Online published on 10 October, 2016.
In recent decades, global perspectives on politics have influenced almost every aspect of international relations studies and regional integration processes have been analysed through new lenses in the post-Cold War era of globalisation. Theories of “old regionalism” have become more comprehensive with the homogenisation of certain dimensions such as culture, economic policies, political regimes and security under the broad paradigm of “new regionalism”. Through the prism of the theory of new regionalism at the supranational level this paper analyses the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, a security alliance formed at a time when the turbulent Central Asian region was in a state of flux after the disintegration of the Soviet Union. While realists view the SCO as an arena of power politics as both Russia and China are founding member states, the impact of globalisation and global politics has spurred its growth in areas other than security such as culture, economics, education, etc.
