Europe and the Arab Spring

In a profile article in Mediterranean Politics, DIIS researchers Rasmus Alenius Boserup and Fabrizio Tassinari take stock of the current politcal changes North Africa and Europe’s attempt to formulate a policy response. The article analyses how the political order in North Africa and the broader Arab region is undergonig a multilayered process of politicisation in which previouslydemobilized or marginalizedcollective actors engage in politics for the first time or in new ways that challenge the previously known status quo. In contrast to this broad process of endogenously driven change inside the Arab World, EU’s policy responses have prooven remarkably static and characterized by continuation rather than change. The authors conclude by suggesting that EU’sforeign policy thinking would benefit from undergoing a broader process of politicization itself. Read the article online here