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.But multilateral regulation may not always be possible dueto conflicts among major sets of countries in the world.Thus, regional organizationoffers a promising mode of handling the interdependencies among countries thatthe ongoing process of globalization throws up.But once it is actually done, thenit may have constitutional implications and it certainly comes with a cost bill.Public organization deals with competences, rights and duties.When regionalorganizations multiply, then the pertinent question is: What competences dothey handle? My argument is that the more compact the regional group of statesbecomes, the more it calls for some form of constitutional regulation.An attempt has been made to theorize regions as a new emergent level of macroorganization of societies, displaying  regionness as well as  actorness (Hettne,2005).The difficulty involved is that such an approach to regionalism could defythe principle of methodological individualism for the social sciences.The actorsparticipating in the new regionalism are inter alia governments, representing Balassa, Regional Organization and Economic Convergence in the EU Club 141the states of the world.They support regional arrangements when the benefitsoutweigh the costs.Regions are not actors in themselves but emerging aggregatesof human beings.Thus, regionness varies much depending upon how compactregional integration or regional organization tends to be.And, similarly, actornessvaries considerably, as only a few regional organizations possess supranationalbodies.Economic blocs as regional organizations include free trade areas andcustoms unions with preferential trade agreements somewhere in between.Atrade bloc is established through a trade pact (or pacts) covering different issuesof the economic integration.However,  regionness and  actorness surfaces onlywhen a common market is established.Regionalism is often modelled as an impersonal process of change, forcingthe nation-states to give up sovereignty and establish new forms of publicorganization.Thus, one speaks of  imperatives ,  functional necessity and major social transformation , as if regionalization is on par with urbanization orindustrialization.I believe this is incorrect.Regional organization is fundamentallya principal-agent phenomenon.Governments as the principals agree to set up,instruct, pay and monitor agents to handle certain tasks for them.They do thismainly because the total gain to the states or countries they represent is largerthan the total costs.As long as TB > TC, they will continue to push for deeperand deeper regional integration, but once TB [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]