Perception of Regionalism

Abstract

Regionalism has been a factor which dominated world history. Nowadays, regionalism has been considered as a characteristic of the contemporary world. Thus, understanding regionalism is necessary in the study of world history, the history of international relations in particular.

In order to clarify the main contents of regionalism, this article presents four approaches to regionalism, including those based on regional consciousness, level of cooperation among actors in region, economic dimension, and a broader synthesis of criterions.

From the analysis of both advantages and shortcomings of the above-mentioned approaches, this article draws several comments on the concept and content of regionalism. Regionalism is diverse phenomenon in the world and constantly changed from history to present. Regionalism includes three main contents: regional consciousness, regional cooperation, and regionalization. In research, concept of regionalism may be divided into two levels: broad concept and narrow concept.