Authors: Ole Jacob Sending (NUPI), Malte Brosig (WITS), Hans Jørgen Gåsemyr (NUPI), Piki Ish-Shalom (HUJI), John Karlsrud (NUPI), Cristiana Maglia (NUPI), Elisa Lopez Lucia (ULB)
Published in February 2025
As global governance becomes increasingly fragmented, regional organizations are gaining renewed attention. While they cannot replace global institutions such as the UN or the IMF, regional bodies play an important —and often underestimated— role in shaping international cooperation. This NAVIGATOR Working Paper on Regional Perspectives examines how regional organizations across the world contribute to global governance, and what this means for the European Union’s external action.
Why Regional Organizations Matter
In recent years, multilateral institutions have faced growing challenges. Institutional inertia, limited reform, geopolitical rivalry, and declining trust have weakened global decision-making. At the same time, states increasingly rely on club governance, informal formats, and ad hoc coalitions such as the G7, G20, or BRICS.
Against this backdrop, regional organizations offer a different governance layer. With more limited membership and regionally embedded mandates, they can facilitate diplomacy, cooperation, and problem-solving in ways global institutions often struggle to achieve. However, the report shows that regional organizations vary significantly in their institutional strength, political relevance, and contribution to global governance.
Strong Variation Across Regions
The paper provides a comparative analysis of regional organizations across the Americas, Asia, Africa, and Europe, highlighting how regional politics and great-power dynamics shape institutional outcomes.
In Europe, the EU stands out as the most advanced case of regional institutionalization. The war in Ukraine has accelerated integration, strengthened the EU’s geopolitical role, and reinforced cooperation in areas such as security and defence. At the same time, differentiated integration and internal political divergence continue to shape Europe’s regional landscape.
In Africa, the African Union has experienced significant institutional growth, particularly in peace and security through the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA). African organizations often act as first responders in conflict settings, working alongside the UN and the EU. Yet, capacity constraints, financial dependence on external donors, and the rise of military ad hoc coalitions challenge the AU’s central role.
In Asia, regional organizations are numerous but generally less institutionalized. Bodies such as ASEAN serve primarily as diplomatic arenas rather than supranational actors. China has emerged as a key organizational innovator, establishing new institutions like the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), while regional states often use overlapping memberships to hedge against great-power dominance.
In Latin America, regionalism is characterized by fragmentation and overlapping institutions. Waves of regional cooperation have alternated between economic, political, and post-hegemonic projects, with mixed results. Trust in regional organizations tends to be lower than in other regions, reflecting broader challenges of political legitimacy and institutional stability.
Trust, Perceptions, and Power Politics
Using public opinion data and elite speech analysis, the report finds significant regional differences in trust toward both global and regional institutions. Confidence in the UN has declined overall, particularly in Africa, while ASEAN and the African Union enjoy relatively higher levels of public trust. At the elite level, emerging powers increasingly prioritize informal groupings such as BRICS, which feature more prominently than both regional organizations and traditional global institutions.
These findings suggest that regional organizations are not a silver bullet for fixing global governance. Instead, they coexist with —and are shaped by— broader trends toward informality, competition, and power politics.
Implications for the EU
For the EU, regional organizations remain a key entry point for engaging a more multipolar world. The paper highlights the importance of orchestration: working through and with regional bodies to broaden representation, reduce governance gaps, and complement global institutions. The EU-AU relationship is a central test case, showing both the potential and the limitations of supporting regional organizations in other parts of the world.
Ultimately, strengthening multilateralism will require a layered approach, combining global institutions, regional organizations, and selective informal cooperation. Understanding regional diversity is essential if the EU is to remain an effective and credible actor in global governance.
