Regional Policy in the EU Mode of Regionalism: Implications for Asian Integration

Abstract

Regional Policy continues to be a central part of the overall framework of the European Union’s (EU) approach to developing a supranational political and economic entity. It accounts for more than one third of the EU’s expenditure and involves complex challenges of redistributing resources from subnational regions in some nations to poorer regions in other nation states. What can nations in other parts of the world that are engaged in pursuit of greater integration learn from the EU’s experience, and to what extent are such understandings relevant to other nations? This paper will review both these questions, with specific attention to the Asian context. It will consider some examples of the interest in subnational regional policy within specific Asian countries, with a view to exploring the potential redistribution from richer to poorer regions in Asia.