Power and Integration. An Historical Overview on Euro- Mediterranean Relations

Year 2018, Akdeniz Özel Sayısı, 0 - 0, 02.08.2018

Massimiliano Trentin

Abstract

This contribution aims to analyze the power relations underlying the international relations of the

Mediterranean space since the late XIX century in order to assess if and how the most recent initiatives

implemented by the European Union (EU) represent continuity or discontinuity with the modern past.

The main idea is that the European Union has tried to shape the Mediterranean space along its basic

preference for free access to the markets of the southern and eastern countries of the Mediterranean,

similar to what European powers did in late XIX and early XX century: the liberal order of the “Levantine”

period combined the patterns of cooperation and consent, which were needed to foster market and elite

integration, with those of conflict and coercion, which in turn were required to enforce the Europeanled

economic and political order against restive and opposition forces. Compared to the past, however,

the European Union has succeeded only partially in enforcing a “neo-liberal order” because it lacks

meaningful political and military capacity for coercion against partners and rivals. The current crisis

of liberal forces across Europe and the Mediterranean has enhanced those forces advocating a return

to “state sovereignty” and control over flows of people, goods and ideas. This might recall the early

postcolonial period of the 1950s and mid-1970s where the states struggled either to retain power and

wealth, or overcome related asymmetries, by standing firm and “tough” in negotiations and resisting

foreign interventions. However, if the centralized state was the main political and institutional driver of

that period, it is highly difficult that today current states might effectively claim a monopoly over the

economy and the public space on highly differentiated, secularized and interconnected societies like

the Mediterranean ones.

Keywords

Integration, European Union, Euro-Mediterranean, Space, Power

References

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