ABSTRACT
The Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) grouping is a most peculiar institution. It challenges conventional understandings of regionalism in several ways. One concerns the geographical scope of a region. Analysts have long recognised that there is no such thing as a ‘natural’ region: regions are very much the construction of their participants. APEC, however, with a geographical expanse from the eastern borders of Poland to the southern tip of Latin America, embraces a far larger area than any previous ‘regional’ institution. Included within the APEC grouping are other ‘regional’ entities. Some, like Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the Closer Economic Relations Trade Agreement (CER) between Australia and New Zealand, are long established; others, like the North American Free Trade Area are of more recent origin than APEC itself. APEC could just as easily be considered a trans-regional as a regional institution, being more similar in its institutionalisation and decision making procedures, for instance, to the Asia Europe Meeting (ASEM) than to the free trade areas that exist within its boundaries.
