Regional Development and International Relations – Challenges and Opportunities

Abstract

As OECD considers, regional development is a broad term that can be seen as a general effort to reduce regional disparities by supporting, through employment and wealth-generating resources, social and economic activities in less developed regions. Although this concept started as merely an economical one, towards the end of the 20^th century, regional development became rather multi-disciplinary in its approach, as law, political science, public policy, and sociology became critical disciplines alongside economics focusing more on the notion of what a region might be and how a range of factors (not just economical ones) could shape the idea of a region. Alongside these basic considerations, one should pay more attention to how these concepts could interfere with the specificities of the State and the Statehood, considering that newly derived (sui-generis) concepts of international law and international relations emerged with the scope of erasing disparities between nations and peoples, creating the premises for both real value development, and potential conflict management in international relations.