Balkan Politics and Society

Several consecutive global crises, including the collapse of the Socialist bloc, the global economic crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the current war in Ukraine have put the lives of citizens of former Yugoslavia and the former Soviet Union under threat. How do the most affected amongst them manage to survive global crises? How do their experiences from previous crises influence their behavior when a new global crisis emerges? Through a unique comparison of life paths of post-Yugoslav and post-Soviet migrants and their communities across Europe, the Americas, and Africa, Sanja Tepavcevic offers a novel theoretical approach revealing a relationship between loyalty to communities and resilience to global crises. For many post-Yugoslav and post-Soviet migrants, the (perception of) exclusion from communities that they belonged to prior to a crisis tends to reshape their sense of belonging and modifies their loyalty to and identification with a community or collective identity. These processes represent psychological and cultural (or ‘soft’) forms of resilience. Similarly, as Tepavcevic demonstrates, greater physical (or ‘tangible’) resilience shows itself in emigration and the formation of alternative communities. By combining and analyzing narratives, participant observations, and theories of resilience and loyalty borrowed from social, behavioral, and the natural sciences, Tepavcevic demonstrates that global crises challenge existing communities and generate various forms of migrant communities, loyalty, and resilience. Among others, social scientists, migration policy-makers, and migrants will benefit from reading this book.

This compilation of essays by scholars from the region, Western Europe, and the US, explores the intersection of international politics in the post-Yugoslav states with a focus on the influence and impact of the European Union, the United States, Russia, China, and Turkey. The implications of external actors’ policy in the region for its Euro-Atlantic integration, its security, and stability are examined and discussed. In assessing the importance of the post-Yugoslav states for the EU and US and the current trend of disengagement by these two democratic actors in the region, answers are revealed regarding the question whether we are seeing a new Eastern Question emerging in the post-Yugoslav states. Likewise, when looking at the role of Russia, China, and Turkey in the region—and in contrast to European and US policies—, it becomes obvious to what extent the region, once again, is becoming the playground of Great Power games and wider geopolitical strategic interests.
The analytical time frame covers the period 1991–2018. The changes in the foreign policies of great powers are explored as they relate to the institutional set-up of the region. For instance, do the changes affect the EU’s hegemony in the region? Do Russia, China, and Turkey actively contribute to changing the rules of the game in the region—be it the accession process or regional cooperation?

The right to be elected, although an important political right guaranteed in human rights documents on international and regional levels, is still an under-researched and undertheorized concept with many synonyms in use. While the right to vote is often correlated with democracy, the closely related right to be elected is often neglected, and the constitutions of most countries are silent about it.

The 2009 European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) decision in the case of Sejdić and Finci v. Bosnia and Herzegovina started the discussions concerning the discrimination in enjoyment of the right to be elected in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Although the right to be elected is not explicitly guaranteed in the Dayton Constitution but only in the Law on Election, the ECHR considered equal enjoyment of this right by everyone in Bosnia and Herzegovina of high importance and declared the relevant Dayton Constitution’s provisions discriminatory.

The book explains the conceptual relevance of the right to be elected, its interrelatedness with the right to vote and both these rights’ significance for democratic systems. Through analyzing and explaining the regional human rights tribunal’s decisions concerning the right to be elected, the importance of this political right is elucidated.

Framed by complexity-thinking, this book uses the prism of security sector reform (SSR) to trace the co-evolution of the Western Balkans as part of the EU/Europe security community and the European Union (EU) as a security actor. It aims to analyse the suitability and adaptability of EU security governance to a VUCA world, i.e. a world of increasing vulnerability, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity—the world of transformative change. It takes a detailed view on the transformation of regional and state security in the Western Balkans and the EU’s role in the process between 1991, the year that marked the flare-up of violence and large-scale conflict, and 2013, when the first state of the region joined the EU.