Regional Integration Knowledge System

Garnet - Network of Excellence

Please take a moment to read through this text to get a basic understanding of the current status and available functionalities of the current version of the Regional Integration Knowledge System.

Regional integration agreements have increased in number, scope and diversity over the last two decades of the twentieth century. In the twenty-first century, the trend towards regional cooperation looks set to continue as governments and states opt for cooperation to serve a variety of purposes and to secure common interests. Regional cooperation serves to reconcile the tensions between globalisation pressures and the demands for greater local autonomy, while offering states an opportunity to retain their own autonomy over political processes. However, in spite of the continuing development of this (supra-national) regional governance level, the provision of systematic, detailed and comparable information on regional integration processes worldwide seems still to lag behind.

The Regional Integration Knowledge System is a joint initiative taken by UNU-CRIS and the GARNET Network of Excellence. It has the ambition to provide a central node for information exchange on regional integration processes worldwide and to constitute a ‘missing link’ between the existing regional initiatives for information provision on regional integration and cooperation.

The Regional Integration Knowledge System counts three main components (represented by the menu on the top):

• Database
• Research
• News

The current version of the Regional Integration Knowledge System is a prototype version which will be gradually refined, improved and extended in close collaboration with the users of the system.

Although the system should be working stable, please keep in mind that it is still in an early level of development. Therefore you may still experience some “bugs” and missing data.

The system itself is a web-based application; accessible with a browser with JavaScript enabled. With older browsers like Netscape 4.x or Internet Explorer 4.x you may encounter errors displaying the website.