, Austria, Finland, Ireland, and Luxembourg.
The United Kingdom, Sweden, and Denmark are not participating
in the euro currency.
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10 European Environmental Agency, “Reporting on
Environmental Measures: Are We Being Effective?”
updated 2001 http://reports.eea.eu.int/rem/en/issue25.pdf
(cited 15 January 2002).
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11 The thirteen nations applying to join the European
Union as of 2002 are (in order of population) Turkey,
Poland, Romania, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Bulgaria,
Slovakia, Lithuania, Latvia, Slovenia, Estonia, Cyprus,
and Malta.
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12 European Commission, “Enlargement and Co-Operation
with European Third Countries,” updated n.d. http://europa.eu.int/comm/environment/enlarg/home.htm
(cited 15 January 2002) para 1.
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13 The African “Franc Zone” consists of (in
order of population) Côte d’Ivoire, Cameroon,
Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Senegal, Chad, Benin, Togo,
the Central African Republic, the Republic of the Congo,
Guinea-Bissau, Gabon, Comoros, and Equatorial Guinea.
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14 The Economic Community of West African States consists
of (in order of population) Nigeria, Ghana, Côte
d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Senegal, Guinea,
Benin, Sierra Leone, Togo, Liberia, the Gambia, Guinea-Bissau,
and Cape Verde.
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15 The Southern African Development Community consists
of (in order of population) the Democratic Republic
of the Congo, South Africa, Tanzania, Mozambique, Zimbabwe,
Malawi, Angola, Zambia, Lesotho, Namibia, Botswana,
Mauritius, Swaziland, and Seychelles.
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16 The League of Arab States consists of (in order
of population): Egypt, Sudan, Algeria, Morocco, Iraq,
Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Syria, Tunisia, Somalia, Libya,
Jordan, Lebanon, Mauritania, Oman, United Arab Emirates,
Palestine (represented by the Palestinian Authority),
Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Comoros, and Djibouti.
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17 Daniel C. Bach, “Revisiting
a Paradigm,”
in Regionalisation in Africa: Integration and Disintegration,
ed. Daniel C. Bach (Oxford: James Currey, 1999), quoted
in Marion E. Doro, “Review of Daniel C. Bach,
ed,
Regionalisation in Africa: Integration and Disintegration,”
H-Africa, H-Net Reviews (August 2000), updated 2000
http://www.h-net.msu.edu/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=6041969311494 (cited
9 January 2002) para 5.
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18 Global Trade Negotiations Home Page, “Regionalism
Summary,” updated 2002 http://www.cid.Harvard.edu/cidtrade/issues/regionalism.html
(cited 17 January 2002).
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19 For additional information
see: Transboundary
Environmental Negotiation: New Approaches to Global
Cooperation, eds. Lawrence Susskind, William Moomaw,
and Kevin Gallagher (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2002).
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20 Committee of the Regions, European Union, “Role:
Introduction,” updated 2001 http://195.200.108.36/corz101.htm
(cited 17 January 2002).
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21 Peter John, “The Europeanisation of Sub-National
Governance” Urban Studies vol. 37 (May 2000):
877–94; Elizabeth Bomberg and John Peterson, “European
Union Decision Making: The Role of Sub-National Authorities,”
Political Studies 46 (June 1998): 219–35.
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22 G. John Ikenberry, “Don’t Panic,”
review of The Challenge of Global Capitalism: The
World Economy in the 21st Century, by Robert Gilpin,
Foreign Affairs 79 (May/June 2000): 145–51.
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23 Mansfield and Milner, “The New Wave of Regionalism,”
343.
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