The New Regionalism: Impediment or Spur to Future Multilateralism?

Abstract

A growing worldwide drive toward regionalism was expected to moderate in the wake of a successfully concluded Uruguay Round (UR). Instead it accelerated. That suggests, prima facie, a weakening in the power of orthodox international trade theory to explain the impulses behind the regionalism of the 1990s. It is now beyond dispute that the new surge in regionalism is influencing the post-cold-war global economic and political order. But it raises questions which have yet to be answered. These questions are not new. They have resonated since the first incipient steps were taken toward the formation of what has evolved into the European Union (EU) over a period of more than 40 years; but they have assumed a particular pungency in the last five.

This chapter is based on some rough ideas first unveiled in a speech delivered at a Fondad Symposium on Regional Integration in Latin America and the Caribbean which was held in Santiago, Chile on 1–2 March 1995. A modified version of that speech was published in J. Teunissen (ed.) Regionalization and the Global Economy: The Case of Latin America and the Caribbean (The Hague: FONDAD, 1995).

Throughout this chapter the term ‘multilateralism’ is used as having global connotations (that is, as in the UN or the Bretton Woods institutions or the WTO). ‘Regionalism’, while multilateral in nature (that is, in that it involves a set of multilateral relationships among a more confined group of usually, but not necessarily, contiguous countries) is often referred to as ‘plurilateralism’ to make a verbally convenient distinction from multilateralism. It must be recognized however that, while regional arrangements are invariably plurilateral, it does not follow that plurilateral arrangements are necessarily regional (in a geographic context; although they may be in an economic context).