In “World market regionalism at the Asian Development Bank” (DOI: 10.1080/00472336.2015.1086407), Paul Cammack discusses “an emerging ‘world market regionalism,’ within which regions are addressed in terms of their position within the world market, and regional projects are strategically oriented towards the ‘completion of the world market’ in its dual aspect as expansion of trade and transformation of social relations of production.”
The focus of the article is on the “purposive transformation” of the Asian region in pursuit of global competitiveness. Cammack provides a forensic account of this project of world market regionalism developed over two decades by the Asian Development Bank through an analysis of its reports.
He argues that this project is “aimed at transforming the region, and individual states within it, into a space contributory to a wider global project aimed at ‘completing the world market’ and transforming both the social relations of production and individual attitudes and behaviour.”