Global political orders are paralleled and sustained by several regional political orders. Regional international societies are configured around normative ‘master institutions’ such as sovereignty, diplomacy etc. Regional international societies may seek to elevate specific normative traits to the global level which in effect turns them into normative powers. Profound institutionalization of regional international societies, as witnessed in Europe with the EU, may infuse them with actor properties thus severely upsetting the state centred Westphalian order.

Some regions suffer a collapse of states and respond with accelerated institutionalization of regional international society – often with external assistance. The African Union is a case in point. This is compounded by the rise of new major powers which seek to source resource to sustain their growth and are enticed by the political vacuum left by fragile and failed states. Europe’s declining powers seek to maintain their influence in chiefly Africa which in part explains their willingness to integrate in the security domain. This opens up for new patterns of interaction between the rising powers of India, China and the EU over the Africa state stabilization project entailing both cooperation and rivalry.

Other regions host a globally dominant power which pre-empt profound institutionalization of regional international society. A case in point is the US which interacts with institutionalized regional international societies on other continents with great ambiguity. While on occasion negotiating select transaction related regimes with institutionalized regional international societies they frequently bypass the regional level and approach individual states directly to gain leverage in effect amplifying contestation over regional institutionalization in the process. Institutionalization of regional international societies and global international society assigns a key role for formal policy bodies and international secretariats to managing inter-regional interaction and serve as frontline harbingers of regional ideas which are either contested or embraced globally or in other regional international societies.

The cluster explores regions as new actors and investigates how they interact with established and emerging traditional powers, other regional entities and global international society at large represented by major cross-continental organizations and regimes such as the UN etc.