POST ARAB SPRING INTER-REGIONAL COOPERATION IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA
POST ARAB SPRING INTER-REGIONAL COOPERATION IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA

Summary/Abstract: Intra- or extra-regional institutionalized regional cooperation facilitates the joint approach to specific issues of countries that generate or can generate and/or export insecurity to other states of the region, but also beyond. Moreover, intra-regional cooperation between countries geographically close to each other supports cross-border dialogue to materialize common economic, political or environmental interests and the development of capacities to maintain or achieve an optimal regional security environment to ensure the prosperity of states and their citizens. MENA (Middle East and North Africa) is a particular case for intra-regional cooperation. Although the region has the prerequisites for its broad development, due to the its ethnicreligious factor and the reserves of oil and gas of most of its states, its ratio of integration and regionalization, even in the classical economic area, is presented by specialists as limited, due to the classical authoritarian forms of government and the divergent interests of the states of the region with different Islamic orientations. In this paper, we analyse the trend in MENA’s intraregional cooperation following the Arab Spring events, starting from the hypothesis that the abolition of authoritarian governments results in states opening towards democracy and dialogue.

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