Stefano Bianchini

Macedonia and the EU: Reshaping Social Values in Fluid Times

In a recent article, Saso Ordanoski, an internationally appreciated analyst and media expert based in Skopje, pointed out with concern that polls in December 2010 had for the first time in years recorded a negative attitude among the Macedonian public toward European integration. In particular, he stressed that a dramatic polarization was emerging between the expectations of the two main ethnic groups of the country, with the level of disappointment among Macedonians1 reaching 72% in contrast to a level of support at 74% among Albanians. In his view, the interpretation of this fact was frightening if juxtaposed with the widespread pessimism of Macedonians, roughly 50% of whom believed that their country would be the last to join the EU, with 51% expressing a negative assessment of the government’s policy in pursuing European integration.2

Etno-politica e State-building: il problema controverso dell'efficienza istituzionale in Bosnia-Erzegovina

Etno-politica e State-building: il problema controverso dell’efficienza istituzionale in Bosnia-Erzegovina

The Future of Western Engagement in the Balkans

Relations between the Western world and the Balkans have suffered from uncertainty and ambiguity since the beginning of the 1990s. These uncertainties were due to the political and cultural lack of preparedness of the West in facing the changes imposed simultaneously by both the Communist collapse in Eastern Europe and the violent break-up of Yugoslavia. Many scholars and policy makers have discussed the reasons for this lack of preparedness: a huge literature has investigated the origins of the Western failure to anticipate the Communist collapse, while studies of Western behavior toward Yugoslavia’s disintegration have been mainly focused on the failure to prevent the war, or mediate effectively among the warring parties.1 Meanwhile, the very notion of the “West” has deeply changed. This homogeneous category, once used during the Cold War to identify an undifferentiated political collective that included the United States and Western Europe, has increasingly shown an articulated set of discrete political positions—illustrated by the dramatic tensions that emerged on the eve of the second Iraqi war between the Bush administration and some EU member-states. The ongoing differentiation of visions and interests that constitute the Western world make it an increasingly weaker category for the interpretation of the policies of its constituent countries and multilateral organizations.