The Greater Mekong Subregion programme: reflections for a renewed paradigm of regionalism

Southeast Asia shares many similarities with Europe, among others, deep economic, historic and cultural ties, as well as the trauma of wars, which led to the desire to turn battlefields into marketplaces. However, in Southeast Asia, regional economic integration has preceded institutional integration, reversing the order of European integration. Despite drawing on different models of integration, programmes favouring the setting up of cross-border and transnational areas have burgeoned both within the European Union (EU) and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). The Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) development programme, supported by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) since the early 1990s, is currently one of the most dynamic transnational integration processes occurring in mainland Southeast Asia. Among the flagship initiatives of the programme are three economic corridors that have revived the ancient caravan trade routes and networks, which once traversed the Indochinese peninsula. This article sketches out the specificities of the GMS integration by examining the “corridor approach”. As institutional regionalism in Europe appears to have encountered problems, and Southeast Asia seems to have stretched its open and network-based integration model to a great extent, the main argument of this essay is that reflections on the success and the limits of the GMS’ specific type of integration can contribute to a new understanding of regionalism, particularly in Asia.