ABSTRACT:
Book Description:
With the process of a “wider Europe” (EU-Commission President Romano Prodi’s “ring of friends”) that extends from Marrakech in Morocco to St. Petersburg in Russia gathering speed, the growing rift between Europe and America also is about how to deal politically with the countries of the Mediterranean-Muslim world. The house of Islam (Dar al Islam) was pivotal to the European path to the Renaissance and to the re-discovery of classic Greek philosophy. The Mediterranean policy of the European Union aims at a positive and cooperative relationship with the region.
A successful integration of the Mediterranean South would have tremendous and positive repercussions for regional and world peace. World-wide leading experts from the field of world systems analysis, economics, integration theory, political science, theology and area studies, agnostics, Christians, Jews and Muslims alike discuss the issue with European decision makers. The outcome is an interdisciplinary evaluation of this projected export of peace, cooperation, dialogue and stability in the framework of world center-periphery relationships.
Table of Contents:
PART I. TOWARDS A WIDER EUROPE; Chapter 1. Supping with the Devil without a Long Spoon: The History of Acp-Eu Partnership (Kunibert Raffer, Vienna University, Austria); Chapter 2. A Chain of Internal Peripheries along the old Muslim-Christian Borders or: Why is Europe’s South Poor? (Hans-Heinrich Nolte, Historisches Seminar, Hannover); Chapter 3. The Effects of European Integration on Economic Growth and Convergence of its Member Countries (Patrick Ziltener, Max Planck Institute, Germany); Chapter 4. Beyond the Washington Consensus. A Quantitative Reflection on the World Economic and World Political Conditions of Turkish Eu-Accession (Arno Tausch, Ministry of Social Security, Generations and Consumer Protection in Vienna, Austria); PART II. THE WORLD SYSTEM AND DAR AL ISLAM; Chapter 5. Globalization and Islam. An Economist’s Perspective (S. Mansoob Murshed, Utrecht University, the Netherlands); Chapter 6. Growth, Institutions and Poverty: The Mena Perspective (Syed M. Ahsan, Concordia University in Montreal); Chapter 7. Fukuyama’s Dream, Huntington’s Nightmare and a Grassroots Reverie (David Skidmore, Drake University); Chapter 8. Arab Unemployment as a World-System Problem (Gernot Köhler, Sheridan College, Oakville); Chapter 9. Does the ‘War Against Terrorism’ Prove the ‘Clash of Civilizations’ Right? Some Evidence (John R. Oneal, University of Alabama and Bruce Russett, Yale University); Index.
