Professor Paul Welfens offers a unique and timely approach to the major
task of stabilizing and integrating the Balkans. His book is one of the
first to assess in depth the progress of reconstruction and to evaluate
the success of coordination on the part of various Western governments
and international organizations. Professor Welfens sees an intimate
connection, in the sense of equal responsibility, between internal
reform, restructuring, and revitalization in the region and Western
financing, ideas, and programs. Professor Welfens has coined the term
"networked approach" to capture the strategy of Western cooperation
among multiple actors, particularly through the mechanism of the
Stability Pact for Southeastern Europe. In addition to demonstrating
where the Stability Pact works well, he identifies problem areas, with
respect to both inconsistencies in donor policies and coordination and
significant structural variations among Balkan countries and entities.
He also flags concerns about EU enlargement overstretch. This book has
emerged from a bi-national, cross-disciplinary research project at the
American Institute for Contemporary German Studies on "Cooperation and
Competition: American, European Union, and German Policies in the
Balkans" that explores the opportunities and obstacles regarding
cooperation in the political, economic and military realms. The
project - financed by a grant from the DaimlerChrysler-Fonds im
Stifterverband fur die Deutsche Wissenschaft - examines the implications
of lessons learned in the Balkans for transatlantic relations, an area
Professor Welfens discusses with some concern about potential conflicts.
Additional individual and collective products from the AICGS research
project will be forthcoming during 2001.
