is an excellent example of the ways in which regionalism and globalization combine to create an impetus for development and growth in a country.
Mohammed Shakur (2001, p. 1) defined globalization as follows:
"Economic 'globalization' is generally defined as the openness, integration, and interdependence of various economies, whereby economic activities, products, services, capital, intellectual properties and investments are flowed across borders; whereby global resources are operated internationally. Malaysia showed her commitment in accepting the challenges of globalization by joining the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), and further ratified the establishment of the World Trade Organization (WTO) on 6 September 1994 (to replace the GATT with effect from 1 January 1995)."
Globalization is not, in all honesty, a new phenomenon. As soon as one group of early humans traded with another, this process was underway - with each successive era in mankind's social, political and economic development creating ever more complex patterns of interaction.
Understanding globalization and regionalism has led analysts such as Gerard Strange (2002, p. 343) to explore such processes as foreign direct investment (FDI), the global mobility of autonomous capital and labor, nationalism, the new constitutionalism, and the relationship between structuralism and functionalism as these theories apply to economics. It is Strange's (2002, p. 344) view that the globalization/regionalism dialectic bears a strong resemblance to the structure/agency dialectic in which analysts attempt to determine if labor and capital movements are primarily affected by existing market and political structures or by new processes emerging as a consequence of politically contested government structures. According to Strange (2002, pp. 344-345), it is important to recognize that much of what seems to constitute globalization is in fact n...