Comparative Regionalism beyond Europe versus the rest
Tobias Lenz, Fredrik Söderbaum
Review of International Studies2/26/2025·DOI·Read paper
Abstract
What is the current state of Comparative Regionalism (CR) as a field of research? Since its inception, CR has suffered from a chasm between those who take European integration as the model for conceptualis- ing, theorising, comparing, and designing regionalism worldwide, and the critics, who reject EU-centrism in favour of more contextualised approaches focusing on the Global South. This paper challenges this characterisation by showing how CR has fundamentally changed in the last decade or so. We detail three ‘silent’ transformations: (i) conceptually, scholars disaggregate regionalism into specific components, rendering systematic comparison more tractable and less individual case-centric; (ii) theoretically, schol- ars develop frameworks that build on general social science theories and actively seek to move beyond EU-centrism; and (iii) methodologically, scholars use more rigorous comparative designs and a broader range of data. These changes, we suggest, indicate a ‘mainstreaming’ of CR, with attendant benefits and costs.
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