On April 23, 2021, Ieva Giedraitytė obtained her PhD degree at the Institute of International Relations and Political Science, Vilnius University (Lithuania), with a dissertation “Good Neighbor and Bad Neighbor? Differentiation in the US and EU Southern Neighborhood Strategies 2014-2017” (academic consultant – Jean Monnet Chair Prof. Dr. Ramūnas Vilpišauskas).
The doctoral thesis seeks to understand what kind of regions can form in the neighborhood of the great powers and analyses the differences and similarities of being a neighbor to such actors as the US or the EU. By applying sociological theories and, thus, broadening the usual approach towards regions located near the great powers just as dominated “spheres of influence” or “backyards”, the author proposes a new typology of regional orders. Using this new theoretical framework in the US and the EU Southern neighborhood analysis, she demonstrates that for understanding and comparing regions one should focus more on processes rather than the strength of the domination.
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