Global Order and the New Regionalism

Overview

Regional institutions and initiatives have proliferated in the twenty-first century. This latest wave of regional innovation raises, in new guise, a long-standing conundrum for global order and U.S. foreign policy: When is regional organization a useful, even essential, complement to the ends of global governance—financial stability, an open trading system, sustainable development, robust protection of human rights, or the end of civil wars—and when does it threaten or undermine the achievement of those goals? The new regionalism presents the prospect for new benefits for global order as well as new risks. How those challenges and risks are addressed, by the United States and by other member states, will determine whether a fragmented global order or more effective global and regional governance emerge over the next decade.

Miles Kahler

Senior Fellow for Global Governance

C. Randall Henning

Professor, American University’s School of International Service

Chad P. Bown

Senior Fellow, Peterson Institute for International Economics

Hongying Wang

Associate Professor, University of Waterloo

Erik Voeten

Peter F. Krogh Professor of Geopolitics and Justice in World Affairs, Georgetown University

Paul D. Williams

Associate Professor, George Washington University

Five authors examine these dilemmas across five issue areas: finance, trade, development lending, human rights, and peace operations. In each issue area, regional actors and institutions have emerged that reopen and recast earlier debates about regionalism and its effects on global order. In four of the five issue areas, a single, established global institution contends with regional alternatives: the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Trade Organization (WTO), the World Bank, and the United Nations. In the domain of human rights, the newly redesigned UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) does not enjoy a similar, central position; global human rights conventions set the normative frame for regional human rights commissions and courts. Each author suggests ways in which the new regionalism can be harnessed to serve global purposes and the contribution that U.S. policy can make to those ends.

Selected Figures From This Series

Chapter Downloads

• "Regional Challenges to Global Governance," by Miles Kahler [180K PDF]
• "Global and Regional Financial Governance: Designing Cooperation," by C. Randall Henning [470K PDF]
• "Mega-Regional Trade Agreements and the Future of the World Trade Organization," by Chad P. Bown [194K PDF]
• "New Multilateral Development Banks: Opportunities and Challenges for Global Governance," by Hongying Wang [317K PDF]
• "International Human Rights Institutions: Competition and Complementarity," by Erik Voeten [189K PDF]
• "Global and Regional Peacekeepers," by Paul D. Williams [947K PDF]