Suchergebnisse

THE NEW REGIONALISM, MANIFESTED IN EUROPE BY THE SINGLE European Act and the Maastricht Treaty (1992) and in North America by the signature of the North-American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA 1993), is centred on strategic policies and new institutions, the aims of which are to achieve a more effective role in global competition. In Europe, the shift is marked by the impending process of monetary union and the creation of its related institutions. The new approach agreed in the Maastricht Treaty sets out four requirements for eligibility to membership of monetary union. Convergence criteria embodying the judgment of financial markets about future inflation, exchange rate and fiscal policy appeared to be the second best choice for governments seeking to institutionalize their commitment to inflation-avoiding policies. The whole mechanism is meant first to provide the region with a credible monetary institution able to win over the financial markets and secondly to set up bulwarks to the inflation-prone pressures of domestic sheltered interests. Thirdly, the aim is to commit member countries, through a so-called targeting exercise (in Keohane's words) to accomplishing the agreed objectives with monetary discipline and macroeconomic adjustment.

During Recent Years, Analysts of World Politics Have noted increasing tensions and conflicts between the countries of the OECD area. As the process of globalization is extending to include several new sectors of domestic economies, multilateralism is deteriorating and perhaps, in some sectors, reaching breaking-point. Globalization, widely acknowledged as a powerful engine for the growth of the world economy during the 1970s and 1980s is now splitting up into trading blocs and much more limited minilateralism. This contribution aims at analysing the extent to which policy-making could be improved so that it can address and deal with the effects of globalization and turbulence on domestic and international environments.

REGIONALISM AS A THEORY EVADES CONSISTENT assessment. Attempts to build a grand theory, such as those undertaken by Ernst Haas and Philippe Schmitter, or more recently in more parsimonious style as in consocational elites analysis or the international regimes theory, have not fully succeeded. One can even speak of a neglect of regionalism as a subject of academic study. Yet, on the other hand, a new wave regionalization is apparent in the real world, and despite decades of abandonment of integration projects, an interest in regionalism is growing.

It is through a gradual evolution, rather than by grand design, that the somewhat fragmented economic policies of the EU now appear to be heading towards a rather more robust and coherent economic governance. EU Economic Governance and Globalization considers the following crucial question as the EU enters its final stage of institution-building; will the economic institutions of the EU push ahead to reform its rigid national economies and open them up to globalization and international competition?.