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Central Europe Facing ‘Eastern Europe’: Symphony or Cacophony?

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Regional and International Relations of Central Europe

Abstract

The purpose of this chapter is to analyse whether Central European (CE) states can be regarded as a uniform actor interacting with Eastern Europe. To this end this chapter will analyse policies of individual CE states towards countries of Eastern Europe, as well as policies of those states acting as a group since the collapse of communism in Central and Eastern Europe (in 1989–91) up to today (2010–11). This chapter argues that while the overall aims of those countries towards Eastern Europe have been convergent throughout the past 20 years, nevertheless, there have been many instances when their attitudes diverged. More often than not CE states preferred to pursue their policies individually rather than as a group. They neither clash with each other over their policies towards Ukraine or Moldova, nor do they closely cooperate. To explain convergences and divergences of CE policies towards Eastern Europe the chapter will analyse factors shaping attitudes of individual CE countries towards East European countries individually and as a region.

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Authors
  1. Szymon Ananicz
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  2. Rafał Sadowski
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Ljubljana, Slovenia

    Zlatko Šabič (Professor of International Relations) (Professor of International Relations)

  2. Institute of International Relations, Prague, The Czech Republic

    Petr Drulák (Director) (Director)

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© 2012 Szymon Ananicz and Rafał Sadowski

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Ananicz, S., Sadowski, R. (2012). Central Europe Facing ‘Eastern Europe’: Symphony or Cacophony?. In: Šabič, Z., Drulák, P. (eds) Regional and International Relations of Central Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137283450_15

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