Regional governance: The evolution of a new institutional form

Gary Goertz and Kathy Powers

Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Global Governance from WZB Berlin Social Science Center

Abstract: The paper argues that a new species of political institution has quickly spread across the globe to deal with regional governance. This new institutional form has similarities with the "state," "international institution," and "IGO" but also significant differences. The paper identifies the characteristics that constitute the population of regional governance institutions. The paper then identifies six core morphological characteristics that vary over time and space within this population. We then track empirically the changing nature of this population from 1980 to 2005. For example, by 2005 almost all countries of the world are members of at least one regional governance institution. Next we survey the very wide scope of economic and security issues covered in these institutions and how that has evolved over time. Finally, we show that almost all important single-issue security (military alliances), free trade agreements, along with new international courts are in fact all embedded in regional governance institutions. The paper concludes with some speculations about the causes of the rapid development in regional governance over the last 30 years.

Keywords: institutional form; regional governance institutions; constituting characteristics; issue areas; evolution over time; Institutionelle Form; regionale Governance-Institutionen; konstituierende Charakteristika; Themenbereiche; zeitliche Entwicklung (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/103311/1/799294500.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:wzbtci:spiv2014106

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Global Governance from WZB Berlin Social Science Center Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (econstor@zbw-workspace.eu).