Regulatory regionalism and education: the EU in Central Asia

Abstract

This paper investigates the purchase which Jayasuriya’s Regulatory Regionalism approach offers for an analysis of the European Union’s engagement in Central Asia. The European Union has a clearly articulated strategy through which to pursue what it sees as its interests in Central Asia and the development of a range of EU-Central Asia Education Initiatives have been given a role within this over-arching strategy. In the first section of this paper, the core features of Regulatory Regionalism are identified and discussed. Then, the prospects for the EU-Central Asia Strategy are discussed in relation to the extent to which the strategy exemplifies the aspirations of EU regulatory inter-regionalism. In the second half of this paper, building on empirical research with EU and Central Asia policy actors, the EU-Central Asia Education Initiatives are used to explore the Regulatory Regional approach and to consider the extent to which it constitutes an adequate account of EU-Central Asia inter-regionalism in the policy domain of education. The paper argues that the theory of Regulatory Regionalism captures something of the EU theory of its inter-regionalism but that further theoretical and empirical work is needed in order to account for the limited traction which the Education Initiatives have been able to gain as part of the EU-Central Asia strategy