ABSTRACT

The growth of regionalization that has characterized the global economy since the late 1970s reflects two distinct but related processes (Cook and Kirkpatrick 1997). First, there is informal, natural or open regionalization, where a group of countries develop more intense trade and other cross-border arrangements as a result of complementarity and limited restrictions on the movements of goods, services and finance (Lorenz 1991). This type of development has been promoted by the activities of transnational corporations (TNCs) which have increasingly organized their production and investment on a regional basis. For semi-peripheral and peripheral countries, this form of regional integration has been assisted by the liberalization of trade and financial regimes through the implementation of structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) and related policies principally at the behest of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank. The international and regional development agencies have also supported the development of a variety of cross-border arrangements as a means of promoting economic growth and structural change. Overall, the development orthodoxy that has emerged since around 1980 is one that seeks to minimize both the restrictions on the movement of trade and finance and the economic role of the state. This has been conducive to the development of informal regionalization and has given TNCs the major role in its promotion (Dicken 1993:102). Second, formal regionalization, or regionalism as it is referred to in this book, has proceeded through a variety of arrangements ranging from preferential trading agreements to economic union (International Monetary Fund 1993). This reflects the view that the global economy is moving towards a series of highly managed trading blocs.