Regional cooperation flourishes only where shared culture underlies shared geography

Evidence

The term “regionalism,” however, does not adequately describe what was happening. Regions are geographical not political or cultural entities. As with the Balkans or the Middle East, they may be riven by interand intracivilization conflicts. Regions are a basis for cooperation among states only to the extent that geography coincides with culture. Divorced from culture, propinquity does not yield commonality and may foster just the reverse. Military alliances and economic associations require cooperation among their members, cooperation depends on trust, and trust most easily springs from common values and culture. As a result, while age and purpose also play a role, the overall effectiveness of regional organizations generally varies inversely with the civilizational diversity of their membership. By and large, single civilization organizations do more things and are more successful than multicivilizational organizations. — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 355

Categorization

• DEFINE: Distinguishes regionalism-as-geography from culture-aligned regional cooperation, a key term in Huntington’s framework.
• XREF: Connects to the dissertation work on institutions and trust (Milgrom law merchant, diamond bourse) — trust as the substrate of cooperative arrangements. — connects to: A music culture’s vitality can depend on intense local territorialization rather than global flow — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1262