ABSTRACT
Introduction This chapter addresses a number of issues that have a bearing upon the prospects for the development of regional formations with a strong social agenda and effective social policies but which were not the focus of attention in the earlier chapters in this book. These issues include those developments which might undermine such regional social policy – e.g. the inter-regional open trading formations such as the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), and the bilateral trading arrangements made between the United States of America, the European Union (EU), China and Japan and individual countries. Such issues also include the inter-regional dialogues and support processes which might reinforce such regional social policies, taking place on a North-South basis as between, for example, the EU and MERCOSUR, the EU and ASEAN+3, the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM), the EU and the African Union (AU), the Southern African Development Community (SADC), and the Maghreb. The EU Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) with the group of African, Caribbean and Pacific countries (ACP) are also discussed as both reinforcing and, in the view of critics, undermining regional social policies. The chapter is framed around two questions. The first question concerns the social policy content of these processes: what social welfare and development concerns are raised by these processes and how are such concerns being addressed? The second question concerns the relationship between these trade formations and world-regional social policy: how do these formations impact on the prospects for the emergence of world-regional social policy supportive of social development? Discussion of these cross-cutting developments in relation to world-regional social policy formation unfolds across three main sections. The chapter opens by reviewing the different forms of trading formations at the regional and interregional level, together with bilateral trade pacts and regimes that bear upon the prospects for world-regional social policy. Here we review arguments and evidence suggesting they may have detrimental effects on the development of worldregional social policy. The chapter then proceeds to examine the social dimensions of North-South inter-regional dialogues. Its focus in particular lies
with such dialogues involving the EU, especially those involving EPAs with developing countries. The chapter then turns to three trans-regional agreements – APEC, Forum for East Asia Latin America Cooperation (FEALAC) and ASEM. There, we outline the extent of their engagement with social policy issues, and come to a preliminary assessment of whether they are supportive of injecting a social dimension into regionalism or an obstacle to such a development. The conclusion returns to the two key questions we set out above in the light of the chapter discussion.
