Abstract:

This article assesses the actual and potential contributions of regionalism to the achievement of such world order goals as peace, social justice, human rights, democracl This assessment proceeds by way of discussing in an introductory section, several main features of the global setting that have become prominent in the early aftermath of the cold war. Against this background, four possible roles for regional actors are depicted: containing negative globalism (basically associated with the adverse impacts of global market forces); mitigating pathological anarchism (the breakdown of minimum order and decency in state/society relations arising from either extremes of excessive control and abuse by the state or of pervasive and dangerous chaos arising from the weakness or breakdown of governance capacity at the level of the state); promoting positive globalism (reinforcing the global capacity to achieve desirable world order goals); and promoting positive regionalism (achieving these goals at a regional/eve/ through the strengthening and orientation of regional structures of governance).

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