Inter-Regionalism and Trans-Regionalism in Regionalism Studies: The Case of European Union and African Union

The central aim of this article is to examine the concepts of inter regionalism and trans regionalism in regionalism studies through the relationship between European Union and African Union. Inter and trans regionalism are patently new concepts within the regionalism studies and yet their importance for international relations has been increasing over the years. As the numbers of regional integration and regional cooperation thriving, both diplomatic and institutional region to region or region to third countries relations become more present in the world politics. Even if there is no disciplinary concession yet on the definitions of these concepts in the literature, inter and trans regionalism have been widely used to refer these types of relations. These concepts also provide compelling new area of study for the flourishing regionalism literature. The article tackles the question of in which meaning, and context inter and trans regionalism have been used by focusing on the institutionalized relations between European and African Union. This study scrutinizes a descriptive methodology to deal with the question at hand by looking at the different meaning and usage of these concepts and try to frame the relationship between European and African Union with respect to these concepts. The aim of the study to contribute to the regionalism literature in Turkish by introducing these two phenomena