Fostering Security in Southeastern Europe: A Role for the EAPC

China’s regional policy is mainly centred on its efforts to forge a friendly, stable and prosperous neighbourhood. To achieve this end, China has developed an approach combining both partnership bilateralism and tailored regional multilateralism. By and large, China does not consider its neighbourhood as a whole and has been very cautious and hesitant to engage in overarching ‘region-building’. China has relied mostly on soft (attractive) use of power, particularly economic power, supported by cultural and assurance diplomacy, even though diplomatic and economic coercion have been exercised occasionally. China has once again become the biggest economy in Asia. Yet, neither the new power configuration in Asia nor China’s own ambitions point to a return to the old ‘Middle Kingdom’ with China holding a dominant position in its neighbourhood. China will most probably continue to see itself as a self-restrained regional power in the foreseeable future.     

Ethnoregionalist Politics From a Structuralist Perspective： Social Identities,Functional and Territorial Cleavages,and the Political Preferences of Minorities

This paper examines the nature and intensity of regional and ethnic minority demands on the example of voting preferences for ethnoregionalist parties in select regions across Europe. It argues that territorial distinctiveness and cultural identities are insufficient to explain minority demands for political representation. The political preferences of ethnoregional groups reflect overlapping and cross-cutting functional, territorial, and symbolic differences, which collectively form the determinants of electoral support for ethnoregionalist parties across Europe. The relative weight and additive effects of territorial and functional cleavages may vary according to national context but the pattern is consistent. The paper conducts cross-national comparison of representative territorial structures spanning across the West-East divide in European studies by including regional configurations in Western Europe （Scotland in the UK and Flanders in Belgium） and ethnic minorities in Eastern Europe （the Hungarian minority in Romania and the ethnic Turkish minority in Bulgaria）. The findings suggest that ethnoregional groups do not necessarily pursue cultural distinctiveness and/or regional autonomy. They are also likely to seek representation and access to government based on socioeconomic status, ideology, and political attitudes. Ethnoregionalist demands for representation thus reflect the growing overlap between the territorial, cultural, and ideological aspects of political conflict.