Greece Regionalization

This paper is an overview of globalization and regionalization issues that were so crucial and disputable in the recent years.
It is also explores the European Union from the point of regionalization, the economic crisis in Greece and it’s government measures to improve the situation and decrease the national debt (such as, financial, social, economic, etc.).
Introduction (presenting regionalization and globalization)
Globalization can be conceived as a myth, a rhetorical device, a phenomenon, an ideology, a reality, orthodoxy, rationality. In both academic and popular discourses globalization has become one of the catchwords of the 1990s. In fact, globalization is a short form for a cluster of related changes: economic, ideological, technological, and cultural. Economic changes include the internationalization of production, the greatly increased mobility of capital and of transnational corporations, and the deepening and intensification of economic interdependence.
The economic manifestations of globalization include the spatial reorganization of production, the interpenetration of industries across borders, the spread of financial markets, the diffusion of identical consumer goods across distant countries, and massive transfers of population.
Ideological changes include investment and trade liberalization, deregulation, privatization, and the adoption of political democracy in the institutional realm.
Technological changes include information and communications technologies that have shrunk the globe and the shift from goods to services.
Finally, cultural changes involve trends toward harmonization of tastes and standards, a universal world culture that transcends the nation-state.
Globalization can be also defined as the intensification of economic, political, social, and cultural relations across borders (Holm and Sorensen 1995. p.2-3).
Globalization is pushed by several factors, the most important among which is technological change. The process is uneven in both intensity and geographical scope, in its domestic and international dimensions. Hence, we might obtain different types of globalization across a rich regional variation.
Regionalization can be conceived as the growth of societal integration within a given region, including the undirected processes of social and economic interaction among the units. As a dynamic process, it can be best understood as a continuing process of forming regions as geopolitical units, as organized political cooperation within a particular group of states, and/or as regional communities such as pluralistic security communities.
The term regionalism refers to the proneness of the governments and peoples of two or more states to establish voluntary associations and to pool together resources (material and nonmaterial) in order to create common functional and institutional arrangements.
Furthermore, regionalism can be best described as a process occurring in a given geographical region by which different types of actors (states, regional institutions, societal organizations and other non state actors) come to share certain fundamental values and norms. These actors also participate in a growing network of economic, cultural, scientific, diplomatic, political, and military interaction. (Mittelman, 1996).