Regionalism in the World Polity

We argue that the rise of regionalism reflects a world polity theory (WPT) logic, whereby it is legitimated and promoted through amendments to the script of statehood by credentialed experts, ritually and isomorphically taken up by states as a function of their need for legitimacy, and enacted and reproduced notwithstanding profound decoupling between embraced and realized goals. We test and find support for these claims on the empirical terrain...