This atlas provides a macro-regional overview of the areas that surround the European Union, from the Sahara to the Middle East, Western Balkans to European Russia, Turkey to the Arctic. Detailing key socio-economic data as well as developmental trends, the maps provide a comprehensive territorial analysis at a local scale and explore the potential for regional integration and cooperation.These pioneering maps examine challenges that threaten this wide, yet inter-connected, region,...

The struggle between Russia and Great Britain over Central Asia in the nineteenth century was the original "great game." But in the past quarter century, a new "great game" has emerged, pitting America against a newly aggressive Russia and a resource-hungry China, all struggling for influence over the same region, now one of the most volatile areas in the world: the long border region stretching from Iran through Pakistan to Kashmir. In Great Games, Local Rules, Alexander Cooley, ...

Based on more than a decade's writing, research, and travel, this book offers a rare glimpse into China's expanding economic, cultural, and political power in the Eurasian heartland. China's rise is changing the world. Much attention has been given to how China's geo-economic vision is playing out in the global economy, or how its technology is reshaping the planet, yet it is over its western borders, in Central Asia, that China's influence has been quietly expanding in a ...

This open access book contributes new theoretical and comparative insights on migrant agency, undocumentedness and informality in non-Western, non-democratic migration regimes. The book is conceived as a critical reflection on the contemporary migration regime scholarship, and, more generally, on comparative migration studies, which primarily focus on migrants’ experiences and immigration policies in the context of liberal democracies in North America and Western Europe. Addressing this ga...

The countries of Central Asia are increasingly the focus of intense international attention due to their geopolitical and economic importance as well as their unsettled transition processes. The region faced enormous challenges when the Soviet Union disintegrated, and this book focuses on the reforms of the institutional environment that have been largely neglected.Through an interdisciplinary approach, the book explores key aspects of institution building as well as economic and p...

This book offers a state-of-the-art examination of peacemaking, looking at its theoretical assumptions, empirical applications and its consequences.Despite the wealth of research on external interventions and practices of Western peacebuilding, many scholars tend to rely on findings in the so-called 'post-agreement' phase of interventions. As a result, most mainstream peacebuilding literature pays limited or no attention to the linkages that exist between mediation practices in the...

An all-inclusive, exhaustive evaluation of the foreign policy of the European UnionFourteen years ago the 2009 Lisbon Treaty put into place the legal and structural foundations for the European Union to play a role as a global actor. In the decade since, the EU itself has undergone intense political and economic stress, from debt crises to the rise of nationalist parties and the strains of Brexit. What effect have these changes had on the EU's foreign policy and its...

Through the study of five ethno-political conflicts lying on or just beyond Europe's borders, this book analyzes the impact and effectiveness of EU foreign policy on conflict resolution.Conflict resolution features strongly as an objective of the European Union's foreign policy. In promoting this aim, the EU's geographical focus has rested primarily in its beleaguered backyard to the south and to the east. Taking a strong comparative approach, Nathalie Tocci explores the principal ...

Chinese President Xi Jinping launched the Silk Road Economic Belt component of the One Belt One Road (OBOR) initiative at Kazakhstan in 2013. OBOR is a development strategy and framework that focuses on connectivity and cooperation among countries primarily in Eurasia. It consists of two main components, the land-based 'Silk Road Economic Belt' (SREB) and ocean-going 'Maritime Silk Road' (MSR). This book studies the equilibrium or balance between overland and maritime trade routes of OBOR....

Officially announced by Xi Jinping in 2013, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has since become the centrepiece of China’s economic diplomacy. It is a commitment to ease bottlenecks to Eurasian trade by improving and building networks of connectivity across Central and Western Asia, where the BRI aims to act as a bond for the projects of regional cooperation and integration already in progress in Southern Asia. But it also reaches out to the Middle East as well as East and North Africa, a ...

The European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) has evolved into one of the European Union's major foreign policy instruments and received considerable attention. However, other EU neighbourhood policies, and their relevance for the ENP, also require examination. The Arab uprisings, civil wars in Libya and Syria, the continuing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the crisis in Ukraine and Russia's annexation of the Crimean peninsula have all brought the institutional design and tools of the ENP into que...

This book provides a detailed understanding of how different types of engagements impact upon the reform and EU integration of the Western Balkan region. It examines the influence of Russia, China, Turkey and the UAE in the region and analyses the range of existing links.Contributors offer an academic and multifaceted perspective of the role of external and non-Western actors in the region that goes beyond, on the one hand, the tendency of some Western decision makers to perceive a...