Multilateralizing regionalism: Case study of African regionalism

Regionalism emerged as a global policy concern during the Uruguay Round of multilateral trade negotiations, towards the end of the 1980s. Before then it had comfortably co-existed alongside the multilateral trading system. The stability of the system hinged strongly on the leadership that the US had provided since the early days of the GATT until the late 1980s. It was only when the US turned to regionalism that the edifice of the multilateral system began to experience tremors, and regionalism started becoming a threat to the functioning and credibility of the multilateral trading system. The stumbling block/building block metaphor widely credited to the Columbia University scholar, Jagdish Bhagwati, reflected the anxiety that the rapid spread of regionalism caused.