The book examines the security puzzles posed by the remaining legacies of dominance and conflict in the Baltic Sea region as governments seek to integrate the three Baltic sates in a more stable system of cooperative security.

HauptbeschreibungGo North was the programmatic title of an international conference on Baltic Sea Region Studies that took place at Humboldt University of Berlin from April 4-6, 2005. It was hosted by the BalticStudyNet project, which is part of the European Union's Erasmus Mundus programme for the global promotion of European higher education. In order to discuss the past, present and future of Baltic Sea Region Studies, the Berlin conference brought together about fifty government representatives and scholars from all Baltic Sea Region countries, including Russia, as well as from the United Kingdom, Switzerland, the USA, Canada, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan. The basic idea of the Go North conference was to encourage a fundamental change of perspective - away from intra-regional and towards extra-regional and truly global approaches to the Baltic Sea Region: How is the Baltic Sea region perceived when viewed, let's say, from Australia? What, if anything, would a Chinese student find typical, extraordinary, or even unique when looking at the region? Why should a scholar from Mexico, South Africa or India wish to do research in and/or about the Baltic Sea Region? Consequently, third country views on Europe's North and the Baltic Sea Region were a feature of many of the presentations and panel discussions during the conference, which are documented in this volume.

This book explores the political and social dynamics of the bilateral relations between Germany and Poland at the national and subnational levels, taking into account the supranational dynamics, across such different policy areas as trade, foreign and security policy, energy, fiscal issues, health and social policy, migration and local governance. By studying the impact of the three explanatory categories – the historical legacy, interdependence and asymmetry – on the bilateral relationship, the book explores the patterns of cooperation and identifies the driving forces and hindering factors of the bilateral relationship. Covering the Polish–German relationship since 2004, it demonstrates, in a systematic way, that it does not qualify as embedded bilateralism. The relationship remains historically burdened and asymmetric, and thus it is not resilient to crises. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of European and EU Politics, German politics, East/Central European Politics, borderlands studies, and more broadly, for international relations, history and sociology.