The Globalisation versus Regionalism Debate

Abstract

Globalisation has intensified competition between countries and businesses for resources, investments, markets and profits. Participants seek whatever competitive edge they can identify to their advantage. In recent decades, countries have sought to use international economic agreements (IEAs) as a method of accentuating their competitiveness. IEAs seek to confer on the contracting countries unique advantages to the exclusion of others. The practice has proliferated remarkably since the 1990s. Some scholars have decried the trend, arguing that it is inhibitive of aspirations for globalised (or multilateralised) regimes that apply uniformly across all countries. This article argues that while regionalism has the potential to impede globalisation of laws in some areas, it can facilitate globalisation in others. For instance, a global legal regime for international investment may be evolving from bilateral and regional treaties, and regional implementation of international legal instruments (ILIs) may hasten global international commercial laws.