290102 VO Regional and political geography of Ukraine and Southeast Europe (2007W)

The course follows these questions regarding the Southeast of Europe, which are important in the current political situation and under the auspices of European integration, especially from an Austrian perspective:
- Southeast Europe (SEE) as a potential region of crisis: preconditions for peace keeping and crisis prevention.
- SEE as Europe's most significant economic periphery: economic situation, development measures.
- SEE as a zone of contact between the three religious groups dominant in Europe (Western Christianty, Orthodoxy, Islam).
- SEE as the host region of an autochthonous European Islam: specifics and political role.
- SEE as the European bridgehead to the Near East: geopolitical importance.
- Political and socio-economic transformation: Very different starting points for transformation due a.o. to very divergent Communist systems (self-administrative Socialism in Yugoslavia, state dirigism in isolated Albania, Soviet model in Ukraine, Moldavia and Bulgaria, national Communism inRomania).

The notion of SE applied comprises the countries and regions southeast of the former Hapsburg Monarchy under long-term and sustaining Ottoman influence, i.e. essentially the current states Bosnia and Hercegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Albania, Greece, Bulgaria, Romania and Moldavia. Greece as non-post-Communist country will only marginally be treated in the course. In addition to SEE the Ukraine is regarded.

The course does not follow the canon of a comprehensive regional geography, but focuses on the specific questions mentioned above and offers basic regional geographical materials for their discussion:
- Population by ethnic and religious declaration and linguistic structure; national, ethnic, religious identities and images of self;
- Cultural regions and landscapes;
- Economic structure and current economic development (transformation);
- Position in the European transportation system;
- Political structures and developments (political institutions, party systems, administrative-territorial systems with special regard to decentralisation);
- External relation of the individual countries within the region and to outside the region (neighbourhood relations; position, attitude, perspectives in the European integration process; relation to Russia; co-operation in the Black Sea Region; relation to Turkey; relations to the Arabic and Islamic World; options in foreign policy).