The role of parliamentary bodies, sub-state regions, and cities in the democratization of the Southern Mediterranean rim

Abstract

The European Union (EU) is an international actor (Stavridis and Fernandez Sola 2011) having a long-standing relationship with the Southern Mediterranean countries that may be traced back to the 1950s, when Algeria was still part of France. Over the years, the EEC (European Economic Community) has gradually strengthened its links with the Southern riparian states. After developing into the EU, it began a new process of (inter-) regional links by setting up the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (EMP; also known as ´Barcelona Process´) in 1995. In 2008, this process was further transformed into the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM. Those institutionalized relations fall within a wider context where other sets of intermeshing connections and networks exist, be they bilateral or multilateral, including or not an EU dimension (for a review, see Sabic and Bojinovic 2007). The purpose of this study is to offer a descriptive analysis of two important dimensions of already existing institutionalized relations: its parliamentary dimension on the one hand, its decentralized (also referred to as territorialized) dimension on the other. Even if changes are almost inevitably made in the way the current UfM structure works due to the unavoidable impact of the Arab Revolutions, there is no need for new institutional frameworks to be set up. Our argument is that those welcome changes will hopefully make the existing structures work better … at long last.