This book re-constructs the evolution of the border conflict between Croatia and Slovenia. The aim is to reveal the processes at work, the historical and contemporary circumstances, and the strategies and motives of the actors involved. The book highlights the roles of the European Union and of judicial third parties in the management of the conflict. Further, it considers the precedent-setting value of the Slovenian-Croatian conflict, the attempts at its resolution, and what they mean for the ongoing and prospective EU enlargement in South East Europe. Internal documents and interviews are at the heart of this process-tracing analysis, which discusses the third-party roles of the European Commission and the EU Council Presidency in 2008/2009 as a mediator-facilitator in the drafting stages of the arbitration agreement, and the judicial work of the arbitration tribunal and the EU Court of Justice. Lastly, the book offers policy recommendations on how to strengthen dispute resolution and solve current bilateral issues in the EU accession process.

The situation in the Balkans, such as the solution to the status of Kosovo, is currently the largest international political problem in Europe, with the potential to burst into a world crisis regarding the Eastern - Western relations. On the other hand, a successful solution to the problem in the Balkans could serve as a model for solving the Muslim - Christian tensions elsewhere in the world. It is the intention of this book to contribute proposals for solutions to the problems of Balkans. The starting principle for the solutions to be effective is that they should come in a natural way from the people below and should not be enforced by the political elites from above. Based on self-determination of nations as a starting principle, they should encourage intra-regional cooperation among the regional entities (economic, cultural, sport, as a basis for political, social understanding and cooperation); secondly, accelerate their economic, political and social development and thirdly, as a final step enable the inclusion of the Balkan countries into the European Union.

Croatia Country Study Guide - Strategic Information and Developments Volume 1 Strategic Information and Developments

An ideal resource for anyone studying current events, social studies, geopolitics, conflict resolution, and political science, this three-volume set provides broad coverage of approximately 80 current international border disputes and conflicts. Border disputes are a common source of political instability and military conflict around the globe, both in the present day and throughout history. Border Disputes: A Global Encyclopedia will serve as an invaluable resource for students studying social studies, political science, human geography, or related subjects. Each volume of this expansive encyclopedia begins with an accessible introduction to the type of dispute to be discussed, identifying the conflict as territorial (Volume 1), positional (Volume 2), or functional (Volume 3). Following the background essay in each volume are comprehensive case study entries on specific international conflicts, examining the disputed area, the reasons for the dispute, and cultural, political, historical, and legal issues relating to the dispute. The third volume will also provide primary documents of legal rulings and important resolutions of various disputes, as well as profiles of key organizations relating to border studies and specific border dispute commissions.

This book offers diverse, multinational perspectives on traditional and emergent issues in the practice and study of international law. It deals with the evolving foundations of international law and covers a wide range of issues that link international politics to international law.

Using the borderscapes concept, this book offers an approach to border studies that expresses the multilevel complexity of borders, from the geopolitical to social practice and cultural production at and across the border. Accordingly, it encourages a productive understanding of the processual, de-territorialized and dispersed nature of borders and their ensuring regimes in the era of globalization and transnational flows as well as showcasing border research as an interdisciplinary field with its own academic standing. Contemporary bordering processes and practices are examined through the borderscapes lens to uncover important connections between borders as a ’challenge' to national (and EU) policies and borders as potential elements of political innovation through conceptual (re-)framings of social, political, economic and cultural spaces. The authors offer a nuanced and critical re-reading and understanding of the border not as an entity to be taken for granted, but as a place of investigation and as a resource in terms of the construction of novel (geo)political imaginations, social and spatial imaginaries and cultural images. In so doing, they suggest that rethinking borders means deconstructing the interweaving between political practices of inclusion-exclusion and the images created to support and communicate them on the cultural level by Western territorialist modernity. The result is a book that proposes a wandering through a constellation of bordering policies, discourses, practices and images to open new possibilities for thinking, mapping, acting and living borders under contemporary globalization.

The book provides the first comprehensive comparative analysis of the development of EU enlargement conditionality across four different enlargement waves - the first (2004) and the second (2007) phase of the Eastern enlargement, the EU enlargement to Croatia (2013), and the ongoing enlargement round involving Turkey and the Western Balkans.

What are the consequences of Yugoslavia's existence – and breakup – for the present? This book reflects on this very question, identifying and analysing the political legacies left behind by Yugoslavia through the prism of continuities and ruptures between the past and present of the area. After the collapse of Yugoslavia, it's former states adopted a nation-building process which opted to eradicate the past as such an approach seemed more convenient for the new national projects. The new states adopted new institutions, new market-oriented economic paradigms and new national symbols. Yugoslavia existed for 70 years and to consider the current political situation in post-Yugoslav states such as Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Kosovo without taking into account the legacy and remnants of Yugoslavia is to discount a vital part of their political history. This volume takes a multi-disciplinary and multi-faceted approach to examining the legacy of Yugoslavia, covering politics, society, international relations and economics. Focusing on distinctive features of Yugoslavia including worker self-management, the combination of liberalism and communism and the Cold War policy of Non-Alignment, The Legacy of Yugoslavia places Yugoslavia in historical perspective and connects the region's past with its contemporary political situation.