ABSTRACT
Determining the importance of regional trading blocs is a notoriously difficult task since their consequences for the global economy are far from clear and because of the relatively limited - but growing - scholarly research devoted to the issue. The traditional literature in political science and economics (with the exception of customs union theory) generally ignored the topic of regionalized trade. Substantive theorizing about regional trade blocs did not begin in earnest until the mid-1970s (see, for example, Preeg, 1974). By the late 1980s, however, preliminary perceptions about regional trade blocs had crystallized. In 1988, for example, the National Planning Association reported that both labor and business leaders in the US perceived a general failure of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), and 89% of these leaders felt that the international economy was moving in the direction of regional trade blocs. Furthermore, seventy-six per cent of these leaders felt that this would hurt the U.S. economy, and 64% said that this trend would hurt the world economy (Belous, 1990: 173). These developments have led to a burgeoning scholarly literature on the topic in the 1990s.
