Kirjahaku

Regional cooperation, regionalism and regionalization in the Middle East are usually considered to be weak and rather ceremonial. However, since September 11, 2001, a new regional order is emerging and the impact of geostrategic changes in the international environment has yet to be satisfactorily studied. With older regional organizations suffering from weaknesses, new forms appear to be developing and flourishing, due either to European support or growing sub-regional identities. This volume offers refined theoretical models and approaches which are attuned to the new dynamics and contradictions of a wide range of regionalist projects in the contemporary Middle East. Case studies of the most important regional organizations in different policy fields offer comprehensive overviews of the main actors, institutions, historical development and current issues.

Relations between the two shores of the Gulf and the countries of the Asia Pacific have received a good deal of attention in policy and media circles in recent years. Yet there continues to be a dearth of rigorous scholarship on the character and significance of these ties, particularly in the fields of international political economy and strategic studies. Even though trade between the Gulf, both the GCC states and Iran, and the People's Republic of China has increased ten-fold over the last decade, this crucial shift in geo-economic activity remains to be properly investigated. In the security sphere, the prospect that China might constitute a counterweight to the United States in the eyes of Gulf governments is often intimated but rarely scrutinized. The chapters juxtapose and interrogate these two lines of scholarly inquiry by exploring alternative explanations for current trends in economic and security relations between the Gulf and the Asia Pacific. Contributors tackle the fundamental question of how these commercial, financial and strategic connections are likely to transform or rearrange the Gulf's long-standing partnerships with the United States and the European Union.