ABSTRACT
In this chapter I begin by briefly surveying the origins and development of those perspectives in geography, economics, sociology and political science broadly consonant with the above statements. I then turn to the diverse and distinctive understandings of ‘regions’ found in this literature, particularly those that emphasize global cities (and their regions) versus those that focus on more ‘traditional’ sub-national regions or metropolitan/hinterland differences. Finally, I discuss the assumptions about ‘the regional question’ that the new regionalism and many of its most vociferous critics tend to reflect, suggesting that its proponents’ general tendency to economic determinism and their critics’ often relational rather than territorial understanding of the nature of regions are both problematic when it comes to grasping the real course of regionalism around the world in recent years. I claim that the regional question is in fact much more of a political question than either most new regionalists or some of their critics are inclined to admit, both in the sense of having a powerful bottom-up political element to it in calls for more local/ regional policy levers and increased devolution of powers, and in the sense of being a chosen rather than an automatic response to the exigencies of globalization and economic regionalization at
the supranational level. From this perspective, the new regionalism in the world as opposed to that in the academy has political as opposed to strictly economic roots, and the economic effects of globalization are always mediated politically in terms of whether a real regionalism rather than a theoretically imagined one actually emerges.
