Professor Dr Michael North

Professor Dr Michael North
Ernst Moritz Arndt University of Greifswald, Germany

The Baltic Sea Region as a Model of Transnational Integration

Abstract:

Following the political and social upheavals in Europe since 1989, new forms of communication came into evidence at all levels where individuals of different national, ethnic and sociocultural origin met. The processes initiated by these epoch-making political events eventually led to the enlargement of the European Union to the East. Accordingly research on European Integration has focused on the Baltic Sea region. In many respects, the eastern part of the Baltic Sea region can be seen as a microcosm of a wide range of initial conditions, problems, and problem-solving strategies, that is unparalleled except, perhaps, in South East Asia. The unusual diversity of political actors and international institutions that come together in the Baltic Sea region constitute an equally promising point of departure for the study of transnational integration.

In the research on the Baltic Region I prefer the theoretical framework based on a multidimensional concept of integration hitherto successfully applied in the Humanities. According to this concept, integration may be achieved by four routes: 1. Integration can involve a centralization of decision-making in transnational or supranational centres. 2. Integration may also be enhanced by growing political, economic and cultural interdependence and exchange, since the exchange of people, capital, know-how and innovations is no longer hindered by political borders. 3. Integration is reflected by the emergence or existence of common European structures, institutions and values, i.e. the existence of a common background independent of national features. 4. A final important dimension of integration is constituted by the discourses on the common or individual experiences constituting collective identities.

Biographical notes:

Michael North is Professor and Chair of Modern History at Ernst Moritz Arndt University Greifswald, Director of the Graduate Programme „Contact Area Mare Balticum: Foreignness and Integration in the Baltic Region”, and Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. 2004 he was a visiting scholar at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles and will be a fellow in the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study (NIAS) in Wassenaar in 2007.

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