Global Governance 12 (2006), 233– 240

GLOBAL INSIGHTS

Enhancing Global Governance

Through Regional Integration
c

Ramesh Thakur and Luk Van Langenhove

G
lobal governance—governance for the world without world govern-
ment—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, intergov-
ernmental organizations, nongovernmental organizations, private sector
entities). Global governance thus refers to the complex of formal and infor-
mal 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 re-
sources 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 envi-
ronmental 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

233
234 Enhancing Global Governance Through Regional Integration

world government, but of various layers of consultation and decisionmaking.

The construction of multilayered governance networks could establish a gen-
uine global rule of law without centralized global institutions. In this model,
“good” 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 nongovern-
mental categories of actors. Structured, systematized frameworks for collec-
tive 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 integrat-
ing zone and a de facto relative rise of external boundaries vis-à-vis coun-
tries 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 inte-
gration. For example, some regional integration projects are limited to the
achievement of economic integration among the countries concerned. Oth-
ers 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. In this approach, integration can also encompass matters
of law, security, and culture.
The European Union (EU), the first and most advanced instance of
“new regionalism,” incorporates explicit political elements in a deep eco-
nomic integration. The EU requires that would-be member states meet cer-
tain standards of behavior in public and foreign policy before they can be
considered to be truly “European.” The new regionalism has also spread to
other continents, both through the creation of new organizations (e.g., the
Southern Common Market [Mercosur]) and through the upgrading of pre-
viously existing regional and subregional economic bodies (as with the
reinvention of the Organization of African Unity as the African Union).
Nevertheless, regionalism remains uneven across the world.
 Ramesh Thakur and Luk Van Langenhove 235

In parallel with spreading and deepening regional integration, recent

decades have also seen the gradual emergence of interregionalism. In the
broadest sense, this new phenomenon involves “the condition or process
whereby two regions interact as regions.”4 Initially the EU dominated in
this area, building formal relations with the Association of Southeast Asian
Nations (ASEAN) as early as 1980. Regular Asia-Europe Meetings (ASEM)
and the EU-Mercosur agreement followed in the 1990s. Now regional
organizations from all continents have become more proactive in pursuing
interregional connections. Although interregional arrangements have focused
primarily on economic and trade issues, some, like ASEM, have also involved
civil society interaction between the regions concerned.

Regionalism and the United Nations

Regionalism has become an integral part of contemporary multilayered and

multiactor governance. Neither states by themselves nor the UN as their
universal collective forum can substitute for regional governance. Within
Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Europe, countries share certain policy prob-
lems and approaches on a regional scale that they do not hold in common
with all countries on a global scale. At the same time, however, regional
governance cannot substitute for the UN, particularly in promoting security
and development in the world.5 The task is therefore to build effective part-
nerships between regional and global agencies.
Although the UN has from its beginnings been based on state member-
ship, regional groupings are also pervasive in its organization and opera-
tions. For example, regional considerations figure in the composition of UN
organs and the appointment of UN personnel at all levels. States often cau-
cus at the UN through regional groupings. With regard to the secretary-
general, the established convention is for the office to rotate between the
different regional groupings. In addition, the UN maintains regional com-
missions and economic regional substructures. Several regional governance
bodies, such as the Caribbean Community and the League of Arab States,
have obtained observer status at the UN. Chapter VIII of the United Nations
Charter is devoted to regional organizations and their relationship to the
global body. All these arrangements corroborate the claim that regional-
scale governance, far from being incompatible with UN goals, is integral to
the makeup and functioning of the organization.
This consistency is confirmed with respect to both security and devel-
opment, the UN’s two great normative mandates. Originally, a principal
impulse to integration in Western Europe was the aim of avoiding another
major war in the region. Economic unification was seen as a means of secur-
ing European peace. Regional organizations help to create webs of functional
236 Enhancing Global Governance Through Regional Integration

links that then improve cooperative relations between the member states
involved. Regional institutions also help to control some types of conflicts
between their member states and prevent them from spreading.
Already in 1992, UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, in An
Agenda for Peace, called for greater involvement of regional organizations
in UN activities regarding peace and security. His proposed division of
labor envisioned using regional arrangements for such mechanisms as pre-
ventive diplomacy, peacekeeping, peacemaking, and postconflict peace-
building. Since then, formal cooperation between regional organizations
and the UN has been consolidated further. Between 1993 and 2005, the sec-
retary-general convened six high-level meetings on security matters with
regional organizations from all the continents. These discussions have con-
sidered challenges to international peace and security, including the role of
regional organizations in peacekeeping and peacebuilding activities.
The UN Security Council also has given more attention to regional
organizations. In July 2004, after the second meeting between the Security
Council and regional bodies, the Council invited regional organizations

to take the necessary steps to increase collaboration with the United Nations
in order to maximise efficiency in stabilisation processes, and encouraged
enhanced cooperation and coordination among regional and subregional
organisations themselves, in particular through exchange of information
and sharing experience and best practices.6

Not surprisingly, the question of the optimal relationship between the

United Nations and regional organizations has been discussed by the Sec-
retary-General’s High-Level Panel on reform.7 Its report urged that the
Security Council, if it is to be more active and effective in preventing and
responding to threats, needs to utilize Chapter VIII provisions more, and
more productively. The report advised the UN to promote the establishment
of such regional and subregional groupings, particularly in view of their
important contributions to peace and security. Most crucially, the panel
explicitly recognized that regional organizations can be a vital part of the
multilateral system. Their efforts neither contradict those of the UN nor
absolve the United Nations of its primary responsibility for the mainte-
nance of international peace and security. Rather, the critical requirements
are (1) that regional action should be organized within the framework of the
UN Charter and be consistent with its purposes and principles; and (2) that
the UN and regional organizations should work together in a more inte-
grated fashion than they have so far.
Kofi Annan accepted the broad thrust of this analysis.8 At the sixth high-
level meeting between the UN and regional organizations in July 2005, he
affirmed that strengthening UN relations with regional and other intergovern-
mental organizations is a critical part of the effort to reform the multilateral
 Ramesh Thakur and Luk Van Langenhove 237

system. The aim is to create “a truly interlocking system that guarantees

greater coordination in both policy and action” with partnerships that “build
on the comparative strengths of each organisation.”9 The meeting also
endorsed the panel’s call for the establishment of regional and subregional
groupings in highly vulnerable parts of the world where no effective secu-
rity organizations currently exist.

Moving Forward

Regional governance will continue to grow and change the landscape of

global governance. States will continue to offer the legitimacy to multilat-
eralism and global governance, but regional arrangements will also take a
greater role.
This trend holds both promises and threats. The promise is that re-
gional organizations become a primary locus for effective action to realize
the ideals of multilateralism. In this scenario, a worldwide network of re-
gional integration schemes would inject fresh oxygen into both states and
the UN and might permit all levels of governance to exploit the principle of
subsidiarity. The major threat is that the growth of regionalism could fur-
ther weaken the multilateral system and the UN, particularly if the pro-
cesses of regionalism and interregionalism create a world order based on
shifting alliances between regional blocs. If regional integration is to
“tame” globalization—realizing the promises and avoiding the threats—
then a number of actions through the UN should be pursued.
First, regional arrangements need a proper global institutional frame-
work in which their interregional interactions can be organized. Gradually,
over the course of the last century or two, the idea of an international com-
munity bound together by shared values, benefits, and responsibilities and
common rules and procedures took hold of peoples’ imagination. The United
Nations is the institutional embodiment of that development, symbolizing
the belief that human beings belong to one family, inhabit the same planet,
and have joint custodial responsibility to husband resources and protect the
environment for future generations. The UN’s greatest strength is that it is
the only universal forum for international cooperation and management.
Only the UN with its universal membership, global legitimacy, and authen-
ticated procedures can provide such a global framework. Interregional
interactions outside such a framework are analogous to bilateral relations
between states.
Second, regionalism could be given a greater role in the UN Security
Council. True, the (so-far abortive) debate on Council enlargement has been
couched in terms of regional representation. However, none of the existing
five permanent member states has a record of speaking and voting as a
238 Enhancing Global Governance Through Regional Integration

representative of its region, and there is little assurance that new permanent
members of an expanded Security Council would act differently. Yet if
regional representation is to be the principal determinant of permanent
membership, then it could be advisable to raise the role of regional organi-
zations in the Security Council. As a first step, for example, the EU could
be made a permanent member in place of Britain and France. Eventually
the Security Council could become a hybrid forum composed of states and
regional organizations.
Third, the UN could help to further a more even spread of regional
organizations across the world. In the past, UN regional commissions have
played an important role in promoting regional governance. For instance,
the Economic Commission for Europe (ECE) has encouraged integration on
the European continent since 1949, while the Economic Commission for
Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) has promoted common market
projects in that region since the late 1950s. Nowadays, however, the EU has
taken the greater role in initiating and consolidating regional integration
initiatives on the other continents.10 The UN could recover its earlier more
active role in this respect, particularly in parts of the world where region-
alism has developed more slowly. The 2005 World Summit acknowledged
the special contribution of regional organizations to peace and security, the
importance of partnerships between the UN and regional organizations, and
the special needs of Africa. In this context, the conference endorsed efforts
by the EU and others to develop rapid deployment, standby and bridging
capacities, and a ten-year plan to build capacity in this area for the African
Union. More generally, the summit declaration advocated a stronger rela-
tionship between the UN and regional and subregional organizations within
the framework of Chapter VIII of the UN Charter; urged more consultation
and cooperation between them through formalized agreements and the
involvement of regional organizations in the work of the Security Council;
encouraged regional organizations with peacekeeping capacities to place
these at the disposal of the United Nations through the standby arrange-
ments; and promoted economic, social, and cultural cooperation as well.11
Finally, and beyond the UN, regional integration needs more active par-
ticipation of civil society organizations (CSOs). A recurring refrain of this
essay has been that in an increasingly diverse, complex, and interdependent
world, solutions to collective action problems are attainable less and less at
any one level or by state actors alone. Under contemporary conditions of com-
plex civilization, governments can satisfy only a small and diminishing pro-
portion of the needs of human beings as social animals. Citizens look more
and more to civic associations to channel a growing range and variety of
social interactions. Like national society, international society too is becoming
more plural and diverse. There has been an exponential growth in the number
of civil society actors and in the volume of transnational networks in which
 Ramesh Thakur and Luk Van Langenhove 239

they are embedded.12 They bridge the “disconnect between the political geog-
raphy of the state on the one side and the new geography of economic and
social relations on the other.”13 CSOs play increasingly active roles in shap-
ing norms, laws, and policies in contemporary society. These activities need
to be enhanced vis-à-vis regional bodies, as they have been upgraded in rela-
tion to the UN and other global governance agencies. As recent electoral
rejections of the European Constitution have shown, increased participation
of civil society is needed in order to enhance the legitimacy of regional insti-
tutions. At the same time, CSOs must also attend to their own legitimacy so
that they are not seen to be unaccountable, unrepresentative, self-serving, and
irresponsible. The challenge is to give CSOs a voice in deliberations and dis-
cussion without necessarily giving them a vote in decisions, let alone veto
over action. They could be invited to address intergovernmental forums, to
provide expert advice, to listen to governmental viewpoints, to form part of
governmental delegations—in short, like and alongside regional organiza-
tions, to act as the conduit for linking the local to the global. c

Notes

Ramesh Thakur is senior vice-rector of the United Nations University (UNU) and
Luk Van Langenhove is director of the UNU’s research and training program on
comparative regional integration studies (UNU-CRIS).
1. This essay is developed from a keynote address delivered at the conference
“Regionalisation and the Taming of Globalisation?” University of Warwick, 26–28
October 2005.
2. See also Ramesh Thakur and Thomas G. Weiss, The UN and Global Governance:
An Idea and Its Prospects (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, forthcoming).
3. B. Hettne, “Globalization and the New Regionalism: The Second Great
Transformation,” in Björn Hettne et al., eds., Globalism and the New Regionalism
(Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999); B. Hettne, “Beyond the ‘New’ Regionalism,” New
Political Economy 10, no. 4 (2005): 543–572.
4. F. Söderbaum, P. Stalgren, and L. Van Langenhove, “Introduction: The EU
as a Global Actor and the Dynamics of Interregionalism: A Comparative Analysis,”
Journal of European Integration 27, no. 3 (September 2005): 257 (emphasis added).
5. See Andrew Mack, ed., Human Security Report 2005 (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2005); and Ramesh Thakur, The United Nations, Peace and Secu-
rity: From Collective Security to the Responsibility to Protect (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 2006).
6. UN Security Council, Statement of the President of the Security Council,
S/PRST/2004/27, 20 July 2004.
7. High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change (HLP), A More Secure
World: Our Shared Responsibility, UN Doc. A/59/565, December 2004, pars.
270–273.
8. Kofi A. Annan, In Larger Freedom: Towards Development, Security and
Human Rights for All, Report of the Secretary-General, UN Doc. A/59/2005, 21
March 2005, pars. 213–215.
240 Enhancing Global Governance Through Regional Integration

9. Joint Statement by Participants in the Sixth High-Level Meeting Between

the United Nations and Regional and Other Intergovernmental Organizations,
United Nations Headquarters, New York, 25–26 July 2005.
10. F. Söderbaum and L. Van Langenhove, “The EU as a Global Actor and the
Role of Interregionalism,” Journal of European Integration 27, no. 3 (2005).
11. World Summit Outcome Document, 16 September 2005, pars. 93 and 170,
adopted by the General Assembly as Resolution 60/1, 24 October 2005.
12. See Mary Kaldor, Global Civil Society: An Answer to War (Cambridge:
Polity Press, 2003), and John Keane, Global Civil Society? (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2003).
13. Thorsten Benner, Wolfgang H. Reinecke, and Jan Martin Witte, “Shaping
Globalization: The Role of Global Public Policy Networks,” in Bertelsmann Foun-
dation, eds., Transparency: A Basis for Responsibility and Cooperation (Gütersloh,
Germany: Bertelsmann Foundation Publishers, 2002), p. 4, available at www.global
publicpolicy.net.