An Unsung Success Story? Regional Cooperation in South East Europe

Abstract

  Following the violent dissolution of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, interstate cooperation has become the norm in wider South East Europe, an area encompassing the so-called Western Balkans, EU member states Greece, Romania and Bulgaria but also Turkey and even Moldova. Multilateral schemes and institutions now cover a broad array of policy areas, from cross-border waterways to investment promotion to security and defence. Such schemes have been part and parcel of the region's integration into Western clubs such as the EU and NATO. The article takes stock of the cooperative turn in Balkan politics in the 2000s and analyses the origins, dynamics and limits of institutions and schemes operating at the intergovernmental level across a number of policy-areas including trade, energy and justice and home affairs. It argues that regional cooperation is mostly a byproduct of the gravitational pull and policies of powerful external actors such as the EU. Local patterns of interdependence play a secondary role and are chiefly responsible for flexible forms of 'minilateral' or neighbour-to-neighbour collaboration..