Power and Integration. An Historical Overview on Euro- Mediterranean Relations

This article aims to analyze the power relations underlying the international relations of the Mediterranean space since the late XIX century in order to assess if and how the most recent initiatives implemented by the European Union (EU) represent continuity or discontinuity with the modern past. The main idea is that the European Union has tried to shape the Mediterranean space along its basic preference for free access to the markets of the southern and eastern countries of the Mediterranean, similar to what European powers did in late XIX and early XX century: the liberal order of the “Levantine” period combined the patterns of cooperation and consent, which were needed to foster market and elite integration, with those of conflict and coercion, which in turn were required to enforce the European- led economic and political order against restive and opposition forces. Compared to the past, however, the European Union has succeeded only partially in enforcing a “neo-liberal order” because it lacks meaningful political and military capacity for coercion against partners and rivals. The current crisis of liberal forces across Europe and the Mediterranean has enhanced those forces advocating a return to “state sovereignty” and control over flows of people, goods and ideas. This might recall the early postcolonial period of the 1950s and mid-1970s where the states struggled either to retain power and wealth, or overcome related asymmetries, by standing firm and “tough” in negotiations and resisting foreign interventions. However, if the centralized state was the main political and institutional driver of that period, it is highly difficult that today current states might effectively claim a monopoly over the economy and the public space on highly differentiated, secularized and interconnected societies like the Mediterranean ones.