After the end of the Cold War, regional and sub-regional groupings have gained momentum as the way in which countries cooperate and should cooperate to pursue peace, stability, wealth and social justice. The surge and resurgence of regional organizations has triggered the proliferation of research on regionalism and regional integration in Europe and other parts of the world. The course will be organized around four general questions that do not only require research across regions but also allow developing a research agenda to accumulate knowledge generated about specific regions. First, why do some governments choose to pool or transfer state sovereignty while others do not? Second, how can we describe and explain the results of the pooling and transferring of state sovereignty at the regional level? Third, how does the pooling and transferring of sovereignty impact back on the domestic structures of the states involved? Finally, what are the 'external' effects if (ever more) countries choose to pool and transfer sovereignty on third states and other regions as well as on global politics? close