Re-Evaluating Regional Organizations

Dr. Evgeny Vinokurov is the Director of the Centre for Integration Studies at the Eurasian Development Bank, St. Petersburg, Russia. He has collaborated with various international organizations, including the UN, UNDP, UNESCAP, EU, ASEAN, CIS, EAEU, World Bank, EBRD, ADB, and IDB.
Prof. Dr. Alexander Libman is a Professor at Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich. He is also Associate Research Fellow at the International Center for the Study of Institutions and Development of the National Research University Higher School of Economics (Moscow), and Associate Research Fellow at the Center for Russian Studies of the East China Normal University, Shanghai, China.

This book re-evaluates the regional organizations landscape and discusses how organizations with similar mandates can exercise strikingly different goals. Even economic organizations, which do not produce any outcomes in terms of economic cooperation, can be valuable for their members or individual stakeholders. The book's argument is supported by a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods. It employs a novel dataset of 60 regional organizations to establish correlations between members' goals and their characteristics. More than a dozen case studies in Latin America, Africa, Middle East, Southeast Asia, and post-Soviet Eurasia illustrate the theoretic arguments of how particular types of regional organizations come into existence and evolve. Finally, the book examines the remarkable resilience of regional organizations and considers the conditions under which the stakeholders are willing to abandon support.

Moves past the simplistic practice of distinguishing between regional organizations based on their level of perceived success

1. Introduction.- Part I: Regional Organizations: An Analytical Framework. 2. Typology of Regional Organizations.- 3. Historical Factors.- 4. Economic Development and Crises.- 5. Power Assymetries. 6. Political Regime.- Part II: The Universe of Regional Integration Organizations. 7. Determinants of RO Type: Large-N Evidence.- 8. "Straight Path" Alive and Kicking Regional Organizations.- 9. Alternative Path: A Regional Organization's Rebirth.- 10. Integration Rhetoric.- 11. Talking Club.- 12. Zombies and Coma.- 13. Dissolution of Regional Organizations.- 14. Conclusions.- Annex: Regional Integration Database data.- Endnotes