What is it about?
This article is about EU foreign policy towards North Africa and the Middle East (in EU policy terms, the 'Mediterranean'). Using dynamic systems as a theoretical lens, and the concept of 'panarchy', the article explains how the EU's engagement with the Mediterranean has been counter productive to bringing peace, stability and prosperity to the region, part of the EU's foreign engagement set of objectives.
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Why is it important?
It is important so the EU and the states that it engages with are aware that while the EU's intentions sound good in policy, what has come about in the Mediterranean is the exact opposite.
Perspectives
Traditional approaches to international relations fall short of actually describing the complexity of interactions and relations between states (agency/agents, for example), international institutions and non-state actors. The theoretical approach of dynamic systems, and the use of 'panarchy' as a structural concept, has a wider 'vocabulary' to explain the complexity of contemporary international relations. Change and transformation - i.e. dynamism - and the subtleties in between (slow or incremental change, sudden change, no change, emergence, disappearance) have always been hard to explain with realism, liberalism, new institutionalism. Dynamic systems theory is able to do so.
Dr Lara Hierro
University of Johannesburg
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Integrationalism and resilience: a dynamic systems analysis of EU regional integration in the Mediterranean and North Africa, Resilience, April 2017, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.1080/21693293.2017.1308634.
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