Editorial Introduction (Special Issue on The Social Policy Dimensions of World-Regionalism)

Abstract

The regionalist strategies of states, businesses, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and social movements are key to understanding the complex relationship between contemporary globalization and social policy processes. In bringing together a range of contributions focused on the social politics and policies of world-regional integration processes, this special issue of Global Social Policy has two major aims. First, it seeks to advance a wider appreciation of the significance of regionalist and regionalization processes in the making of global social governance and policy. Second, it begins to address the substantial gap in the scholarly and policy literatures on regionalisms that privilege issues of trade, diplomacy and 'security' to the neglect of welfare. This collection shows that there is a tangible social policy dimension to several regional groupings and that questions of trade and 'security' policy are in practice entangled in wider social policy issues concerning the resources that people have access to and control over and how certain social groups and entire populations are treated.