Karl Haushofer's Concept of "Pan-Regions" and Its Projection onto the Future Structure of the World Economy: From Economic Fragmentation to Macro-Regional Organization

Abstract

The intensification of geopolitical competition, the proliferation of trade restrictions, sanctions regimes, industrial policies, and strategies aimed at reducing external dependence are changing the spatial organization of the world economy. Globalization is not coming to a complete halt; however, its former model, based on the primacy of economic efficiency and the cross-border optimization of production chains, is increasingly supplemented by the logic of security, technological sovereignty, and the political reliability of partners. Against this background, a comparison between contemporary processes of geoeconomic fragmentation and Karl Haushofer's concept of "pan-regions" is of scholarly interest.

The purpose of this narrative review is to reconstruct the content of the pan-regional concept, identify its economic components, and assess the possibility of its limited application to interpreting the emerging macro-regional structure of the world economy. It is shown that Haushofer viewed a large space not simply as a territory, but as a combination of a political center, a resource periphery, transport communications, and a cultural-political idea. At the same time, his constructions were connected with interwar German geopolitics, a hierarchical understanding of the international order, and ideas of spatial redistribution. They therefore cannot be mechanically transferred to contemporary integration associations.

Contemporary macro-regionalization differs from the classical pan-regional model in that global production networks are preserved and transnational corporations, digital platforms, international institutions, and intermediary states play a major role. The emerging order will most likely take the form not of a system of fully closed autarkic blocs, but of a multi-level configuration of overlapping regional spaces. Critical production chains, financial infrastructure, energy flows, and technological standards will be concentrated within them, while part of global trade will continue to operate on a multilateral basis. Haushofer's concept retains analytical value not as a forecast or normative project, but as a historical model of the transition from a universal world market to politically structured large economic spaces.