Power over the Sea: The Relevance of Neoclassical Realism to Euro-Mediterranean Relations

Abstract

The Barcelona Process and the European Neighbourhood Policy have often been considered inherently constructivist policies. This article maintains that power and the logics based on it are important in such policies and that the political dynamics at stake in the Mediterranean area offer an interesting occasion to reflect on the current relevance of the realist tradition. Drawing on classical and neoclassical realism, this research highlights that the realist perspective does not necessarily neglect ideational factors and the non-material dimension of power and it aims at showing that classical realism can be usefully updated to interpret phenomena of contemporary international politics such as Euro-Mediterranean relations.

Acknowledgements

The author thanks Luciano Bozzo, Alessandro Colombo, Francesco Moro and Kaat Smets for their helpful suggestions. He also wants to thank Richard Gillespie for his support and two anonymous reviewers of Mediterranean Politics for their useful comments.

Notes

¹ Realist concepts such as the security dilemma have been applied with success to ethnic conflicts where the fighting rival groups did not possess the features of statehood (Posen, 1993).

² I consider Bull, Butterfield and Wight representatives of a moderate or liberal branch of realism.

³ The same escalating dynamic has been noticed in the relation between ethnic identity and ethnic violence (Fearon and Laitin, 2000).

⁴ See also Niebuhr's sharp analysis of the role of ‘priests’ (to be intended in a symbolic sense, including also the oligarchs of Communist states) as partners of the ‘soldiers’ in the organization of the ideological frame that gives the community its final cohesion and his analysis of the role of prestige and universalism in the expansion of empires (Niebuhr, 1959).

⁵ Carl Schmitt would have probably maintained that it is just a softer expression to address the old friend/enemy dynamic.

⁶ A comparison between 1988–90 and 1998–2000 indicates that the region has lost in its relative attractiveness, with FDI stagnating in absolute terms and backsliding in relative terms (UNCTAD, 2006; World Bank, 2006).