Western Europe and the Balkans : A Geo-Cultural Approach of International Relations?

This essay will examine the geographical, structural, political and cultural elements that affect the West’s unfavourable evaluation norm towards the Balkans, a negative notion that eventually affects the region’s course to economic and political advancement. The combination, interaction and overlapping of the above mentioned elements also affects the alternative courses of action that countries in the European zone of peace (Western and Central Europe) take to assist south east Europe. It will focus mainly on suggesting the causes of instability and conflictual intra-Balkan relations rather than exclusively scrutinise the results of these incompatibilities. It also aims at providing explanation, through an interpretative approach, not only for the long standing “Balkanization” of the peninsula, but also considering the ideological, cultural, and to a certain extent religious explanations the Balkan peninsula has been left to its own devices and out of the mainstream integration processes that characterise Western and Central European politics