The countries of the Western Balkans - Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and the province of Kosovo - form a core European region. The region is known for its instability and recent history of wars and civil conflicts, but far less is known about the changes that have taken place in the economic and social welfare systems and the dynamic processes of transition, development and European integration that have been taking place over the last twenty years. Although economic growth has been firmly established, many problems remain in relation to the labour markets where there is high unemployment, large informal economies, and widespread poverty. The book discusses the role of welfare reforms, international aid and European integration in addressing these difficulties. The author argues that the resistance to reforms which were initiated under the communist system in former Yugoslavia led to the break up of the country and that since then a group of early reforming countries have made fast progress in institutional reform and have been at the forefront of EU integration. He also acknowledges that the main problems have been among a group of late reformers including two international protectorates where aid dependence has held back progress with institutional reforms. The book concludes that the resolution of these problems will unblock the completion of the transition, development and EU integration in the region and open for the way for a more stable and prosperous future.

This book presents a contemporary broad assessment of the main dilemmas of regional development and regional policy in Central and Eastern Europe considering the influence of internal and external pressures on the regionalization process in this area.

Disentangling a controversial history of turmoil and progress, this Handbook provides essential guidance through the complex past of a region that was previously known as the Balkans but is now better known as Southeastern Europe. It gathers 47 international scholars and researchers from the region. They stand back from the premodern claims and recent controversies stirred by the wars of Yugoslavia’s dissolution. Parts I and II explore shifting early modern divisions among three empires to the national movements and independent states that intruded with Great Power intervention on Ottoman and Habsburg territory in the nineteenth century. Part III traces a full decade of war centered on the First World War, with forced migrations rivalling the great loss of life. Part IV addresses the interwar promise and the later authoritarian politics of five newly independent states: Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, and Yugoslavia. Separate attention is paid in Part V to the spread of European economic and social features that had begun in the nineteenth century. The Second World War again cost the region dearly in death and destruction and, as noted in Part VI, in interethnic violence. A final set of chapters in Part VII examines postwar and Cold War experiences that varied among the four Communist regimes as well as for non-Communist Greece. Lastly, a brief Epilogue takes the narrative past 1989 into the uncertainties that persist in Yugoslavia’s successor states and its neighbors. Providing fresh analysis from recent scholarship, the brief and accessible chapters of the Handbook address the general reader as well as students and scholars. For further study, each chapter includes a short list of selected readings.

What are the prospects for enhancing security in the most volatile subregions of post-communist Europe? This text examines the external and internal factors that impede or foster subregional cooperation in South-Eastern and East-Central Europe and the Caucasus.

This booklet contains 10 briefs on the political structure and individual parties of the European Economic Community, all of which have previously appeared in The Economist. The first four briefs deal with the' institutions and powers of the central bodies in Strasbourg and Luxembourg: the parliament, the budget process and the day-to-day problems of managing a multi-lingual European government. A page of maps and charts then explains and analyses the outcome of the elections to the assembly. Following this are six briefs on the major political groupings within the European parliament, contrasting their power there with the influence they have inside the individual member countries. The booklet is thus a practical and, it is hoped, useful guide to the development and present state of European political ideas -communism, socialism, liberalism, Christian democracy, conservatism and nationalism - within the broader context of the relatively new idea of a federated European community.

一带一路是新时期中国出台的全新战略倡议，它以促进中国与相关国家互联互通和经贸合作为主导，积极推进政策沟通、货币流通和民心相通。中国提出“一带一路”倡议后，在欧洲国家，尤其的在中东欧国家引起了多元的反响，欧盟机构也对“一带一路”倡议表示了一定的关注，并期待这一倡议能够与欧盟现有的多项投资对接。

Recent developments in cultural heritage policy and practice in South-East Europe. Since 2003, the Council of Europe–European Commission joint initiative known as the “Ljubljana Process: rehabilitating our common heritage” has set out to unlock the potential of the region’s rich immovable cultural heritage, working with national authorities to accelerate the development of democratic, peaceful and open societies, stimulate local economies and improve the quality of life of local communities. In 2003, the region was overcoming the effects of the traumatic transition to a market economy. Since then, it has been hit hard by the economic crisis of 2008, and more recently by an unprecedented migration crisis. Despite the challenges facing the region in the field of cultural heritage, the present situation can be seen as an opportunity to use the lessons learned from the Ljubljana Process to avoid the traps laid by the cumulative and sometimes inconsistent heritage-protection legislation of the past 60 years, overcoming the legacy of the top-down approach that privileges the “high art” canon rather than the local heritage that reflects the culture of everyday life and which often means more to most people. The authors suggest that selecting from innovative practice elsewhere could make heritage management smarter so that it more directly meets the needs of modern society and individual citizens. This volume reflects the views of international experts involved in the joint initiative and complements earlier studies on the impact of the Ljubljana Process by experts from within the region (Heritage for development in South-East Europe, edited by Gojko Rikolović and Hristina Mikić, 2014) and from the London School of Economics and Political Science (The wider benefits of investment in cultural heritage. Case studies in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia, edited by Will Bartlett, 2015).

Since the onset of the global financial crisis in 2008, the EU has been in almost permanent crisis mode. It is witnessing new dimensions of internal differentiation among its member states, and the migration crisis has shown that the Central and Eastern European countries (CEEs) in particular are slowly but certainly transforming themselves from predominantly passive policy-takers towards becoming more active players in the process of shaping the EU’s governance agenda. This edited volume offers the first comprehensive and critical insight into how the CEEs position themselves in the EU’s changing internal and external environment, their stance towards the European integration process under current crisis conditions, and what political and economic strategies they prioritize.

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.

This volume brings together a collection of classic and contemporary texts which engage with the core problem of sovereignty from the perspective of various legal and law-related sub-disciplines: legal history and theory, constitutional law, international law and relations and EU law. Many of the highlights from the intense debates about the continuing relevance or otherwise of the internal sovereignty of national legal orders and the external sovereignty of states in a rapidly- globalizing world are reproduced here.c