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After two decades of fierce deregulation processes, which has weakened national protection and economic barriers enormously – endangered by increasingly global trade - , and inspite of increasingly numerous demands in favour of controlling globalisation, should it be admitted definitively that we are moving inescapably towards a socio-economic model where rules and limits are imposed exclusively by the market forces. ?
Having said that, a growing number of authors hold that an answer could be found at the regional scale (as in regional multinational associations). Whether in Europe, East Asia, North (Nafta) or South (Mercosur) America, in Western or Austral Africa, a multi-form partnership set up at the regional scale could reshape economic and political geography by modifying the constraints and strategies of local societies.
In general, regionalisation as a process and a strategy by the key players is based on four principal arguments. The first is economic. Firms, whether they are small- or intermediate-sized, or multinational companies, often find in their the regional affiliations (known as “nearshoring”), the partners and the equilibrium they need to be able to find their way in the context of globalisation which is becoming increasingly competitive and less and less predictable. In this light, commercial trade progresses better within the regions than in the rest of the world. Ever increasing populations live by spanning several countries which are often close or neighbouring ones. The second argument is mainly cultural, “collective preferences” are often conceived better at this scale than at a global one, when consumer protection, environmental care, social or cultural norms, etc. are involved. Europe, the best placed to create synergies necessary for the optimal functioning of the whole regional group it forms, was forced to look for cultural homogeneity and a balance between its different inter-state and intra-state components. The third argument is political, and is based on certain social strategies and practices requiring a return to a balanced model between free-trade and regulation processes. Nevertheless, the regions must not be considered as fortresses which impede free-trade. They are notably, as recognised by the GATT and the WTO rules, indispensible openings towards the trading universe between developing countries which the Doha Round or Development Agenda would not have been able to promote and which place them in a too unfavourable balance of power when only using simple bilateral agreements with the Northern countries. It is true that in the Euromed area, as in Nafta or East Asia, the regional agreements are a way for developed countries to impose their norms on their developing neighbours. International “regulation” must also be considered because, most of the time, these regional commercial agreements (known as “in depth” agreements, Lawrence, 1996) extend beyond commerce alone : sometimes they affect environmental norms at several levels, the principles of trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights, telecommunications and energy standards and norms, etc.. Euromed Association Agreements, for example, are much more than a free-trade project : they have social, cultural and major political implications. No doubt it is because East Asia has estimated the importance of the phenomenon and the multiple stakes it encompasses, that it did not jump on the band wagon of regional agreements, like America or Europe, and that it has been setting up “Asean plus Three” with China, South Korea and Japan since 2000 The fourth argument is geopolitical : regionalisation is the best and perhaps the only way to recover a certain pluralism of geopolitical actors from the point of view of contemporary international relations. The USA would thus have to adapt to the strong European and Asiatic regional agreements by proceeding in a less liberal manner than at present. Analysis of the regional integration process can be divided into three types of approach :
 A comparative approach of the large regional groups (Europe and its Eastern, Southern and South-eastern neighbours, North America, East Asia, etc.) and sub-regional groups (West Africa, Magreb, Eurasia, the Arctic, etc.) ;
 A distinction between the different scales from the local to the macro-regional scale via small and large towns and then States. These different territorial scales have become the object of our observations of regional integration processes ;
 An objective and normative approach towards the different actors involved, sometimes their defendants, in the regionalisation process. This has led us to study the content of the concept of territorial governance.