Re-imagining Mediterranean Geopolitics: The Role of Eight Key Powers

This paper aims to provide MEDRESET Work Package 2 (WP2) partners with the conceptual and methodological guidelines that we will pursue in our research. The primary theoretical approach to be used in our research is constructivism and discourse analysis, as elaborated in the WP1 concept paper. The purpose of WP2 is to observe the changing role and influence of different leading stakeholders (the US, Russia, China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, and Israel) in the Mediterranean area, as well as their policies, in order to show how they construct the region which is called the Mediterranean and to see if these policies are conflicting, competing or converging with the EU’s policies. This paper provides the framework for such an analysis, encouraging our partners to design their research in such a way as to support the argument that challenges and problematizes the Western and Euro-centric assumptions underlying the dominant mode of knowledge about regionalism and geopolitics of the Mediterranean.