Enhancing Global Governance Through Regional Integration

Abstract

Global governance--governance for the world without world government--refers to cooperative problem-solving arrangements on a global plane. (1) These may be rules (laws, norms, codes of behavior) as well as constituted institutions and practices (formal and informal) to manage collective affairs by a variety of actors (state authorities, intergovernmental organizations, nongovernmental organizations, private sector entities). Global governance thus refers to the complex of formal and informal institutions, mechanisms, relationships, and processes between and among states, markets, citizens, and organizations--both intergovernmental and nongovernmental--through which collective interests are articulated, rights and obligations are established, and differences are mediated. (2) Such global governance faces a fundamental paradox. The policy authority for tackling global problems and mobilizing the necessary resources is vested primarily at the country level, in states, while the source and scale of the problems and potential solutions to them are transnational, regional, and global. One result of this situation is that states have the capacity to disable decisionmaking and policy implementation by global bodies like the United Nations (UN), but they generally lack the vision and will to empower and enable global problem solving on issues such as environmental degradation, human trafficking, terrorism, and nuclear weapons. Could regionalization, by inserting an additional level of governance between the state and the world, provide a satisfactory resolution of this paradox? What are the implications of regionalism and interregionalism for global governance and world order? Do these developments herald a shift from a world order based on sovereign states toward one based on regions? Where does the UN enter into such a picture? Today's world needs global governance, but most people fear the idea of a centralized, all-powerful world government. Thus, the goal of most contemporary proponents of global governance is the creation not of a world government, but of various layers of consultation and decisionmaking. The construction of multilayered governance networks could establish a genuine global rule of law without centralized global institutions. In this model, good1' global governance would not imply exclusive policy jurisdiction by any one site, but rather an optimal partnership between state, regional, and global levels of actors and between state, intergovernmental, and nongovernmental categories of actors. Structured, systematized frameworks for collective action at the regional level can offer an escape from the bind between unilateralism at the state level versus multilateralism at the global level. Regionalization The term regional integration is often confusing. Not only has the concept been used imprecisely, but it also lacks a single, widely accepted definition. As understood here, regional integration refers to a process in which a group of (usually contiguous) countries moves from a condition of partial or utter isolation toward one of partial or complete unification. The shift involves a progressive lowering of internal boundaries within the integrating zone and a de facto relative rise of external boundaries vis-a-vis countries outside the region. Regional integration does not have to--although it often does--involve the construction of some kind of permanent formal institutional structure of mutual cooperation among the governments of the countries involved. Regional organizations have proliferated across the world over the past sixty years. This growth in number and geographical coverage has been accompanied by increased diversity in the substance or content of integration. For example, some regional integration projects are limited to the achievement of economic integration among the countries concerned. Others extend integration beyond purely economic concerns in a so-called new regionalism, (3) which holds that trade and economy cannot be isolated from the rest of society. …