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Publisher's note: The European Union’s enlargement policy aims to promote peace, stability and socio-economic development in the six countries of the Western Balkans by granting the prospect of accession. While enlargement fatigue or skepticism can be observed among the member states of the European Union, chiefly due to clear democratic deficits and resistance to reform in the candidate countries, in most of the target countries the approval rates for EU membership are continuously decreasing because the time horizons are being pushed further and further into the future. The article not only discusses the problems of enlargement policy but also refers to the different geostrategic interests of the EU, the USA, Russia and China.
Publisher’s note: The Western Balkan countries are stuck in a hybrid status quo on their way to democracy. Traditional arguments related to cost–benefit calculations, national identity or conflicting objectives fail to explain the observed decoupling between gradual improvements in formal compliance with membership criteria and stagnating, if not declining, democratic performance. We explain the limited impact of the EU’s political conditionality in the Western Balkans with rampant state capture and proceed to unpack how EU conditionality has effectively contributed to the consolidation of such detrimental governance patterns. First, EU pressure for simultaneous economic and political reforms opened opportunities for business actors to build powerful clientelist networks that reach into politics. Second, top-down conditionality has weakened political competition and mechanisms of internal accountability and deliberation. Finally, formal progress towards membership and high-level interactions with EU and member state officials legitimize corrupt elites. A congruence analysis of the Serbian case provides empirical evidence for the hypothesised linkages between EU conditionality and state capture.
Publisher's note: This article evaluates public perceptions of the European Union (EU) in Montenegro and Serbia as the front running EU membership candidates. It uses a multidisciplinary approach, which comprises a comparative survey data analysis method, the Image Theory and a mind-mapping approach of EU perceptions analysis to study the EU-Western Balkans relations. Public perceptions of the EU in the Western Balkans are (re)created and juxtaposed against perceptions of other external actors, notably Russia and China. This has led to the EU’s ‘power of attraction’ being diminished in the Western Balkans. Rival perceptions of China and Russia as ‘less demanding’ partners than the EU, and the slowing down of EU’s enlargement agenda have also contributed to this trend. In order to maximize its own security and counter the growing geopolitical influence by China and Russia in the Western Balkans, the EU would benefit from a more comprehensive study of its own representation and public perceptions in candidate states. By doing so, the EU could improve the knowledge about its soft power, which can in turn increase the effectiveness of its foreign policy programmes globally and democracy promotion in the neighbourhood.
Publisher’s note: Almost two decades after the European Council summit in Thessaloniki, the promise of EU membership remains unfulfilled in the Western Balkans. Although the process of EU accession is continuing, the current pace throws the Thessaloniki promise into doubt. Despite initial success, the current approach to enlargement has reached its limits, as it seems to be slowing down the integration process rather than accelerating it. At the same time, the transformative power of the EU is too weak to positively impact on democratic and economic setbacks in the region. That is why this article considers various strategies that the EU could employ to recalibrate the accession of the Western Balkans, notwithstanding the need for sincere reforms in the aspiring member states.
Publisher’s note: For decades, countries aspiring to join the European Union (EU) have been linked to it through migration. Yet little is known about how migration affects individual support for joining the EU in prospective member states. We explore the relationship between migration and support for EU accession in the Western Balkans. Using data from the Gallup Balkan Monitor survey, we find that prospective and return migrants, as well as people with relatives abroad, are more likely to vote favorably in a hypothetical EU referendum. At the same time, only people with relatives abroad are more likely to consider EU membership a good thing. Our results suggest that migration affects attitudes toward joining the EU principally through instrumental/utilitarian motives, with channels related to information and cosmopolitanism playing only a minor role. Overall, we show that migration fosters support for joining the EU in migrants’ origin countries and that joining such a supranational institution is likely to foster political and institutional development of migrants’ origin countries.
Publisher’s note: EU membership conditionality has been conceptualized as a dialogue between the EU and power elites of countries that aspire to join the Union. Research that inquire into the association between support for EU membership and conditions that the EU imposes on countries that aspire to join the Union remains scarce. Relying on data from a simple random sample of cellphone random digit dialing collected in summer 2015 in Albania, we found that people's view of EU membership conditionality as helping country's democratization firmly predicts support for their country's EU membership. Such a relationship outweighs respondents’ concerns of EU conditions encroachment upon country's sovereignty as well as their prioritizing of economic development, even though they might expect economic benefits from country's EU membership. Our findings suggest people's concerns over country's democratization to be the primary force behind their support for EU membership.
Publisher's note: The paper contributes to the deconstruction of the liberal peacebuilding concept, particularly its main components of failed state and statebuilding, through the analysis of two internationally-backed statehood projects in the Western Balkans: Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo. The authors analyse critical peacebuilding literature on these two casesto provide arguments for abandoning the failed state and state-building ideas as overly biassed and ideologically based. Instead, they suggest reintroducing the conceptualisation of state-making as a more suitable framework for understanding the post-war context and dynamics in the Western Balkans. Based on that premise, the authors conclude that the cases of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo should be approached from a broader historical and geographical perspective and call for the decentralisation of the “Westphalian state” and the reinstatement of the longue durée perspective in state-formation research, as well as the depathologisation of the subjects of that research.
Publisher’s note: The article concludes the Special Issue, Illiberal Politics in Southeast Europe, on the retreat of liberal democracy in the region. It focuses on the central themes that link all the papers together: free and fair elections, media freedom, judicial independence, privileged access to public resources and the role of civil society. It seeks to disentangle the causes and consequences of illiberal politics in the region and explores the similarities in the illiberal practices and strategies incumbents use with the aim of staying in power indefinitely. The main argument is that democratic backsliding in Southeast Europe is deeply rooted in the unfinished transitions of the 1990s, which gave rise to new political and economic elites and that blending those two into one resulted in the dominance of the executive over the judiciary and legislature. These new elites became entrenched during the wars and conflicts that affected the region. The enabling factors were of societal origin – clientelist practices, corruption, nepotism and mistrust in politics accompanied by external factors – as well as international pull and push factors (from the EU and Russia) along with a domino effect of democratic backsliding in the region.
Publisher's note: At the end of the twentieth century, the transition from non-democratic regimes has been the most important political event in the Western Balkans. The fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 paved the way to the sudden collapse and breakdown of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe and in the Western Balkans, albeit some of them did already show a growing decline. Despite the variation in terms of institutional framework and electoral systems, the Western Balkan countries do present difference in some aspects of the political system but not for all the variables considered. The different scenarios that involved the Western Balkan countries during the armed conflicts have generated often negative outcomes in terms of democratic performances, or better have exacerbated persistent resistances to the democratic strengthening from the political actors. The factors beyond these different patterns can be indicated in three main areas: (1) the type of democratic transition and the role of the different actors in the process, (2) the influence of the political parties and their genetic features and (3) finally, considering the context, the impact of the war in the country.
Publisher’s note: Three decades since the beginning of democratization processes, the Western Balkan countries have built a democratic façade by holding elections, by promulgating legal acts guaranteeing freedom of expression, or by constitutionally declaring a strict system of checks and balances. In reality, however, political elites rely on informal structures, clientelism, and control of the media to undermine democracy. Given that formal democratic freedoms are effective only to the extent that political elites are bound by the effective rule of law, the core argument of this study is that the structural weaknesses of democratic institutions are purposefully exploited by domestic regimes, which are able to misuse these fragile institutions to their advantage.
Publisher's note: The aim of this paper was to identify the nature of hybrid threats posed by Russia in Bosnia and Herzegovina and, subsequently, to identify to what extent the Kremlin is successful in destabilising the political situation in this country. For this purpose, disciplined interpretative case study was employed. This study is primarily based on four expert interviews which were conducted in August 2021, in Sarajevo. The theoretical part of this study introduces the concept of hybrid threats. This concept is then applied to the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Based on a comprehensive analysis, the authors were able to identify three areas where the Kremlin's hybrid threats are the most significant. These are political and economic influence, information space and proxy organizations. This paper may contribute to the understanding of how Russia constructs its hybrid threats and may also lead to further research on hybrid threats in the Western Balkans.
Publisher's note: After the fall of the communist regime in Eastern and Central Europe, a new geopolitical context was created on the European continent and beyond. These changes had important implications for the security and foreign policy dimension of the EU. The political turmoil that erupted in the former communist countries in the early ‘90s and especially the wars in the former Yugoslavia that began in 1991 highlighted the EU's lack of capabilities to respond to crisis management situations either in its own backyard or in other parts of the world. This was reaffirmed during the Kosovo war in 1998-99, where the EU failed to play any major role in resolving the conflict. Because of changes in the geopolitical landscape in its neighborhood and beyond, the EU began to increase its efforts to empower the foreign and security policy. In this regard, the European Union Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo (EULEX) - which is the subject of study in this paper - is of great significance. This is because EULEX is the largest civilian mission ever launched under Common Security and Defense Policy of the European Union, and is therefore an important exam through which the EU's capabilities in implementing these policies on the ground are tested. Analytical discussion takes place through a mixed methodology where both qualitative and quantitative methods are combined. The study highlights that the EULEX mission has faced significant challenges in terms of efficiency and public image, concluding that the lessons learned from the EULEX mission’s work will serve as a valuable experience that can help the EU in its efforts to strengthen the Common Security and Defense Policy further.
Publisher's note: The article explores how transport networks in the Western Balkans are transformed from physical infrastructures into political instruments. It concentrates on two case studies: the construction of the ‘Brotherhood and Unity’ Highway and the EU connectivity agenda in the Western Balkans. It examines how the first was part of the process of constructing a Yugoslav ‘community of nations’ and how the latter has been integrated into the broader scheme of ‘region building’ in the Western Balkans. The analysis considers how transport networks were used in each case and reflects on the limits and the durability of this political endeavour.
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