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The East-West cold War, which dominated international politics for almost half a century after the end of the Second World War, resulted in the centrality of the political-security issues in the agenda of global, trans-regional, and regional multi-lateral arrangements such as the United Nations, and the League of Arab States, and the Organization of OIC. This was essentially because these enterprises were subordinated to the influences of the global bi-polar competition. Further, governments, and legal institutionalism heavily dominated these enterprises. In addition to these features, regional arrangements were also based on the concepts of geographical contiguity, and cultural and ideological similarity.
The end of the Cold War and the emergence of a new uni-polar global system has led to the rise of the processes of globalization which were mainly led by the Western powers by virtue of their victory in the Cold War. Globalization essentially entailed processes of global economic, cultural, and political standardization from a Western perspective. This included emphases on trade liberalization, the role of capitalist sector and civil society institutions, globalizing Western values, and introducing new security models, which focus mainly on the notion of non-proliferation.
These processes of globalization brought about significant changes in the field of multi-lateral arrangements in many directions. First, The role of the traditional multi-lateral institutions, mainly the UN, is being marginalized and Western security institutions (mainly the North Atlantic treaty Organization, NATO) are being globalized. Secondly, New global institutions were established with a view of managing the process of trade liberalization. The most important of them has been the World Trade Organization (WTO). Thirdly, (Geo-economic issues began to gain prominence in the agenda of various global, trans-regional, and regional multi-lateral arrangements. However, whereas, Western powers emphasized on the notion of global trade liberalization, Third World countries advocated a technological development and transfer approach. Fourthly, the cultural variable gained more prominence in inter-state relations as the West began to emphasize of cultural globalization. This has led to the rise of the issue of relations among civilizations, and cultures, the definition of human rights and terrorism. Fifthly, the role of non-governmental variables began to enter into the process of multi-lateralism not only at the level of creating new non-governmental multi-lateral institutions, but also bringing non-governmental forces to play a more prominent role in multi-lateral institutions. Sixthly, the traditional concept of regionalism began to give way to a new concept of neo-regionalism. The latter concept entails four main concepts, namely, (I) geographical proximity is no longer the main determinant of regional cooperation. It now possible for geographical disparate countries to belong to regional or trans-regional groupings on the basis of shared interests, (ii) membership in the neo-regional groupings is open to all states which accept the basic norms of regional cooperation, mainly trade liberation and non-discriminatory trade treatment. In fact, neo-regionalism is sometimes labeled open regionalism; (iii) regional institutions are mainly oriented towards socio-economic issues rather than politico-strategic ones. As a corollary, ideology is not an essential bond for forming the new regional groupings; and (iv) emphasis on loose institutionalism. The traditional requirements of building an elaborate secretariat dominated by heavy bureaucracy working on the basis of a charter have given way to a new emphasis on the formation of a functional system, which consists of broad guidelines, and simple, but efficient, institutions with no permanent t bureaucratic structures (soft regionalism). Perhaps, the establishment of the Asia-pacific Economic Council (APEC), and the Indian Ocean Rim Community (IORC) are some of the main manifestations of this neo-regional multi-lateral paradigm (3).
Whereas these four concepts are generally accepted as the main characteristics of the neo-regional multi-lateral paradigm, there is major disagreement on their definition. For example, whereas Western powers focus on the notion of trade liberalization as the main focus of the neo geo-economic agenda, many Third World countries insist that technological development and transfer should be given more prominence. Further, whereas, the of ideology is being de-emphasized in the new-regional groupings, European powers insist on the notion of "shared European values" as a pre-condition for any form of cooperation.
As all Third World groupings, the end of the Cold War and the other variables associated with it heavily influenced the Islamic world. When the Cold War ended, the Islamic world was already engaged in various regional and trans-regional enterprises, such as the OIC, which established in 1972. Virtually, the governments including those who claimed to be of a non-governmental nature dominated all of these enterprises. The agenda of these institutions was dominated by issues related to Islamic Call (Da`wah), relations with non-Islamic states (issues of Islamic minorities), and to a lesser extent economic cooperation among Islamic states.
As the Islamic world began to feel the pressures of the processes of globalization, it began to adjust itself to these processes with a view of minimizing the negative impact and benefiting from the opportunities they might generate. At the multi-lateral level, the response of the Islamic World has been visible at five main levels, introducing certain adjustment mechanisms within the OIC, the main governmental multi-lateral institution of the Islamic world, creating neo-regional institutions among some Islamic countries, such as the Developing-8 (D-8), creating more genuine non-governmental institutions for cooperation; and joining the promising neo-regional trans-regional groupings such as the Group of Fifteen of the Developing Countries, and attempting to reform global multi-lateral institutions in a way to make them more effective in dealing with issues of the Islamic world. These enterprises will be reviewed in the following sections (4).
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