Geo-economic Power Research Articles

The EU as a Geopolitical and Development Actor: Views from East Africa

The EU frequently prides itself with being the largest donor of official development assistance (ODA) in the world and consequently claims a lead role as a major global actor in international development. This paper examines how this role of the EU is exercised and perceived by the EU’s development partners in East Africa through a qualitative research approach centered around semi-structured interviews and participant observation. The paper thereby does not evaluate perceptions or judge their reality value, it rather emphasises the existence of different perceptions and how they vary depending on the eye of the beholder and the policy field under consideration. It further argues that conceiving of one coherent international role of the EU reveals limited insight; instead a more diversified view of the EU as both an appealing geopolitical model and a resented geoeconomic power is presented. Moreover, it suggests that conception and implementation of European development policy should be more consultative and perceptive in order to dispel perceptions of the EU as a neo-imperial power.

The EU's civilian/power dilemma

This article exposes the dilemma between the EU's civilian geopolitical model and its role as a dominant geoeconomic power. While the success of the European model for political-economic organisation and for overcoming war is appealing, the EU's external relations frequently fail to avoid the traps of Europe's imperial past (and present), thus undermining the EU's credibility and legitimacy in international development policy. This article therefore argues for a critical engagement with views on the EU from the outside. It draws on qualitative fieldwork on EU development policy in East Africa and illustrates how such external perceptions sometimes differ considerably from dominant European ones articulated in official EU geopolitical discourse.

ASEAN and interconnecting regional spheres: lessons for the Indian Ocean Region

In an era of shifting global geopolitical, geostrategic and geo-economic power, ASEAN's resilience as a regional grouping and its relative success in keeping internal conflicts at bay through various forms of quiet diplomacy and adherence to certain norms and binding principles mean that it may become a force helping to foster peaceful and stronger regional linkages within the eastern frontiers of the Indian Ocean Region (IOR). In this article we focus on ASEAN's growing roles and relations within three key ‘spheres’ of adjoining regional–extra-regional reach, which we identify as the mostly landward Greater Mekong Sphere (GMS), the South China Sea Sphere and the Bay of Bengal and Andaman Sea Sphere. The Bay of Bengal and Andaman Sea straddle between the Indian Ocean Region and ASEAN, so this offers a joint issue of cooperation and proximate regionalism. As for the GMS and South China Sea, the common Chinese factor holds important geo-economic and geopolitical references that IOR could incorporate into its foreign policy portfolio. Despite ASEAN's at times below-par performances and contradictions in terms of regional and internal security, its direct and adjacent interconnectedness with the IOR suggests that it is perhaps one of the best institutions to learn from in terms of strengthening the IOR's future regionalism aspirations.

Shifting Geo‐Economic Power of the Gulf: Oil, Finance and Institutions – Edited by Mateo Legrenzi and Bessman Momani

Shifting Geo‐Economic Power of the Gulf: Oil, Finance and Institutions – Edited by Mateo Legrenzi and Bessman Momani

Germany as a Geo-economic Power

Berlin's March 2011 abstention on the UN Security Council vote on military intervention in Libya has raised questions about Germany's role in the international system. By abstaining on Security Cou...

Rebalancing Global Governance: Gulf States’ Perspectives on the Governance of Globalisation

Abstract In recent years the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states have emerged as major global actors engaged in reforming the international financial system, frameworks of energy governance and climate change discourse. This article maps the motivations and objectives that lie behind this global engagement, and the mechanisms through which it is operationalised. It finds that the GCC states prioritise economic globalisation while resisting political and cultural globalisation, and that regional discourse focuses on the practical implications of global engagement in order to shape the governance of globalisation. Nevertheless, scepticism toward theoretical or normative concepts of global governance does not distance the GCC states from acting as global players or from participating in the rebalancing global order. This holds important implications for the continuing evolution of global institutions in a polycentric environment with multiple centres of influence and policy objectives. Policy Implications • The GCC states will become further embedded in the global system of power, politics and policy making and perspectives on global engagement will continue to evolve. • Conceptual clarity over Gulf states’ perceptions of global governance can enhance policy formulation that incorporates and accommodates diverging viewpoints and objectives. • Policy makers in the GCC states are more receptive toward practical measures relating to the governance of globalisation than to normative concepts of global governance. • Emerging linkages between the GCC states and major developing nations are creating new coalitions of convenience with a shared interest in reshaping frameworks of global engagement, particularly in financial and energy governance and the international politics of climate change. • Integrating Gulf states’ discourse on global engagement with other non-western teleologies reflects this global realignment and addresses the broader rebalancing of global geo-economic power.

Resources and conflict in the Caspian Sea

The management of resources can shape or alleviate conflict. This article examines the case of the Caspian Sea as littoral states vie for oil fields in the transboundary water body. These five states have promoted conflicting proposals for the division of Caspian resources and are staking their claims through a mix of diplomatic efforts, international agreements, commercial contracts and militarization. Geoeconomic power has not fully surpassed more traditional, military control of territory in this context which continues to be complex on several geopolitical scales.

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

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.

Rules of Engagement: Psychological and Diplomatic Dynamics of American-Japanese Relations

During the forty years from 1953 to 1993, the geoeconomic power balance between the United States and Japan shifted dramatically from American to Japanese predominance. America's trade surplus with Japan turned to a deficit by the mid-1960s, its foreign investment surplus to a deficit by the early 1970s, and its financial, manufacturing, and technology supremacy was eclipsed or equaled during the 1980s. In 1993 the United States suffered deficits of $60 billion in trade and $110 billion in accumulated foreign investments with Japan. What accounts for this shift in geoeconomic power, and how has it affected the relationship? Although many primary and secondary forces contributed to the power shift, it is largely the result of nearly a half-century of sustained asymmetrical macroeconomic, industrial, and trade policies by the two countries. American liberalism and Japanese neomercantilism complemented each other in simultaneously developing Japan's geoeconomic power and relatively diminishing America's. Since the 1950s, virtually all conflicts between the United States and Japan have resulted from Washington's attempts to readjust the relationship's relative balance of costs and benefits that were set during the Occupation (1945-52). Over the past half century, in return for an alliance with Tokyo, Washington has guaranteed Japan's military security under a conventional and nuclear umbrella; allowed Japan to maintain high import and investment barriers, an undervalued yen, and virtually unlimited access to American markets, technology, and finance; sponsored Japan's membership in international organizations such as the United Nations, GATT, and OECD; and