Thomas Meyer, J. Sales Marques and M. Telò eds., Regionalism and Multilateralism: Politics, Economics, Culture / Thomas Meyer, J. Sales Marques and M. Telò eds., Towards a New Multilateralism: Cultural Divergence and Political Convergence?

Excerpt

Research on comparative regionalism is developing in new innovative directions. A new research agenda, supported by the annual interdisciplinary scholarly conversations organized by the Institute of European Studies of Macau, are characterized by two new research: a) the controversial link between diversity of regional cooperation in different continents and various “background cultures”; b) the question of the interplay of regionalism with multilateral cooperation in relevant policy fields. Following these conferences, the GEM book Series Globalization, Europe, and Multilateralism, which I review below, has recently published two important contributions to the studies of regionalism and multilateralism. On the conceptual and theoretical side, the two volumes identify how multilateralism forms and functions. On the empirical side, both volumes extensively examine the European vision of multilateral cooperation, but neither volume considers that the European experience offers the only approach to examine multilateralism. Through comparative case studies, both volumes reveal how multilateralism develops in different regional contexts and/or different issue areas. Significantly, both volumes examine the causes of the currently uncertain future of multilateralism, and thus, pave a way for further theoretical and empirical examinations of multilateralism. …