ABSTRACT
The study of regionalisation and regionalism has burgeoned in the post-Cold War era, but for decades was relegated to a sub-field of international relations narrowly focused on European regional integration. On the one hand, a number of studies have continued, in the vein of early integrationist work, to trace the links between state-driven regional economic and political institutionalisation and economic prosperity, regional security, and order. On the other hand, a growing literature around ‘new regionalisms’ has eschewed focus on official state-driven process in favour of studying regionalism as a dynamic process, driven by a multiplicity of actors, both state and non-state, and processes, both formal and informal. Furthermore, these studies delved beyond regions as fixed entities, tracing out the contextual and multilayered nature of regionalism while investigating micro-regionalisms at the national-level interstice (Grant and Söderbaum 2003; Hettne 2000; Söderbaum 2005). However, as noted in the introduction to this volume, there remains an epistemological and ontological gulf between the two approaches, with few studies anchored in the traditional approach attempting to incorporate the contributions made by the new regionalism literature.
