Stemming from an international and multidisciplinary network of leading specialists, this best-selling text is fully updated with new chapter additions. With the first edition prepared at the end of the last century and the second edition adding inter-regional relations, this new edition focuses on competing models of regional cooperation within a multipolar world and the role of the European Union.

Introduction: Globalization, New Regionalism and the Role of the European Union; I: Theoretical Perspectives; 1: Regional Blocs, World Order and the New Medievalism; 2: The Political Economy of New Regionalism and World Governance; 3: Cultural Difference, Regionalization and Globalization; 4: Alternative Models of Regional Cooperation? The Limits of Regional Institutionalisation in East Asia; 5: Interregionalism and World Order: The Diverging EU and US Models; II: Comparative Analysis of Regional Groupings; 6: Between Trade Regionalization and Various Paths towards Deeper Cooperation; 7: NAFTA and United States Regional Trade Policy; 8: Competing Latin American Regionalisms in a Changing World; 9: African Regionalism and EU-African Interregionalism; 10: Southeast Asian and European Integration Compared; III: European Union as a New Civilian Power in the Making; 11: The European Union and the Challenges of the Near Abroad; 12: The European Union, the Eastern Neighbourhood and Russia: Competing Regionalisms; 13: Regionalism, the European Union and the Arab Awakening; 14: Europe: Trading Power, American Hunting Dog, or the World's Scandinavia?; IV: Reconsiderations; 15: European Union, Regionalism, New Multilateralism: Three Scenarios