Abstract Due to its proximity to the EU, Serbia’s strategic importance in the Western Balkans has attracted attention from non-democratic external actors. While existing research on autocracy promotion has primarily focused on cases of geographical proximity, this article examines whether Russia’s foreign policy toward Serbia can be classified as autocracy promotion. It thereby contributes to the literature on authoritarian external influence. Drawing on the frameworks of Katsiaryna Yakouchyk and Oisín Tansey, the analysis examines Russia’s motives and political mechanisms in Serbia between 2012 and 2024. The findings suggest that Russia’s primary motive is the fear of losing influence in Europe and identify mechanisms through which Russia shapes domestic politics and supports political elites. The article argues that Russia’s policy toward Serbia is better understood as autocratic sponsorship driven by democracy resistance rather than autocracy promotion. It also suggests that other non-democratic external actors may similarly shape political developments in the region.
Abstract This article shows how decades-old narratives, shaped partly by state-led campaigns against “walled-up” households in state socialist Macedonia, influenced the post-2001 armed conflict narratives and endure today. Drawing on the concept of slow memory, the authors argue that portrayals of Albanians as separatists and Macedonians as defenders persist beyond the formal peace established by the Ohrid Framework Agreement. These entrenched perceptions manifest in everyday practices, localized commemorations, and the absence of official efforts to address past injustices. The study introduces the notion of ethnic spatialization, understood here as the linking of ethnic identities, power relations, and spatial practices that assigns particular groups to particular places, to explain how collective memories are physically embedded in segregated commemorative sites, further reinforcing longstanding divisions. As a result, the 2001 conflict emerges less as a sudden rupture, as predominantly suggested in the public discourse, than a continuation of unresolved tensions stretching back to the 1980s. The authors here thus call for deeper engagement with these historical legacies and inclusive remembrance practices to foster more meaningful reconciliation and long-term social cohesion.
Abstract Over the course of past three decades, extensive external efforts aimed at consolidating democracy in the Western Balkans have been underway. Despite these endeavours, persistent political gridlocks and security crises serve as a stark reminder that substantial work remains. This article adopts the viewpoint of Western donor states, exploring the impact of their democracy promotion policies on the region. Focusing on the United States’ approach, it examines why externally supported democratization, originally rooted in principles, has fallen short of its intended goals, and in some cases helped lead to autocratization. The prevalent stabilitocracy theory ascribes externally “facilitated” autocratization to the procedural and political failings of the EU enlargement and accession negotiations process. This article offers a distinct theoretical perspective by introducing the concept of chessboard politics among major global powers and posits that Western policies are increasingly driven by systemic competition. As regional leaders with undemocratic and illiberal proclivities align with revisionist states, Western donors, reluctant to lose geopolitical influence, find themselves extending tacit or explicit support to those same local elites engaged in autocratization. The article relies on process tracing to illustrate these dynamics within the context of developments in Serbia and US foreign policy towards it since 2000.
Abstract The Western Balkans have become a battleground for competing visions of the global order. While the European Union demands a rules-based approach through accession negotiations, China promotes infrastructure projects, direct investments and trade as its preferred way to modernity within the framework of the Global Development Initiative. This oversimplified view portrays the Western Balkans as passive recipients of external influences. Countries in the region have agency. They engage in hedging and adopt opportunistic behaviour, driven by a rational-instrumental logic. Even this perspective runs the risk of oversimplification. Drawing on literature about institutions as networks and examining Serbia as a case study, this article argues that Serbia’s engagement with both powers contributes to the reshaping of regional and global orders. The incentives offered by Brussels and Beijing are not mutually exclusive; governments may simply have different timeframes for their objectives, or different reputational risks and opportunities. We may even see a relative convergence of the EU’s and China’s narratives in the region, combining the rule of law with effective development. This article looks beyond hedging as a standard perspective on Serbia’s foreign policy and sheds light on complex interactions between Belgrade and these two external powers.
Abstract Why is it essential to examine the securitization of China in Bosnia and Herzegovina’s (BiH) public discourse, particularly in light of China’s growing global presence? This article fills a gap by analyzing how local and international actors construct narratives around China’s presence as a security concern in BiH. Utilizing qualitative content analysis and expert interviews, the study uncovers narratives shaped by media outlets, think tanks, and local experts acting as narrative brokers. These brokers frame China’s infrastructure initiatives and bilateral relations through specific themes, heavily influenced by Western funding that highlights “malign influences.” The securitization intertwines with ethnic and political divides, EU integration concerns, corruption, and democratic backsliding. The article concludes that China’s role is predominantly interpreted through a security lens, potentially obstructing balanced relations. Additional research is required to assess the long-term implications for BiH’s foreign policy and its engagements with both China and the EU.
Abstract Despite substantial external financial inflows over the past decades, the Western Balkan (WB) countries continue to lag behind the European Union (EU) in economic convergence. Using a newly compiled dataset covering EU transfers, bilateral assistance, foreign direct investment, and remittances, this article compares the WB experience with that of Central Eastern Europe and the Baltics (CEEB). The findings challenge the common view that the WB’s slow growth is primarily due to insufficient external finance. In per capita terms, WB countries have received volumes of external funding comparable to – or in some cases exceeding – those provided to CEEB during their pre-accession period. What proved decisive for CEEB-EU convergence was not pre-accession funding, but different EU instruments and the substantial surge of financial resources after accession. The scale, timing, and effectiveness of post-accession EU financial instruments provided a major boost to growth and structural transformation. In contrast, persistent institutional weaknesses and governance deficits in the WB have significantly limited the impact of external finance. The analysis suggests that increasing EU funding alone will not accelerate convergence unless accompanied by stronger conditionality and reforms targeting the region’s structural governance challenges.
Abstract This article introduces the special issue on slow memory in the Yugoslav successor states, and as such proposes some directions for further developing a framework of the slow that can be incorporated into the conflict analysis and conflict transformation inquiries in memory studies. By placing the slow memory framework alongside the slow peace one, the special issue editors make visible what far too often is lost in depictions of war and peace, as well as its commemoration: the local and regional experiences of war that are beyond events only. In tracing slow memory practices in the region, this introductory article will feature two main threads of analysis in the existing literature: the first relating to tracing remembrance beyond the violent breakup of Yugoslavia only; and the second which allows the tracing of mnemonic actions beyond ethnicity only. The article will do so by featuring the slow in the study of activism, protests, and joint social actions, followed by the use of the slow in the analysis of mnemonic murals as an emerging form of commemoration.
Abstract This article examines how memory contributes to slow peacebuilding in postwar Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). Drawing on qualitative fieldwork and in-depth interviews with memory activists, individuals maintaining cross-ethnic relationships, and multiple generations within families, it investigates how memories accumulated through personal experience, family storytelling, and social activism challenge entrenched ethnonational narratives. The analysis highlights three pathways: activist strategies that reframe the past, everyday cross-ethnic interactions that prioritize relationships over “correct” memory, and intergenerational transmission that selectively preserves or omits wartime experiences. These mechanisms demonstrate how memory can be mobilized incrementally to reduce polarization, foster empathy, and cultivate dialogue as subtle resistance to divisive narratives. Intergenerational dialogues and cross-ethnic solidarities reveal memory’s potential to extend peacebuilding beyond immediate contexts. By situating grassroots practices alongside elite-level discourses, the research underscores how ordinary individuals negotiate complex pasts, offering practical insights for scholars and practitioners seeking to support reconciliation in divided societies.
Abstract This article examines how peaceful reintegration of Croatia’s Danube region is today publicly remembered and shows that it has remained a marginal part of collective memory of the 1991–1995 war in Croatia. The article attempts to move the attention from research on the memory of violent events during conflict and to focus on the slow memory of a peaceful process in the aftermath of violence. It is argued that, in post-war Croatia, public remembrance of the war has mostly included only violent episodes from the war and has marginalised public memory of peace. This has created an impression that alternatives to violence were and are not possible, although a non-violent, peaceful solution proved exactly the opposite by playing a crucial role in ending the conflict. The article aims to expose this cultural continuity of seeing conflicts as necessarily and inevitably violent and pays more attention to peace processes that are harder to recognize because they are not one-off events and because of their slowness.
Abstract This article comparatively studies the culture of memory, identity politics, and commemorative practices in contemporary Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia. It focuses on two recent events that can be interpreted as an implicit and an explicit demand to address the culture of memory in the Balkans. The first is the legal prohibition of genocide denial in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2021. The second is the escalation of violence along with a wave of civic anti-violence protests in Serbia in 2023. The article aims to examine whether there was a rise in radicalism and ethnonationalism during the period preceding May 2023 in Serbia and whether these events influenced commemoration practices afterward. It also explores if the decision to legally ban genocide denial in Bosnia and Herzegovina was followed by a decline or exacerbation of historical revisionism in Bosnia and Herzegovina compared to before. The author attempts to illuminate the nexus between the culture of memory, nationalism, and identity politics in the light of these events in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia, as well as their connection to the culture of violence and the persistence of ethnonationalist identity politics from a comparative perspective.
Abstract This article assesses how effectively international aid has supported peace-promoting constituencies among civil society and business actors in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina. It probes the plausibility of a proposed model that illuminates how implementing the international aid blueprint in conflict-affected settings can make aid efforts vulnerable to resilient domestic constituencies that pursue narrow interests and undermine pro-peace constituencies. Implementing the liberal peacebuilding model by following a target-driven aid distribution approach and relying on limited capacity for reflection results in insufficient attention to local needs and context, prioritization of donors’ interests and aid implementers’ resistance to give up some powers to local counterparts out of concern for derailing the aid implementation schedule. Adherence to established concepts and ingrained operational procedures further limits international aid providers’ willingness to learn and develop new instruments. Drawing on new evidence from Bosnia and Herzegovina, complemented by analysis from other Western Balkans countries, the article illustrates how these dynamics shape aid outcomes.
Abstract This article explores civic activism and informal hospitality along the Balkan route, focusing on the border city of Trieste and the Silos, an abandoned building that has served as an informal hub for displaced people for nearly a decade. Using an ethnographic approach, it examines how activists, humanitarian organizations, migrants, and citizens have created complex entanglements of solidarity beyond formal reception systems. Through the iceberg metaphor, the Silos is portrayed as a space where visible securitarian and humanitarian narratives form only the “tip,” while the submerged layer consists of civic engagement with transformative potential. By shifting attention from border regimes to everyday practices around the Silos, the analysis shows how grassroots solidarity can reshape local identities and concepts of citizenship, emphasizing the liminal and participatory nature of frontier spaces.
The historiography of the Bulgarian Massacres of 1876 is overwhelmingly dependent upon early English reports. As such, key assumptions need to be challenged by new evidence. “The Suffering in Bulgaria” was written principally for other reasons by two American missionaries, Henry O. Dwight and James F. Clarke, but was also an eyewitness account contemporaneous to the earliest reports of Edwin Pears, Walter Baring, Eugene Schuyler, Januarius MacGahan, and William Gladstone. “The Suffering in Bulgaria” presents heretofore unconsidered evidence for a reduced death toll of the Bulgarian Massacres including a more reliable method than was utilized by the other eyewitnesses for determining this number. Under mistaken pretenses, therefore, the early English reports formed not only the tradition of Western historiography but the trajectory of late Ottoman history itself. This they did on the basis of poorly sourced data, which the American missionaries decisively and effectively disputed. Both the introduction and the conclusion identify two potential avenues for further study in the secondary literature, namely (1) the Bulgarian Massacres of 1876 as an old subject reinvigorated by the missionary sources and (2) the real-world consequences of getting it wrong in 1876 on the history of violence.
This article examines emerging environmental activism in Kosovo, focusing on the right to water as a key theme in grassroots responses to resource crises. Using political ecology and photo-elicitation interviews with activists and experts, the study reveals how lived experiences and local knowledge shape resistance to environmental degradation, injustice, and resource privatization. Activism is portrayed as a dynamic, intersectional movement tied to contested ecologies and rooted in marginality, memory, and ongoing struggles over natural resources. Rather than treating environmentalism as a singular issue, the article frames it as a constellation of interconnected struggles. The visual, process-oriented methodology emphasizes both resistance and solidarity, showing how environmental crises can inspire wider political mobilization. Additionally, the research contributes to understanding regional dynamics and insecurities, illustrating how environmental activism is deeply embedded in Kosovo’s complex socio-political context and broader visions for transformative justice.
This article turns the gaze toward the practice of feminist archival activism in Kosovo. It aims to analyze whether and how feminist archives and archival activism are challenging and problematizing mainstream historical threads in Kosovo. It aims to address two main questions: how is feminist archival activism problematizing and challenging the postwar masculine hegemonic narrative in Kosovo? How does feminist archival activism resist the marginalization of women in mainstream historical narratives? The analysis relies on six semi-structured interviews with prominent feminist activists, independent researchers, and artists who engage in archival research and documentation. The analysis is complemented through a review of archival depositories, collectives, and initiatives. The article intends to fill the gap in the literature regarding archival activism in Kosovo, particularly on archival activism as a feminist practice. Furthermore, it aims to contribute to the broader discussion on the “archival turn” in the post-Yugoslav space.
