Europeanization and Statebuilding as Everyday Practices

Europeanization and Statebuilding as Everyday Practices
Author: Vjosa Musliu
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 156
Release: 2021-05-17
Genre: History
ISBN: 1000393658

This book provides a critical understanding of Europeanization and statebuilding in the Western Balkans, using the notion of everyday practices. This volume argues that it is everyday and mundane events that provide the entry points to showcase a broader set of practices of Europeanization in countries outside the EU. It does this by tracing notions of Europeanization in the everyday statebuilding of Kosovo, Europe Day celebrations in Bosnia and Herzegovina, urban politics in Tirana, and space and place making in Skopje. In doing so, the book shows that everyday events tell us that as much as it is about changing structures, institutions, and economic models, Europeanization is also about changing behaviours and ideas in populations at large. At the same time, the work shows that countries outside the EU use everyday events to perform their belonging to Europe. This book will be of much interest to students of European Studies, Balkan politics, statebuilding, and International Relations generally.

State-Building in Kosovo

State-Building in Kosovo
Author: Andrea Lorenzo Capussela
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 386
Release: 2015-03-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 0857738887

The history of Kosovo is a complicated one which typifies the darker side of modern Balkan history. Milosevic s Serbia withdrew from Kosovo in 1999 and the province was handed over to a special UN body who governed until 2008, when the West allowed Kosovo to become independent. The aim was to erect a stable and well governed democracy, but the outcome was a fragile state, which still threatens the stability of the Balkans and Europe s internal security. How did this happen? Here, Andrea Lorenzo Capussela offers an inside look at the process of building democracy in Kosovo. As head of the economics unit of Kosovo s international supervisor, Capussela has had access to previously unknown sources and information regarding the roles of the EU and the US in the crisis. This will be an essential reading for those studying the Kosovo crisis.

State-building in the Western Balkans

State-building in the Western Balkans
Author: Soeren Keil
Publisher: Association for the Study of Nationalities
Total Pages: 152
Release: 2018-08-23
Genre:
ISBN: 9781138377523

The Western Balkans have seen rapid changes since the end of the violent conflicts in the 1990s. The EU has been one of the main drivers for change, focusing on the political, economic and social transformation of the region to prepare the countries for membership in the Union. EU enlargement has never before been this complex and inter-connected with processes of state-building and democratization. It can be argued that the EU is actively involved in state-building. By focusing on a number of case-studies, it will be demonstrated how complex the transformation towards independent statehood and modern democratic governance has been (and continues to be) for most Western Balkan states. While some chapters focus explicitly on the role of the EU in these transformative procedures, others discuss the role of outside influences on state-building, democratization and independent governance more implicit. The picture painted is one of multiple and inter-connected alterations that have long-term consequences for the political systems of the region. This book was published as a special issue of Nationalities Papers.

The European Union and Everyday Statebuilding

The European Union and Everyday Statebuilding
Author: Ramadan Ilazi
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 161
Release: 2023-09-11
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1000955826

This book examines the European Union’s everyday statebuilding practices, using the case of Kosovo as an example of how it uses informal practices to influence local actors. The objective of the book is to explain how the EU operates as a statebuilding actor in the everyday context, outside its zone of comfort. It illustrates the EU’s dynamics of dealing with the local actors through everyday practices, which are understood as informal means or practices of interaction with the local actors in the framework of three key issues of relevance for statebuilding process for the EU: rule of law, reforming public administration and resolving bilateral disputes. The book shows how the EU utilizes everyday practices to influence decision-making process on the part of the government in order to ensure a particular outcome, be that diffusing a norm or promoting its own interests; in doing so, it gives an important insight into what these interests actually are in practice. In providing an insight into how the EU works as a statebuilding actor in practice in the everyday context, it unmasks factors that facilitate the EU’s influence on other countries that it considers to be ‘ailing’, such as Kosovo, in order to secure desired behaviours, decisions, and actions on the part of the local government. It also unmasks the EU’s commitment to being an ethical actor by unearthing practices that undermine local agency, the practical intentions of the EU’s statebuilding intervention approaches, and the reality that hides behind the façade of public statements on the part of the EU and the local government. In doing so, the book provides a new way to look at the EU as a statebuilding actor. This book will be of interest to students of statebuilding, EU policy, Balkan politics and, International Relations.

The Politics of Recognition and Engagement

The Politics of Recognition and Engagement
Author: Ioannis Armakolas
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 254
Release: 2019-07-05
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 3030179451

This edited volume explores the different ways in which members of the European Union have interacted with Kosovo since it declared independence in 2008. While there is a tendency to think of EU states in terms of two distinct groups – those that have recognised Kosovo and those that have not – the picture is more complex. Taking into account also the quality and scope of their engagement with Kosovo, there are four broad categories of member states that can be distinguished: the strong and weak recognisers and the soft and hard non-recognisers. In addition to casting valuable light on the relations between various EU members and Kosovo, this book also makes an important contribution to the way in which the concepts of recognition and engagement, and their relationship to each other, are understood in academic circles and by policy makers.

EU Conditionality in the Western Balkans

EU Conditionality in the Western Balkans
Author: Florian Bieber
Publisher: Routledge Europe-Asia Studies
Total Pages: 196
Release: 2013
Genre: Balkan Peninsula
ISBN:

This book examines the ways in which the European Union and its policy of conditionality has shaped the post-conflict reconstruction of the Western Balkans. This book was published as a special issue of Europe-Asia Studies.

The Europeanisation of the Western Balkans

The Europeanisation of the Western Balkans
Author: Jelena Džankić
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 262
Release: 2018-09-21
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 331991412X

This volume casts a fresh look on how the political spaces of the Western Balkan states (Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo, Macedonia and Albania) are shaped, governed and transformed during the EU accession process. The contributors argue that EU conditionality in the Western Balkans does not work ‘effectively’ in terms of social change because rule transfer remains a ‘contested’ business, due to veto-players on the ground and strong legacies of the past. The volume examines specific policy areas, salient in the enlargement process and to a different degree incorporated in the accession criteria, as well as EU foreign policy in the spheres of post-conflict stabilisation, democratization and the rule of law promotion.

Unravelling Liberal Interventionism

Unravelling Liberal Interventionism
Author: Gëzim Visoka
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2019-04-10
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0429017936

Despite calls for the decolonisation of knowledge, scholars who come from conflict-affected societies remained marginalised, excluded from the examination of the politics and impacts of liberal interventionism. This edited volume gives local scholars a platform from which they critically examine different aspects of liberal interventionism and statebuilding in Kosovo. Drawing on situational epistemologies and grounded approaches, the chapters in this book interrogate a wide range of themes, including: the politics of local resistance; the uneven relationship between international statebuilders and local subjects; faking of local ownership of security sector reform and the rule of law; heuristic and practical limits of interventionism, as well as the subjugated voices in statebuilding process, such as minorities and women. The book finds that the local is not antidote to the liberal, and that local perspectives are not monolithic. Yet, local critiques of statebuilding do not seek to generate replicable knowledge; rather they prefer generating situational and context-specific knowledge be that to resolve problems or uncover the unresolved problems. The book seeks to contribute to critical peace and conflict studies by (re)turning the local turn to local scholars who come from conflict-affected societies and who have themselves experienced the transition from war to peace. This book, voted one of the top 10 books of 2020 by International Affairs, is essential reading for students and scholars of peace- and state-building, conflict studies and international relations.

EU Peacebuilding in Kosovo and Afghanistan

EU Peacebuilding in Kosovo and Afghanistan
Author: Martina Spernbauer
Publisher: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers
Total Pages: 452
Release: 2014-02-20
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9004265716

In EU Peacebuilding in Kosovo and Afghanistan: Legality and Accountability Martina Spernbauer offers a comprehensive account of the EU's peacebuilding toolbox in light of the Union's constitutional architecture under the Treaty of Lisbon. A detailed analysis of EU peacebuilding in Kosovo and Afghanistan, with a focus on the security and justice sectors, demonstrates that the Union's continuous dichotomy between the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and other Union policies is difficult to maintain for this multi-faceted, comprehensive policy framework, which lies at the interface of security, justice and development. Within this analysis, the central questions of compliance of EU external action with international law and international human rights law in particular under CFSP, as well as accountability towards third countries and their nationals are addressed.

The EU and Member State Building

The EU and Member State Building
Author: Soeren Keil
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2014-12-05
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1135092265

This book critically examines the process of statebuilding by the EU, focusing on its attempts to build Member States in the Western Balkan region. This book analyses the European Union's policies towards, and the impact they have, upon the states of the Western Balkans, and assesses how these affect the nature of EU foreign policy. To this end, it focuses on the tools and mechanisms that the EU employs in its enlargement policy and examines the new instruments of direct intervention (in Bosnia and Kosovo), political coercion (in the case of Croatia and Serbia in relation to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia), and stricter conditionality in the Western Balkan countries. The book discusses the key aim of this special form of statebuilding, which is to establish functional liberal-democratic states in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia in order for them to join the EU and to cope with the responsibilities and pressures of membership in the future. However, the authors argue that while the EU sees itself as an international actor that promotes and protects liberal-democratic values, norms and principles, its experiences in the Western Balkans demonstrate how the EU ́s actions in the region have undermined the basic principles of democratic decision-making (such as the European support for impositions in Bosnia) and international law (Kosovo), and have consequently contributed to new tensions (see police reform in Bosnia, and the tensions between Kosovo and Serbia) and dependencies. This book will be of much interest to students of statebuilding, EU politics, global governance and IR/Security Studies in general.