GEO-HETEROGENEITY IN THE CONTEXT OF THE EU

Abstract

Classification of the project of European integration tends to derive predominantly from a justification on either political or economic grounds. Yet, owing to the complexity of causality in the logic of European integration both politics and economics (or rather geopolitics and geo-economics) have been decisive for further heading of integration in Europe, which is most visibly represented by the European Union (EU). Current global economic crisis significantly accelerated initiatives seeking further integration in the EU, even with calls for a political union. Now with the EU embracing Croatia as its 28th Member State since 1 July 2013, the Union’s enlargement policy – also referred to as “soft power†– has been repeatedly given credit for having motivated reform efforts in candidate or potential candidate countries. Recent fast pace of integration in the EU in terms of deepening, widening and enlargement in the context of the unprecedented global economic crisis represents a challenge for conceptualising and reflecting on policy-making. Adaptability has become a must; hence, interdisciplinarity increasingly becomes a crucial driving force in higher education in terms of research just like in teaching. Both the prospects of the Western Balkans region as well as the neighbourhood of the EU inspire us to consider and elaborate on the interdisciplinary nature of the links of geopolitics (through traditional or innovative approaches to geopolitics) to a number of evolving related concepts in this paper at the background of ambiguity of the term “interdisciplinarity†as well as possible shifts in interpretation across the scientific community.