mesoregionalism

mesoregionalism, process of cooperation and integration in the development of intermediary regions, or “regions within regions.”

The prefix meso is used to describe the middle or intermediate part of a structure or phenomenon. Applied to regionalism, the idea and classification of mesoregionalism and mesoregions cannot be properly understood outside a broader discussion of the emergence of regional economies and regionalist projects as key components of contemporary world order. Perhaps the simplest definition is to treat mesoregions as “regions within regions.” Mesoregionalism, therefore, suggests deliberate projects to inaugurate, consolidate, and develop mesoregions. As with the broader debate about regionalism in the global political economy, a key question is the extent to which mesoregions emerge through deliberate collective decisions versus the degree to which they reflect the de facto growth of transnational economic spaces.

Mesoregionalism is often understood to be one way in which economic space is being reconstituted in the post-Cold War world. If this world order is thought to be “regionalized,” then mesoregionalism might be thought of as an intermediate level between the growth of macro regions, such as the European Union (EU), and smaller cross-border micro regions. Some mesoregions are supranational but do not encompass entire regional spaces. Thus, formal projects such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), and Mercosur (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay) have been identified as mesoregions because they constitute subparts of Asia or the Americas. These regions might be thought of as potential stepping-stones to wider Asian/Asia-Pacific or hemispheric integration in the same way that all regional blocs are considered by some to act as stimuli for globalization. But, equally, mesoregions might form a platform to resist wider macro-regional integration schemes. ASEAN, for example, could be read as an attempt to consolidate a tighter notion of Asia than is implicit within a body such as the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC).

Although some mesoregions tend to be formed by collections of states, other self-defined mesoregions include spaces that embrace only parts of states. For example, the Puebla Panamá Plan—which sought to facilitate commercial exchange and to develop common infrastructures—used the concept of “Meso America” to describe a space defined by Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, and the southeastern states of Mexico. Mesoregions also may exist within existing states and as collaborative ventures between subregions of geographically adjacent states.

The formation and growth of mesoregions may follow economic or political rationales. They are often held to be interest-driven insofar as they can be traced to networking and negotiations among elites. At the same time, most discussions of mesoregions hold that certain preconditions must be met before they come into existence. Communication links, a transport infrastructure, and a mutually comprehensible industrial and economic culture may be key background conditions, but shared historical experiences and common values are equally held to facilitate the successful imagination of the mesoregion. The Baltic Sea region comes close to this model, where a commercial-economic project is underwritten by rhetorical appeal to a shared past and identity. The extent to which a mesoregion flourishes may depend on these variables, but such projects are usually functional and thinly institutionalized. Mesoregionalist projects tend to lack the inherently expansive logics of entities such as the EU.

Mesoregions may also be created and promoted by larger entities. The EU delineation of its multiple and often overlapping regional territories is a good example. For the most part, this has involved the creation of subnational territorial units of analysis to allow the evaluation of regional disparity and to provide a statistical basis for the distribution of structural funds. However, through programs such as Interreg (an EU-funded program that helped Europe’s regions form partnerships to work on common projects), the EU has also been responsible for delineating cross-border mesoregions such as the Baltic Sea, the western Mediterranean, and the Alpine Space. These may be long-standing areas of growth and transnational exchange and in many cases include territories that remain formally outside of the EU. There may be a common developmental rationale, or their formation may be provoked by perceived security imperatives.