Regionalism in the Asia-Pacific Area

Research into the phenomenon of regionalism has finally begun to take into account other experience or models than the large-scale European experiment. In the Asia-Pacific region, groups of states are active with efforts at regional coordination in which the ambitions and achievements reflect more the situation in this part of the world than any imitation of the EU model. Regional organisation here reflects the predominance of politics over economics. Thus, regional coordination targets political stability and is conditioned as well as restrained by the growing strength of China and India. Instead of closed and profound regionalism, as with the EU model, regional coordination in ASEAN and APEC display weak but open regionalism in keeping with the economic power of the region in the world economy.