Regional Integration, defined as the process leading to the establishment as well as the working of regional regimes, is one of the most important international developments today. Its growing importance derives from its perception as a counterweight to globalisation, and as a response to the challenges of global governance. Despite its worldwide relevance, integration processes remain empirically unverified and theoretically underspecified at the comparative level.  

The need for a basic empirical understanding and theoretical specification of integration processes at the comparative level provides the research background, and justification, for the establishment of this CCIS. The centre's overarching research goal is to conduct empirically based analysis of regional integration processes (worldwide) with the aim of constructing an integration-theory.

Three questions frame the centre's research activities:

1) What is Regional Integration?
2) How does it emerge and develop?
3) What forces influence its emergence and development?  

The CCIS aims at initiating comprehensive, empirically based analyses of regional integration-projects, successful as well as failed ones, in order to gain insights in the integration-processes, more specifically preconditions, ‘starters', and ‘blockers'. We deliberately try to cover all significant projects systematically from the beginning of the 20^th century until today worldwide; those which worked; those which failed and those in the making. Until now, the focus has to a large degree been on Europe, as an outstanding example of regional integration.*)

The distinctiveness of the centre revolves around the use of an explicitly comparative for understanding regional integration processes. In this respect the CCIS seeks to carve out a niche which is distinct from other similar research centres worldwide focusing on integration.

Ultimately the CCIS seeks to create a permanent institutional anchor and research infrastructure for the promotion of comparative integration research, as well as provide a forum for intellectual reflection on comparative integration processes.  Ultimately, the centre aims at being the nucleus of a strong international research network, to be achieved by, among others, i) involving leading international researchers and research institutions in the activities of CCIS, and ii) establishing an international advisory committee for the CCIS made up of leading international scholars

Among the tasks of the CCIS, one may mention the following:

- To initiate research projects
- To build a network to academics working with integration outside Europe
- To arrange an international seminar per year
- To invite guest researchers for shorter or longer periods
- To arrange regular seminars for discussion on new research
- To have a home-page which promotes and tells about the centers activities?

Currently the CCIS cooperates with Copenhagen Business School's (CBS) Centre for European studies on a project focusing on the relations culture - politics - supranational integration.

*) The idea of comparing integration-projects is in it self not new. Ernst B. Haas and Philippe Schmitter did so in 1961, (Europe - South America) but seemingly it has not been attractive to scholars in spite of its obviousness - attractive because building theory on one case (EC / EU) is not sustainable, as the development of neo-functionalism in the 60s and 70s clearly showed.