This book takes a mixed-methods approach to completely re-evaluate the regional organizations landscape. Based on a systematic categorization of heterogeneous goals, it identifies several regional organizations in various parts of the world (Latin America, Africa, Middle East, Southeast Asia, and post-Soviet Eurasia) to illustrate the most typical cases of how particular types of regional organizations come into existence and evolve.

Chapters use a novel large-N dataset of more than sixty regional organizations to establish correlations between members' goals and their characteristics. Finally, it examines the few cases of formal dissolution of regional organizations in the last fifty years to consider the conditions under which all stakeholders are willing to abandon their support for regional organizations.