Prisoners or Masters of Destiny?

Abstract

Global governance for a world without world government faces a fundamental paradox. The policy authority for tackling global problems and mobilizing the necessary resources is principally vested at country level, in states, while the source and scale of the problems and potential solutions to them are transnational, regional and global. One result of this situation is that states have the capacity to disable decision making and policy implementation by global bodies like the United Nations, but generally lack the vision and will to empower and enable their own global problem solving on issues such as human rights abuses, gender discrimination, environmental degradation, human trafficking, terrorism and nuclear weapons. Could regionalization, by inserting an additional level of governance between the state and the world, provide a satisfactory resolution of this paradox? What are the implications of regionalism and interregionalism for global governance and world order? And what might a regionally integrated South Asia look like in 50 years' time? In this essay, I will first comment on the rise of regionalism in recent decades and then describe how South Asia has bucked the trend, before concluding with a personal, highly idealized vision of the South Asian region in the year 2060. Show more