Imagining geographies of the ‘new Europe’: geo-economic power and the new European architecture of integration

Abstract

Since 1989, East-Central Europe has witnessed a series of transformations that have resulted in the region’s geopolitical and geoeconomic repositioning within Europe. This paper explores three examples of such repositionings. First, the paper examines the scripting of post-communist transitions as a naturalized process of neo-liberal marketization. The role of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the place of East-Central European economies within discourses of emerging markets and the naturalization of uneven economic development in treatments such as those by Jeffrey Sachs are explored. Second, the paper examines the role of the European Union enlargement process in the closure of economic practice in East-Central Europe around liberal market economies. Third, the paper explores how the process of post-conflict reconstruction in the Balkans has been part of the assertion of marketization discourses as the one best way for ensuring peace. The paper therefore examines these geo-economic discourses as central to our understanding of European reconfigurations at the start of the twenty-first century.