Regionalism: The meso public domain in Latin America and South-East Asia

A few decades ago, many countries in the developing world saw collective selfreliance through regional cooperation as an important way of countering Western dominance. Regional autonomy and self-reliance became key norms of regional institutions in Asia, Africa, and Latin America (Acharya 1994, 1999b). But these norms took a back seat with the acceleration of neo-liberal economic globalization (a newer form of Western dominance) in the 1980s and 1990s. Instead of viewing regional institutions to reduce dependency, Third World elites employed them as devices to make their regions more adaptive to, and competitive within, the global economy. Moreover, domestic economic liberalization and transnational coalitions developed around it and became the basis of new regional political and security orders (Solingen 1991, 1998).