Cross-border regionalism in the EU and ASEAN: another dimension of the “varieties of regionalism”

This article examines the governance norms of micro-regional cross-border cooperation (CBC) in Europe and Southeast Asia. We ask why world-wide cross-border micro-regional institutions, though at first sight pursuing similar economic and socio-political objectives, markedly differ in their institutional design. Guided by arguments derived from sociological institutionalism, we argue that cross-border institutions adopt the governance norms of the regional organization to which they are linked. Accordingly, while in Europe CBC is characterized by normative ideas, supranational tendencies tamed by subsidiarity, bottom-up processes, liberal participatory norms and legal formality, Southeast Asian cross-border institutions are more material, intergovernmental, hierarchical, state-controlled and informal. Cross-border regions established in countries acceding to a regional organization localize the latter’s governance norms if these deviate markedly from entrenched extant normative arrangements. The diversity of CBC in the two world regions studied suggests that the ‘varieties of regionalism’ concept also applies to micro-regionalism.