The European Mediterranean Policy after the Arab Spring:Beyond Values and Interests

The article attempts to combine findings from transition studies, Middle East Studies and European Studies in the framework of a historical institutionalist approach in order to explain political output and interaction in Euro-Mediterranean relations. Its focus is on the impact of domestic political structures and processes of transition in the Arab world as well as inside the European Union on the interaction structures in Mediterranean politics. The approach aims to explain change and persistence in the Euro-Mediterranean policy arena not by single incidents but by drawing a complex picture of the development of political and social institutions and introducing the concepts of path dependency and critical junctures. The objective of the article is to formulate a theoretical research program for Euro-Mediterranean relations that identify the institutional structures behind the phenomenological level of analyzing politics as the interactions of interests and values.