Democratization Without Decommunization in the Balkans

Since recent U.S.-led democratization projects having led in some cases to the election of Islamist movements, the old democratic theory that structural preconditions are key determinants of successful democratization has apparently been bolstered. This article examines the democratization experience in postcommunist Europe to assess which matters more, a society's “givens” favoring democracy or the institutional imports that a democracy-minded elite can borrow. In particular, it compares the experience of the Southeast Europe countries, which presented poor prerequisites for successful democratization and yet in at least two cases (Romania and Bulgaria) are far along on the path to democratization to the experience of Central Europe and the former Soviet Union as a whole.     

The Albanian Diaspora and security in the Balkans

The main theses of this article, completed on the eve of the NATO bombing campaign, remain relevant. With half of Europe's Muslim Albanians living outside Albania proper in Slavic and Greek Orthodox countries, the resultant risk of a broader Balkan conflict remains. Indeed, the sense of grievance of both Serbs and Albanians has been intensified by ethnic cleansing, bombing, dispossession, and polarization. Those like Kosovar shadow President Rugova, who were committed to multi‐ethnic compromise, have been pushed aside by the KLA. Increasingly, the long‐term solution in Kosovo appears to be one of independence from both Serbia and Albania with the rights of Serbs preserved by partition policed by NATO/UN forces.     

Democratization in the Balkans: Challenges and prospects

The post‐communist states of the Balkans face daunting challenges as they experiment with pluralism. The absence of a strong democratic tradition, national rivalries within and between states, weak civil society, and the impact of communism on political culture, complicate the emergence of open politics. There is a lack of agreement about the management of political competition and an absence of political institutions able to integrate conflicting forces. Compared with democratizing southern Europe, the Balkans faces numerous handicaps, and support from heartland democracies has been meagre. The fate of democracy may well be determined by events outside local control, namely the economic situation and the outcome of the war in former Yugoslavia.     

Democratic control and border security in the Western Balkans

This note focuses on the best means for achieving civilian control of border security in the Balkans. Civilian control may be achieved through societal control (as in civilian complaint reviews) but such procedures require an established political culture that does not yet exist in the region. Civilian control also requires a degree of technical expertise, which is not always available among international officials, let alone local communities.     

Structural power and the China-EU-Western Balkans triangular relations

Asia Europe Journal - Narratives about the challenges of China’s growing involvement with Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) for the region and the EU are exponentially proliferating and have...     

巴尔干国际治理:科索沃案例

冲突后地区的国际治理是冷战后国际社会面临的新挑战.本文对国际治理的起源进行了简要分析,考察了巴尔干国际治理的条件与功能,较为全面地探讨了科索沃国际治理的背景、法律依据、实际运作及其经验,并对科索沃独立后国际治理的演化进行了简要评述.     

Assessing international aid for local governance in the Western Balkans

This article investigates the impact of international efforts to cultivate effective and authoritative local governing institutions in the Western Balkans, a prime testing ground for democratization aid to post-war states. It explores three hypotheses, each of which argues that a particular approach of international actors toward domestic officials best improves the quality of local governance. The study's gathering of interview and survey data from field-based actors enables it to evaluate local government reforms' impact on domestic communities. This investigation arrives at three findings. First, in the view of Western Balkan peoples, local governance reforms do not produce benefits when they are either imposed or ignored by international authorities. Secondly, reforms produce benefits for local communities when they are designed to meet domestic concerns. More specifically, reforms valued by local communities are designed in ways that respond to domestic, rather than international, concepts of good local governance that emphasize socioeconomic aspects and produce tangible benefits. Well designed reforms also include significant aid targeting local governance that is coupled with the promise of a larger political settlement that is attractive to powerful domestic elites and contingent on clearly articulated local governance reforms. Thirdly, such aid best characterises European Union efforts only in Macedonia.     

Coercive Europeanization: the EU's struggle to contain secessionism in the Balkans

Secessionism is still the predominant conflict type in Europe. Even though the European Union (EU) extended the enlargement perspective to the Balkans 15 years ago, secessionist ambition remains pervasive, especially in Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia and Serbia. How does secessionism affect Europeanization and how does Europeanization affect secessionism? It is argued here that in cases of unattained statehood domestic power struggles among deeply divided elites over status and territorial control undermine the consensus needed for Europeanization. In cases of attained de facto statehood the conflict focuses on recognition, which likewise polarizes societies and marginalizes reform. In such high-resistance scenarios, where the inclusionary EU norms clash with the exclusionary norms of the secessionists, the EU vigorously works to marginalize the secessionists by relying mainly on denial, punishment and imposition. Still, the EU's leverage is often insufficient in moving the conflicting parties towards within-state solutions and reform. A study of Bosnia's transformation since Dayton reveals, however, that the EU's leverage varies over time and that the EU at times itself inadvertently fans secessionism.     

The Balkans and the enlargement of NATO: A sceptical view

Throughout the Cold War, NATO and the USA worked hard to consolidate their strategic presence in Europe, while at the same time containing the Soviet threat. But the road taken by NATO in its effort to reform itself after the collapse of Communism and the disintegration of the Warsaw Pact, has not been a royal path, smooth and free of risk. NATO's geopolitical and selective way of eastward expansion encourages the creation of new ‘enemy blocs’ with Russia at their epicentre. The clash between NATO and the European Union over defence and security issues becomes all the more obvious. The humanitarian war over Kosovo was a risky affair whose spillover effects are badly felt today with the uprising of Albanian Macedonians; The Kosovo war, moreover, created a unique precedent in the conduct of foreign policy and clearly bordered on ‘double standard’ politics. Last but not least, the wider implications of Turkey's entry into the European Union may not be, in the long run, as positive for NATO as initially thought they would be.

This article offers a critical overview of NATO's reform process in the 1990s and argues that its transformation from a military defence pact into a political organisation upholding and selectively implementing liberal‐democratic principles may lead the alliance into serious political deadlocks in the years to come.     

Containing the Refugee Crisis: How the EU Turned the Balkans and Turkey into an EU Borderland

The events that took place during the 2015-16 refugee crisis in the southeastern EU region boosted unprecedented bordering processes. Borders were reinforced and extended and a costly and difficult deal with Turkey was undertaken; the western Balkans were turned into a vast buffer zone made up of multiple buffer states with fences of all types and sizes; while Greece was ring-fenced and to this day struggles to manage thousands of refugees stranded in camps all over its territory. By seeking to contain the refugee flows, the EU turned its southeastern region into a fortified EU borderland.     

NGOs and Ethnic Conflict: Lessons from the Work of the Project on Ethnic Relations in the Balkans

This article examines the impact of nongovernmental organization-sponsored contact and communication on fostering peaceful solutions to ethnic conflict via case studies of the activities of the Project on Ethnic Relations (PER) in Romania, Macedonia, Montenegro, Kosovo, and Serbia. It explores five operational principles that guide PER activity: creating credible, neutral forums for dialogue; maintaining momentum; working within political realities; encouraging indigenous solutions from within existing processes; and acting with the backing of powerful states. These principles explain PER's success as a "weak mediator" of ethnic conflicts. According to this analysis, PER also exhibits organizational characteristics that contribute to success, including nonpartisanship, area expertise and extensive networks of local contacts, and an ability to secure the trust of local actors.
A significant indicator of the success of PER activities is the establishment by conflicting parties of institutionalized mechanisms for addressing their differences. Contrary to the view that electoral competition contributes to conflict, this study finds that the possibility of achieving an electoral advantage by participating cooperatively in conflict resolution activities creates incentives for local actors to recognize opportunities offered by PER activities and leads local actors to heed PER's advice. Finally, the article offers a cautionary observation. While PER's perceived influence with major international actors may contribute to its local successes, once a state actor with the power to impose a solution has committed itself to ending a conflict, its preferences outweigh any local interests in determining the outcome and renders the efforts of a "weak mediator" such as PER irrelevant.     

The 1945 Ethridge Mission to Bulgaria and Romania and the Origins of the Cold War in the Balkans

In autumn 1945, US Secretary of State James Byrnes deadlocked with Soviet Foreign Minister Viacheslav Molotov over the governments of Bulgaria and Romania. To escape, Byrnes dispatched Mark Ethridge, a liberal newspaperman, on a fact-finding mission. Contrary to Byrnes' hopes, Ethridge found conditions as bad as reported, and went to Moscow to convince the Soviet government to moderate Communist behavior. Ethridge's damning report on political repression had little effect on Byrnes, who grabbed a face-saving Soviet offer. President Harry Truman, though, read Ethridge's report and became convinced of the failure of Byrnes' soft-line and the need to stand up to the Soviet Union.