The 1990s have seen a tremendous upsurge of regionalism in all parts of the world. In the process, the unfolding institutional global governance architecture became increasingly vertically and horizontally differentiated. The new interregional fora, which proliferated in the 1990s as a new layer of global governance, attracted a lot of scholarly attention. Taking Asia-Europe relations as an example, scholars sought to make sense of interregionalism and attached to it functions of which they believed they would promote global governance. One of the functions attributed to interregionalism was regional identity building. The regular interaction of regional fora, scholars argued, would strengthen regional identity. “Regionalism through interregionalism” was Heiner Hänggi’s much quoted formula for this anticipated effect. Yet, viewed from hindsight, there are few indications that interregionalism has strengthened European and Asian regional identities. The greatest impact on regional identities emanated from the group-to-group ASEAN-EU dialogue relations, while the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) as a transregional forum has developed into a typical institution of what has been categorized as “diminished multilateralism.” Hybrid interregionalism, that is, region-to-group relations, have even less impacted regional identities. Only in the EU-China relationship, they ambiguously affected European regional identity.
