Economic Regionalization and Black Sea in a Comparative Perspective

Year 2017, Volume: 5 Issue: Özel Sayı Nisan 2017, 33 - 45, 10.05.2017

Arzu Al , Hakan Mehmetcik

Abstract

Since the end of the Cold War, the study of regions has become a major preoccupation of political

scientists. And yet, regionalism still means many different things to many different peoples in too

many different contexts. Nonetheless, economic interdependences through trade and other intraregional

activities is one of the main pillar of regionalization in any given example. The driving impulse

of this paper is that there is a hypothetical relation with emerging regional economic relations and

regionalism. That is, regionalism and emerging regional economic activities self-enforcing phenomena

at least on theoretical front. In this sense, it is sensible to look at the some of the trade and economic

statistics to determine the state of regionalization in the Black Sea. Therefore, this paper first tries to

demarcate “Black Sea Region” and possible sub regions than will comparatively analyses the economic

regionalization process by comparing some other regions and sub regions. The main finding of the

paper suggests that fundamentally due to the fact that every member of Black Sea regions has been

engaging with other exclusive regionalization movements, regionalization in the wider Black Sea is

weak and underdeveloped.

Keywords

Regionalism, Black Sea as a Region, Comparative Regionalism, Trade and Economy in Black Sea, BSEC.

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