The Politics of Regionalism in the Mekong: Institutional Bypass and Bricolage

Regionalism in the Mekong has continued to proliferate over the last three decades, despite some ups and downs, but the reasons for this persistent proliferation remain under-explained. The hypothesis of this study is that ‘institutional bypass’, a concept originally developed by international lawyers, provides the logic behind the proliferation of regional institutions in the Mekong. This is a top-down force to bypass existing institutions, often exercised by states in forming regionalism at the international level. In addition, the study draws on the insights of geographers, who have argued that ‘institutional bricolage’ helps to explain how regionalism is rooted in local communities. This is a bottom-up force to re-use and re-shape existing institutional elements associated with regionalism, rather than creating new ones. After analysing the politics of regional institution-building in the Mekong, which seems to support the institutional bypass hypothesis, this article considers how best to synthesise the two seemingly opposing logics – namely, institutional bypass and institutional bricolage. The article proposes an integrated analytical framework that explains the coexistence of various types of regionalism in and beyond the Mekong.