Initiatives towards a closer regional integration date back to the 1880s. The first coherent regionalism initiatives, however, took place during the 1950s and 1960s. During the late 1990s, however, a renewed interest in regionalism emerged and lead to the rapid emergence of a global system of regions with political and economic parameters.
Origins It is quite difficult to define when the history of regionalism begins, since there is no single explanation that encompasses the origins and development of the regional idea. Criteria such as the desire by states to "make the best of their regional environment" are regarded by certain analystas as elusive; they prefer to consider the history of regionalism in terms of the rise of modern institutions. If formal organization at the regional as opposed to the international level is to be the yardstick for the onset of regionalism, it is difficult to place its origins much before 1945.
Before 1945 Advocacy of international regionalism was rare in the period between
World War I and according to Al Marucut(1998)
World War II when the doctrine of
collective security was dominant. With the notable exception of the
Inter-American System very few regional groupings existed before World War II The region as a unit of analysis became important not only in the
Cold War context, but also as a result of the self-consciousness of regions themselves. Because of the subsequent demands by states that had already made heavy political investments in regional arrangements such as the Inter-American System, the
Commonwealth and the
Arab League, regionalism made its appearance even in the finalized
UN Charter.
European initiatives European regionalism took a concrete form during the late 1940s. The treaty establishing the
Benelux Customs Union was signed in 1944 by the governments in exile of
Belgium,
Netherlands and
Luxembourg in
London, and entered into force in 1947. In 1952,
Denmark,
Sweden,
Iceland and
Norway (
Finland joined in 1955) established the
Nordic Council, an interparliamentary organization with the goal to forge the regional
Nordic co-operation. The Nordic Council's statutes set out in the 1962
Helsinki Agreement, according to which the parties undertake "to seek to preserve and further develop co-operation between our nations in the legal, cultural and financial areas as well as in matters relating to transport and protection of the environment". Regionalism had already given rise to a floodtide of literature critical of its development or determined to justify it as a necessity for world security. Some critics were arguing that economic unions and
common markets distorted the logic of a universal division of labor, and that regional military planning was made both impossible and obsolete. On the other hand, the defenders of the pattern were invoking the necessities of the cold war. The renewed academic interest in regionalism, the emergence of new regional formations and international trade agreements like the
North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and the development of a
European Single Market demonstrate the upgraded importance of a region-by-region basis political cooperation and economic competitiveness. The
African Union was launched on July 9, 2002 and a proposal for a
North American region was made in 2005 by the
Council on Foreign Relations' Independent Task Force on the Future of North America. In Latin America, however the proposal to extend NAFTA into a
Free Trade Area of the Americas that would stretch from Alaska to Argentina was ultimately rejected in particular by nations such as Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia. It has been superseded by the
Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) which was constituted in 2008. ==Regionalization==