EU's Impact on Regionalization Process in the Middle East ; Europos Sąjungos įtakos Vidurio Rytų regionalizacijos procesui vertinimas
Regionalization refers to the process of cooperation, integration, cohesion and identity creation in a regional space and involves state as well as non-state actors. Regionalization serves as a tool for settling conflicts and securing peace among nations. The conflicts and the spillovers they produce in regions such as the Middle East are acknowledged as being of paramount concern to international security. Building regional peace and security is a stepping stone to the construction of a more secure global order. Transforming regions into pluralistic security communities, moving from zones of war to stable zones of peace, has assumed increasing importance. The ongoing spatial formation is defined and explained as a gradual regional transformation movement from a Machiavellian-Keynesian geopolitical rationality toward a Porterian-Floridian one. These political rationalities are motivated by the perceived nature of the contemporary security environment in which a specific type of competitiveness (competitive regionalism/city-regionalism) has partly superseded military-based security issues. There is a growing emphasis on endogenous processes, utilizing regional assets, institutions and knowledge and promoting intra-regional links via cluster policies as the key to regional economic success in a global political economy. It is acknowledged that innovation, competitiveness, clusters, networks, and top quality are key shibboleths in the plans which present long-term future visions for the regions. The author is crafting a research that could measure regional performance in political, socio-economic, societal and environmental aspects with respect to regionalization processes, regional security and regional transformation. Rather than using European Union as the standard from which to explain all other cases of regionalization, or excluding European Union altogether in theorizing attempts, author emphasizes that it is important to enhance the comparative regional analysis. In order not to be restrained to the European Union model, the volume encompass multi-paradigmatic and eclectic analysis that could explain in detail why the European Union regionalization model cannot be replicated in the Middle East, in the core countries of the Levant in particular.