The European Union (EU) plays a facilitating role in the normalization of relations between Kosovo and Serbia. The EU has applied a proactive approach to normalization through several agreements, initially of a technical and later of a political nature. This gradual approach has produced a relative success in the easing of relations between the parties and in creating the conditions for a final agreement

Acknowledging the saliency ‘ethnonationality’ has acquired in the post-Yugoslav scenario, this article analyses the ‘evolution’ of the meanings and functions of the term ethnonational belonging in the context of Macedonia, and it does so from both macro-structural and micro-individual perspectives. Alongside providing an overview of how ethnonationality has evolved from a political-institutional perspective

This article explores the networked politics of feminist and lgbt movements in Slovenia, focusing on the organizational (“actional”) and the thematic (content-related) credo of the movements during the “All-Slovenian Uprisings” of 2012–2013. Analysing the movements’ “repertoires of contention”, the authors argue that the movements are driven by cross-movement and cross-issue (i.e. connective) alliances

This article argues that the EU’s enlargement negotiations with Eastern European applicants have become possible to a large extent by the introduction of objective assessment by the Commission, which allowed integration to proceed despite the threat of deadlock. The process of negotiations and preparation, however, should be better seen as a constant switching between the technical parts of the acquis

This article analyses the emergence and development of different forms of civil society in Bulgaria from the late 1980s to the present day, focusing on ngos and the large anti-government protests in 1989–1991, 1997, and 2013–2014. It shows that civil society has been developing in ebbs and flows, its main actors having alt-civic and fake doubles: nationalist movements and fake counter-protests. Recent

This article discusses Bulgaria’s geopolitical predicament and its impact on the country’s political development since 1989. It looks at Bulgaria’s accession to the EU and nato in the 1990s and 2000s, its role in both institutions, as well as at its relations with Russia and Turkey. The article contends that the state’s position – on the margins of the European institutional and spatial order – informs

This article discusses to what extent Bulgaria has attempted to establish the Rule of Law in recent years and the reasons this aim has remain unattained. It outlines the “peripheral status” of law in Bulgarian society because of the society’s unaccomplished modernization. Next, the manifestation of deficiencies in the development of the Rule of Law is analyzed following Martin Mendelski’s conceptual

Based on an analytical narrative, and utilizing macroeconomic and new institutional economic theory, this exposition studies the Bulgarian economy during the decades after 1989. The three decades are placed in the context of the century-and-a-half-long Bulgarian development and convergence dynamic. They are then presented in terms of clearly defined sub-periods, and each sub-period is analyzed in detail

This article offers a broad analysis of the “name issue,” its origins, background and the challenges ahead in light of the Prespa agreement. It posits the historical perspective of both identities, assesses the positions maintained by the parties during the political and diplomatic dispute settlement process and presents the concerns of both parties regarding the agreement. Given the content of the

This article focuses on the relation between EU leverage and domestic elites related to the differential impact of conditionality in the case of the Republic of North Macedonia. The main focus is on the influence of the low credibility of the membership perspective on the effectiveness of EU political conditionality in North Macedonia. Additionally, it examines to what extent the legitimacy of the

This article aims to map and periodize memory regimes in North Macedonia, with the divergent set of Ilinden commemorations epitomizing the developments and critical changes in the period from 2001 to 2018. Ilinden is still by and large considered to be pivotal for Macedonian nation-building, structuring the long Macedonian 20th century and serving as the most prominent state holiday. The commemorative

This article fills a gap in theories of forced migration. We present a new model, motivated by specific features of forced migration during a conflict which do not feature in existing migration models. We incorporate the relative deprivation hypothesis and a new “restoration” hypothesis in order to better explain forced migration as a two-stage process, which starts with conflict and, in some cases

The objective of this article is to qualitatively assess the scope of diaspora contribution to the economic development of North Macedonia. The author’s key argument is that diaspora presents an indispensable source of opportunities for helping the development of the country. The author collected qualitative data and used existing quantitative data, and set them in an exploratory framework. Findings

This article examines the link between Serbia’s demographic and socioeconomic momentum on the one hand, and the migration phenomenon on the other. This is done both to determine the restrictions for development and to identify the potential scope for using migration as a catalyst of Serbia’s development as an emigration country. The revised push and pull model by and the migration transition model

This article conceptualizes contemporary mass emigration of skilled youth from post-transitional societies such as Serbia in the context of globalization and transnationalism. Today, developed and knowledge-based economies are searching for young, highly educated professionals (IT professionals, scientists, researchers, medical staff, etc). Massive mobility has been motivated by better work prospects

The crisis of state cultural institutions in Bosnia and Herzegovina that started in 2010 peaked with the closure of the National Museum in 2012. The crisis exposed the fragmentation that was taking place within Sarajevo’s cultural elite and the increasing gap between the former state cultural institutions and the civil sector. This paper examines the entanglement between the memory of the siege of

This article traces trajectories of colonized bodies and (female) sexualities through the geopolitical and historical continuity in the territories of what is now Bosnia-Herzegovina. Starting with the historiographic overview of women under Ottoman rule, the author addresses the “patriarchal bargain,” that is, women’s (in)voluntary choice to accommodate the frame of patriarchal norms and restrictions

The adoption of the EU sanctions on Russia provides a good case study to assess Bulgarian foreign policy under the conditions imposed by EU membership. This paper emphasizes the limits of both the foreign policy and Europeanization approaches when looking at national foreign policy and EU membership. It underlines the need to develop alternative approaches. These alternative approaches relate, in the

The aim of this paper is to deeply rethink and better understand the different approaches to ‘value-based’ politics – and social subroupings’ reactions to it – in the post-Soviet area through the lens of the Ukrainian scene, by analysing both the political and cultural narratives which have emerged in the aftermath of the recent Ukrainian-Russian clash of discourses. An accurate tracking of the policies

This paper analyses structural change in the European Union ( EU ) over the past two decades, with the aim of providing some guidelines for the Western Balkan ( WB ) countries. After recalling the main theories of structural change, the paper illustrates the general trend of decline in the relative shares of manufacturing output and employment in the old and the new EU member states, pointing to distinctive

This article intends to approach the phenomenon of population aging within the conceptual framework of structural transition. In this work the authors put forward a method of defining the variety of evolutionary trajectories – the result of different sets of fertility-mortality interactions – on the global level and hence identify the position of each Balkan country within the worldwide demographic

Analysts of “State Capture” too often treat the phenomenon as an outside-in process. They identify firms or rent-seeking political entrepreneurs that take over, subvert, or otherwise bend political structures to serve their parochial interests. The key to solving the perceived problem is supposed to lie in better governance, strengthened judicial systems, civic education, and transparency in political

State capture is a form of institutionalized particularism whereby elite actors manipulate policy formation to their own material and political interests at the expense of the public good. In Kosovo, a competitive form of state capture emerged during the postwar period as the country’s main political parties fiercely compete for control over state spoils. What makes the case of state capture in Kosovo

This article argues that external state contestation and internal ethnic divisions have resulted in a high degree of state capture in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia and Montenegro, thus providing structural mechanisms for the reproduction of power of political elites. The article focuses on two dominant forms of state capture – party membership in public administration and the privatization process

This paper will discuss the rise of authoritarian tendencies in the political systems of Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia. In all four countries, certain parties and political elites have become entrenched in the political system, and have been able to enhance their grip on power, often beyond, and in some cases through, constitutional frameworks. It will discuss how forms of state capture

The year 2015 saw an unprecedented number of refugees and migrants arriving to Europe through the “Western Balkans migration route”, where the states through which the route passed established the so-called “humanitarian corridor”. The operation of this corridor was outside the European normative framework and was treated by those states as a de facto undeclared “state of exception”. This situation

This article introduces the concept of a “valve” state as an instrument in the study of transit migration. A “valve” state is defined as a transit state that, due to its geographical position, to a specific regional political and geopolitical configuration and to key changes in its migration control policies, can play a decisive role in significantly shaping regional transit migratory flows. The case

In the face of the ‘refugee crisis’, many European governments, even in traditionally liberal states, unilaterally introduced a number of restrictive and, often, controversial migration, asylum, and border control policies. The author argues that past legal-bureaucratic choices on migration and asylum policies, ongoing developments in international relations at that time, the structural and perceived

The research question to be answered in this paper is to what extent Istanbul provides Syrian refugees with a feeling of security and safety despite the practical difficulties of everyday life such as working conditions, exclusion, xenophobia and exploitation. The main premise of the paper is that historical, cultural and religious forms of affinity are likely to particularly attach the Sunni Muslim

The foundation of the Non-aligned Movement in Belgrade, Yugoslavia in September 1961 represented a new opening, not only for a joint political representation of the countries trying to challenge the bipolar division of the world and imperialism during the Cold War, but also for the establishment of the direct economic relations. In the first decades of the movement, Yugoslavia was trying to match political

On July 26, 1963, the city of Skopje was struck by a powerful earthquake which left behind almost nothing but ruins. Financially precarious, technically unprepared and politically non-aligned, the Yugoslav government needed neutral, long-term and specialized technical assistance if the Macedonian capital was to be rebuilt. Thanks to mediation of Ernest Weissmann, an architect of Croatian origins and

The concept of development evolves following the transformations and new challenges communities have to face. In this framework, in the past twenty years, development discourse has covered questions about the interrelations among its different dimensions (economic, human, social, environmental, institutional), about the transition from linear to circular models, and about the role (and importance)

The article traces the transformation of a Catholic cult site in Kosovo (Letnica in county of Vitina/Viti) in transition from the 20 th to the 21 st century over a period of twenty years: first, its slow decline during the wars of the 1990s, the sudden interruption of pilgrimages in 1999, followed by a gradual revitalization when a local cult was turned into a regional or even global one, by presentation

Recent scholarship has exposed the “EU’s pathological power”, which has undermined the creation of the rule of law in South Eastern Europe (SEE) and beyond. This paper discusses the “pathological turn” in Europeanization studies by identifying and providing evidence for several “pathologies of Europeanization”, i.e. legal and political deficiencies related to rule of law reform, such as legal instability

During the last twenty years, all the countries of Southeastern Europe have been engaged in reforming their judicial systems under Europe’s influence, exerted throughout the Enlargement process. The aim of this article is to analyze judicial reform paths and trajectories in four countries of this area: Slovenia, Croatia, Romania and Serbia. In each country, in fact, the effectiveness of the EU ’s leverage

Over the last decades, academic interest in judicial globalization and judicial reforms has increased. The literature has gone through three distinctive waves of research. One part of this literature examines judicial reforms from a top-down perspective, revealing the origins and evolution of European/international prescriptions related to rule of law consolidation. By looking at the motivations and

This article analyzes the conditions and challenges for security sector reform ( SSR ) in Macedonia since 2001. One of the main pressures that the Western community has been able to wield for reform and for post-conflict normalization in Macedonia has been the conditional offer of integration into key Western organizations – the North Atlantic Treaty Organization ( NATO ) and the European Union ( EU

The burden of this paper is to assert the significance of the 2011 movement of the Greek indignados for Greek politics during the Great Recession. Acknowledging the systematically feeble analysis of the nexus between non-institutional and electoral politics in social movement literature, the authors analyze the emergence, development, and heritage of the Greek indignados, focusing squarely on their

The sustainability of the current wave of Occupy protests, taking place in various parts of the world since 2011, is a major outstanding question that is of concern to both movement actors and social movement scholars. In this regard, collective identity construction is a key element, as it facilitates the transformation of multi-issue and multi-actor coalitional networks into sustained movement networks

The purpose of this text is to explore the possibilities of civic resistance and struggle in the context of ethnonational, deeply divided societies such as Bosnia and Herzegovina, in the light of its June 2013 ‘ JMBG ’ (citizen’s identity number) and ‘February 2014’ protests. The 2013 and 2014 protests occurred not only in Sarajevo, but also elsewhere in the country, and, to some extent, crossed the

This chapter sets the stage for the volume by introducing the most relevant conceptual instruments for “unpacking” the increasingly potent symbolic nexus that has developed between non-heterosexual sexualities, LGBT activism(s), and Europeanisation(s) in all of the post-Yugoslav states. The volume problematises the trope of “Europeanisation” as linear and approaches it as a complex, dynamic, and troubled

Operating inside the complex state apparatus that has been constructed in a way which perpetuates ethnic divisions, LGBT activism in BiH has to face the relatively uninformed and homophobic public, on the one hand, and the poorly coordinated state institutions that are often not accountable to the citizens whom they are supposed to represent and protect, on the other. Sexual matters in the still highly

This paper examines Croatian LGBTQ activists’ engagement with discourses of human rights and European identity in their struggles for anti-discrimination legislation. Utilizing the external pressure imposed by European Union institutions on the Croatian government and the government’s aim to become an EU member state during the pre-accession process, some activists and the organizations with which

This paper draws upon my fieldwork at the Festival of Gay and Lesbian Film in Ljubljana to examine how “Europeanness” is used to ground the legitimacy of minoritarian organizations, but also to question the assumptions implicit in such claims to belonging. I argue that the discourse of Europeanness is used in similarly ambivalent ways in both Slovenian LGBT activism and official Slovenian politics: