Financial and economic crises have a global impact. While this was already visible in the 19th and at the beginning of the 20th century, when the collapse of national stockmarkets triggered economic crises in a large number of states, the most recent economic breakdowns and recessions – the 1980s in Latin America, the 1990s in Asia and, finally, the years 2000 in Europe and North America – have influenced not only states but also regional organisations. Institutional structures, as well as relations between member states and the citizens of these regional integration structures have been modified – either through strengthening these structures, and creating new opportunities for actors, or by weakening the relations between the main actors of regional integration. The aim of this collective volume is to see whether regional institutions change in periods of economic and financial crisis and - if they do - analyse why they change to different degrees and in different directions. While the economic and financial crisis seems to lead the European Union to become more formal with its member state relations bringing the most powerful actors to the fore (Hodson et al. 2014), Asian and Latin American regional organisations appear to be influenced in a more limited way. Why do we observe the establishment of stricter rules in the European case, while neither Central and Latin American nor Asian institutional structures seem to be profoundly affected?