Pursuing Open Regionalism for Shared Prosperity

In pursuing the aspirations embedded in Vision 2050, this article identifies some key areas for individual and collective action by the Central Asian countries to pursue open regionalism and outlines the crucial elements of a regional agenda. Central Asia’s open regionalism will be a multispeed and multitrack process, prioritizing and sequencing of which will not be easy. Given the time horizon that is being considered in this article, it is important to note that not all collective actions proposed in this article are to be achieved in the immediate future, nor even over the next decade or so, but over the next three and a half decades. Within this overall framework, the article takes stock of the state of play in terms of both intraregional and interregional integration, and addresses the imperatives, opportunities, and challenges in seven broad dimensions, not necessarily in order of relative priority: connecting countries and the region; integrating trade and production; cooperating on water and energy; cooperating on capital flows; managing migration; supporting regional institutions; and balancing national and regional interests—the leadership issue.