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  • "In this paper I will argue that Russia and the European Union have different visions of their roles and instruments in their common neighborhood. Russia treats most ex-Soviet states as “naturally” belonging to the zone of its vital interests, hence the “near abroad” concept and the concomitant reluctance to admit any role for Western institutions in the region. The EU in turn relies mostly on its “soft power” resources, including norm projection, in order to foster domestic transformation in the neighboring countries and make them more compatible with the European understanding of partnership. Yet despite these obvious differences, there are similarities between Russia and the EU as well. Each tries to distance itself from the other party through a variety of means. Russia wishes to install its political and security monopoly in the “near abroad” by claiming that regional problems have to be resolved on the regional level, i. e. without involvement from the outside. The EU however increasingly prefers to focus on “regions-in-the-making” where Russia is viewed as an external power rather than as a constitutive member of regional structures (such as the South Caucasus region and Central Asia). As a result of this mutual “othering” (i. e. ascribing characteristics of difference), both Russia and the EU develop their own policy instruments and strategies for the common neighborhood instead of engaging neighboring countries in full-fledged cooperation. Both Russian and EU policies lack elements of inter-subjective interaction with their neighbors, which makes the Eastern Partnership more of an EU policy tool rather than a common forum of co-partnership with Eastern European and Caucasian countries. In a similar vein, the Customs Union project is more of a reflection of Russia’s great power ambitions in the post-Soviet area than a common approach jointly coordinated by all participating countries. This is one explanation for the preponderance of bilateral relations that both Moscow and Brussels develop with individual countries over more institutionalized forms of multilateral cooperation. Another possible explanation is the continuous process of disaggregation and fragmentation within this vast zone of the common neighborhood, which makes all attempts to propose broad institutional frameworks (like CIS institutions or the Eastern Partnership) dysfunctional. Yet Russia and the EU will eventually have to find not only a more cooperative modus operandi in managing the projects of common interest in their shared neighborhood, but also to systematically engage its neighbors in multilateral projects. Arguably, the best pathway to achieve these goals is through region building aimed at strengthening regional institutional clusters. This process is dependent on a number of factors, among which regional identities plays the crucial role. In this paper I will dwell upon four regions-in-the-making located at the intersection of EU-Russia spheres of interests: Nordic Europe, the Baltic Sea, the Black Sea, and the Caspian Sea regions." [author's abstract] (xsd:string)
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  • 2012 (xsd:gyear)
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  • 2012 (xsd:gyear)
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  • en (xsd:string)
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  • 1611-7034 ()
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  • Russia-EU: competing logics of region building (xsd:string)
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  • GESIS-SSOAR (xsd:string)
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  • urn:nbn:de:0168-ssoar-350113 ()
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  • 1 (xsd:string)