Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

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Open Access Thesis

Keywords

Regional planning--Europe, Eastern; Regional planning; Security, International; Eastern Europe;

Abstract

The thesis investigates the so-called Visegrád Group(the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia as of July, 1997) as a case of post-socialist regional cooperation in Central Europe and presents an empirical and theoretical framework to analyze the Group by reviewing stimuli and history of its cooperative efforts in security, politics and economics (including the Central European Free Trade Agreement), and contrasting empirical evidence with major theories of international relations. The Group has evolved as a result of interactions between its attempts to merge with West European economic and security structures, which could promote economic modernization, enhance security, and help redefine regional identity of the Central European countries, and responses of the Western organizations (the EU and NATO) to these aspirations. The Visegrád alliance is viewed as a defensive instrument created to facilitate adjustment of its members to impulses from both Eastern and Western Europe and advance their agenda vis-a-vis the two. In contrast to traditional international organizations, the Group is characterized as a flexible, noninstitutionalized, ad-hoc cooperation-and-competition process, largely influenced by external forces and grounded, in a network of intra-regional bilateral treaties. The Visegrád process has been most successful as a consultative forum on issues of regional security, an attempt to coordinate relations with the West, and a regional trade liberalization mechanism. The record of cooperation remains modest in almost all issue areas because of the westward orientation, intra-regional tensions, domestic instability, and limited military and economic capabilities of the group. Cohesion of the cooperative effort is dependent on Western attitudes toward the Group and on external threats. However, the Visegrád framework has become a factor of regional stability and attracts new applicants which view it as a valuable free trade zone and a vehicle for speedier EU/NATO accession. Liberal institutionalism and hegemonic stability theory v provide a satisfactory analytical framework since they acknowledge the existence of balancing and band-wagoning tendencies, common and conflicting interests, high value of the future, limited number of actors, and the hegemonic role of EU and NATO in the Visegrád process.

Year of Submission

1997

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Department

Department of Political Science

First Advisor

Kenneth Basom

Second Advisor

Mattias Kaelberer

Third Advisor

Philip Mauceri

Comments

If you are the rightful copyright holder of this thesis and wish to have it removed from the Open Access Collection, please submit a request to scholarworks@uni.edu and include clear identification of the work, preferably with URL.

Date Original

1997

Object Description

1 PDF file (131 leaves)

Language

en

File Format

application/pdf

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