Regionalism in the Era of Globalization: The Case Study of the SAARC in South Asia

Abstract

Globalisation has emerged as one of the defining features of International Relations, specifically since the latter half of the decade of the 1990s. With the preponderance of the World Bank and the IMF in each and every sector of global dynamics, there is no doubt that the world today seems to be dominated by the unstoppable forces unleashed by Globalisation and Economic Liberalization. This leads to the inevitable question- do regional organizations stand a chance in the globalised world of the 21^st century? Regionalism has often been regarded as a panacea for resolving all the ills besetting a particular region. As such, the E.U., The ASEAN and the OAU-AU have all tasted varying degrees of success in the field of regional collaborative ventures. This brings us to the success-failure paradigm in the anvil of the regional cooperative endeavour in South Asia”the SAARC.