Introduction

Pierre BECKOUCHE1 and Yann RICHARD2

1 UMR Ladyss, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, France

2 UMR Prodig, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, France

Following the global financial crisis that arose from the subprime crisis in the United States (2008), after “America first” witnessed during Trump’s presidency in the United States (2017–2020) and after the Covid-19 pandemic (2020–2022), the globalization paradigm lost its omnipotence. At the economic level, the theme of “deglobalization” advocates the relocation of some activities (Latouche 2019), a priority for local production intended for the national market – especially in the countries of the South – in place of imports (Bello 2002), even protectionism (Sapir 2010), and the regulation of financial activities. At the political level, this takes the form of sovereignty and sometimes a revival of nationalism. When globalization is challenged, it is often in the name of local distribution channels that allow local actors to control their future, preserve their jobs and their environment, and/or in the name of a return to national sovereignty.

We might have thought that these demands for more controlled internationalization would lead to the promotion of a world organized in large international regions, more capable of regulating things than on the scale of the vast world. Nevertheless, the first two decades of the 21st century have not seen the victory of the regions. Instead, we hear more about the local and the return of nationalism. As for globalization, it is far from having surrendered: space is now structured by a planetary connection; the world’s metropolises form a circumterrestrial archipelago animated by flows that never stop; the power of multinationals remains huge.

There are even signs of regional disintegration here and there. This was the case in Europe, at least until the Russian–Ukrainian war that broke out just as this book was being written. All Europeans have suddenly become geographers, asking themselves whether political Europe should stretch as far as Ukraine, whether the Donbass should be part of Western Europe rather than a Russian regional entity, and whether the European Union should integrate militarily. But it should be remembered that before then, the EU project had suffered a dramatic setback with the withdrawal of the United Kingdom (Brexit vote in 2016). Some EU member countries were turning inward and rejecting the community logic. We could speak of populist, Eurosceptic or sovereignist governments, but this also reflected a dislike of the European Union among citizens, the first signs of which were seen in the 1990s. These years also saw the end of the Soviet Union, the Warsaw Pact and the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, the other great European regional experiment.

Regional uncertainties are not unique to Europe. In the Americas, MERCOSUR and UNASUR are stalled by recurrent economic and political crises, a structural lack of trust among some member countries and inadequate infrastructure. Venezuela’s exclusion from MERCOSUR is a sign of a Latin American regionalism that seems to accumulate institutions without coherence. In East Asia, the disputes between China, Taiwan, Japan, North Korea and other countries in the region remain immense. In Africa, large regions are having difficulty driving development. We wonder whether the very idea of a large region is not simply being swept away by a Sino-American bipolarization of world space, shaking up the logic of proximity through international mega-treaties and Belt and Road initiatives.

However, the long-term trends are obstinate. States are giving more and more importance to relations with their neighbors. This is reflected in the spectacular increase in the number of regional agreements (“regionalism”) for trade in goods and services. Today, 450 such agreements, notified to the WTO, are active. In 2021, the free trade area of the 44 members of the African Union came into force (African Continental Free Trade Area, AfCFTA). In January 2022, the world’s largest free trade area, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RECP), involving East and Southeast Asian countries, came into effect as China’s response to the US attempts to create a trans-Pacific treaty. For the past 20 years, Russia has been trying to strengthen ties with its neighbors – former Soviet republics – through the Eurasian Economic Union and the Collective Security Treaty Organization, the influence of the Runet and, more recently, through arms. The Covid-19 pandemic and the rise of the importance of the environment and increased climate change to the top of the political agenda are prompting many actors to seek solutions at the scale of their regional neighborhood.

This regionalism is based on a major trend that globalization had masked: the regionalization of trade. For the past 50 years, many interactions have been concentrated in clusters of neighboring countries, whether in trade, investment, international mobility or the joint management of transboundary environmental public goods. These trends have long been observed by specialists from different disciplines who are interested in the effects of geographical proximity or in the comparative advantages and disadvantages of multi-state regionalism. Looking at the existing bibliography, economists and political scientists have dominated the debate for several decades. Geographers are also interested in the subject, looking at objects as diverse as the relations between metropolises, North/South regionalism, European, Latin American or East Asian integration, mobilities or international migrations.

Several recent events have revived thinking about the European region. Firstly, Brexit is proving more difficult than was envisaged by British Eurosceptics. Undoing ties that have been built over decades is a daunting exercise. Along the way, we realize that there is much to lose and that signing a separation agreement does not instantly sweep away the functional integration that has been built on the ground. Secondly, several countries are still knocking on the door of the European Union (recently Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine). Thirdly, Brexit does not seem to set a precedent, as there are no further requests to leave the European Union. Fourthly, European institutions and member countries continue to build the EU on a day-to-day basis. Research shows that regionalism is still very much in vogue, because it echoes major economic (construction of large markets, regulation of trade), political (international regulation of globalization, co-construction of norms and standards) and geopolitical (pacification of relations between neighboring states and structuring of a multipolar world, not to mention the work that will be devoted to the new European geopolitics which arose on February 24, 2022) challenges.

On the world map, despite the headwinds, the major regional groupings are there and there they are indeed. They have gradually imposed themselves, with varying degrees of success and following different trajectories. The first objective of this book is to answer the following question: have the regions become an additional level in the spatial deployment of numerous actors (political actors, firms, social groups, cultural organizations)? They could thus come to be inserted between the national and the global levels: the continuous enlargement of the scales of exchange, environmental problems, migratory routes, energy distribution, construction of major infrastructures. All of this goes beyond national limits and leads to regional cooperation. A second hypothesis: as more than just levels, these large entities become real territories, appropriated by the societies that constitute them, subject to shared representations, steered by powers that are increasingly defined and even increasingly competent on this macro-regional scale. In this hypothesis, which corresponds to what economists call “deep” regional integration, growing integration at the economic, institutional, legal and normative, political, cultural and identity levels make the region a landmark that makes sense, takes root in representations and models what could become a regional society.

The second objective of this book is to show that geographers are equipped to test these hypotheses and to better understand these large regions, even though they have long remained discreet in this field of research dominated by economics, political science and international law. Their legitimacy in the study of regions, scales, territories and spatial integration is not in doubt. They are aware of the contributions of other disciplines in order to shed light on their own research, even though these studies still too often lack the necessary generalization to go beyond the stage of regional monographs.

The first chapter of this book lays francophone geography’s historical and theoretical contribution to the large regional issue.

Chapters 2–8 are thematic approaches to regional geography. The aim is to observe and even measure the regional concentration of certain practices and to see whether it combines with or opposes globalization. It is also a question of seeing whether this scale is not the most relevant for dealing with certain issues, in fields such as security, energy, planning, transport and even finance, since cooperation on a regional scale is easier when neighboring societies share certain collective preferences and are linked by strong interdependencies.

– Chapter 2 studies...