ABSTRACT
A very large international and interdisciplinary literature has been offering evidence for several decades about regional cooperation among neighbouring states as a structural, resilient, and multidimensional feature of global governance. The paradigm of structural and eternal anarchy radically excludes the possibility of limiting security dilemmas through regional conflict prevention and economic cooperation among neighbouring countries. A turning point in regionalist studies happened in the mid-1990s bringing the historical, cultural, and territorial dimension of regional groupings back into play. Constructivism is influencing regional studies, thus strengthening the post-realist tendencies: not only do ideas matter, but a general approach to 'cognitive regionalism' is gaining ground by explaining the role of perceptions, principles, and discourse in region building. It is a fact that research on regional entities and groupings was fostered in the US by alternative theoretical streams to neorealism: on the East Coast, there was 'complex interdependence' theory-related research on 'international regions'.
