ABSTRACT
The rise and the growth of international regionalism have played an important role in the dynamics of the world order. Theoretically, regionalism and regional integration are mutually dependent in the process of development. While regional complementation after integration deserves much attention, the spill-over effects of integration can only emerge in cases where the economics, politics and policies of the participants involved are highly compatible. In practice, regionalism as a set of state projects intersects with globalization. The relationship between the two carne into particularly sharp focus with the beginning of the post-Cold War era in the 1990s. Many observers have seen this development as threatening, warning that the world may presentIy be in the process of becoming dangerously divided between three broad regions, namely, the European Union (EU), the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEe).l Especially because of the international economic interdependence and political change after the Second World War, technological, social, and cultural changes have sharply reduced the effective economic distance between nations, while many of the government policies that traditionally inhibited cross-border interactions have been relaxed or even dismantIed.2
