• Regionalization is intensification of political and/or economic interdependence among states and other actors in particular geographic region.
• While regionalisation would mean localisation of major political interactions among states based on local reflexes, orientations and socio-historical legacies, regionalism would mean a perceptible/perceived commonality of vision and consciousness that acts as a centripetal force for different states to acknowledge commonness and privilege it over differences that could divide them. Regionalism, even when it is parochially perceived, emphasises a will of togetherness and a desire to overcome ethno-cultural prejudices in quest of the larger goal of working with synergy to ensure mutual advantage and prosperity for a region as a whole. In a major sense, geography determines such localness or ''regionality'', and regional groupings like SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation), BIMSTEC (Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation), ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) and SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organisation) indicate that even common historical experiences sometimes generate the impulses (for cooperation) that engender such regionalism.

Impact

• It promotes internal conditions of nations to change in way that is more conducive to international multilateralism.
• It has demonstrating effect i.e. it shows the various actors involved the effects of globalization. Arguably easiness and effectiveness of such cooperation.
• Each successive regional arrangement reduces the margin of preference. Thus it weakens the opposition to multilateralism.
• Regional agreements have often more to do with strategic and political alliance than trade liberalization.
• Regionalism has more positive than negative effects. When countries can see how they are getting benefitted by increasing regionalization, they will be optimistic about cooperation at international level.

Regionalism makes multilateralism more difficult to achieve

• The net result of preferential agreement may be trade diversion from international to regional market.
• There also may be ‘attention diversion’ with countries becoming less interested in multilateralism, or simply absorption of available negotiating resources.
• Competing arrangement may create incompatible situation of regional and multilateral agreements.
• Creation of multiple legal frameworks and dispute settlement mechanism may weaken discipline and efficiency.
• It may also lead to competition and friction between several economic blocs.

     At the global level, what we mean by ''world politics'' is a summation of such regionalised geo-political developments. A strong sense of regionalism may not necessarily be seen as antagonistic to the creation of world consciousness, especially at a time when the information technology revolution and artificial intelligence have made it impossible for regions to wall themselves off from one another and conduct their politics in an insulated manner. The main reason for this is cross-regional linkages that bring in yet another dynamic to regionalisation of politics and mark it as a defining feature of world politics. Many states are thus members of different regional groupings and blocks that come together to maximise their security and raise their economic status by all means, in the true tradition of realism, that continues to define and determine state behaviour, even if one employs different theoretical paradigms to interpret regional and global politics. Rather than looking at regionalisation of politics and regionalism as separate and unconnected phenomena, these should be taken as building blocks for world/international politics.