Persistence of regionalism in the face of economic and financial crisis? Institution-building in ASEAN, MERCOSUR and the EU

Recurring and overlapping financial and economic crises have become markers of the global political economy in the twenty-first century (Reinhart and Rogoff 2009; Kindleberger and Aliber 2011; Claessens and Kose 2013). They affect both large and small, as well as rich and poor countries. Reinhart and Rogoff (2013) aptly describe them as an “equal opportunity menace”. Major recent examples are the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s, the Argentinean crisis at the turn of the millennium and the still ongoing euro crisis. In all three instances, financial crises have generated not just economic but also social and political crises. These crises have jeopardized regional institutions by undermining regional solidarities, thereby threatening to dissolve the very glue holding together the respective regional projects: the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the Common Market of the South (MERCOSUR) and the European Union (EU).