As a consequence of the Kosovo war in 1999, the international community, and in particular the European Union, placed greater emphasis on conflict prevention, finally realizing that allowing crises to explode in the Balkans is more costly than taking initiatives for the construction of long-term peace and stability. In the immediate aftermath of the cessation of hostilities, the countries of the region and the international community have committed themselves to making a long-term effort in this direction. The new approach is elaborated in the "Stability Pact for South-Eastern Europe", which resembled the Helsinki Process in that democratization, human rights, economic development, and security are essential constituents of stability. The thesis analyzes this conceptual political novelty, connecting comprehensively post-war reconstruction, regional cooperation and a long-term perspective of accession to the Euro-Atlantic institutions for the region. The thesis assesses the Pact's chances for success by focusing on its potential, problems, and perspectives.

Regional cooperation has become a distinctive feature of the Balkans, an area known for its turbulent politics. Exploring the origins and dynamics of this change, this book highlights the transformative power of the EU and other international actors.

Securing Europe takes a novel approach to Europeanization among EU member states by employing a sociological institutionalist approach. Watanabe argues that Europeanization as a process of change takes place not as a result of rationally calculating states, but as a result of the reworking of perceptual and normative frameworks.

Considering the enormous problems of the Balkans during the 1990s, the experts who contributed to this study believe that there are solutions to the seemingly intractable situation and the legacy of the disintegration of the former Soviet Union.

The rapid changes in the economic and political climate of the Balkan and the Black Sea countries demand continuous adjustments in the mixture of the implemented economic policy in the area. Under this framework, there is a special interest to investigate the impact of the global economic reality in these economies, the importance of their integration in the European Union, as well as the foundation of various regional organizations that host many countries of the specific area. Taking into consideration the current developments within the European Union, the economic crisis that strikes the peripheral EU countries and the dispute over the credibility of the euro currency, economists need to enhance the effectiveness of regional development, to underline the value of FDI and entrepreneurship of the countries of the Balkan and the Black Sea, to assist the bank sector in order to support the level of productivity, to control the financial flows with the help of auditing structures and to exploit human recourses in order to achieve economical reforms in these countries. The current volume approaches, among others, the above matters and aspires to contribute to the further investigation of the possibilities and the perspectives of the economies of the region.

The debates on regionalism have been polarized between European Union (EU) scholars and non-EU scholars, with the assumption being that regionalism within the EU and other regions of the world are quite distinct, with little to be learnt from dialogue with each other. This book challenges such assumptions and calls for a genuine debate between scholars of regionalism. This book demonstrates that more can and needs to be learned about regional integration all over the world through comparison and reflection on specific regional trends. Beginning with a theoretically driven introduction, leading experts in the field are brought together to offer a series of case studies on regional integration within Latin America, Africa, Asia, North America and Europe. In Part III the authors investigate the links between the EU and selected other regional organisations and processes, exploring the dynamics through which these interregional relations are developing and the implications they have for the study of contemporary regionalism/regionalisation both inside and beyond the continent of Europe. The conclusions set out a challenging research agenda for comparative studies in the field. Addressing one of the under-explored aspects of EU studies, the EU’s coexistence with other pan-continental/regional organisations in the European continent, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of regionalism, IPE, European Studies and international politics.

This study assesses the influence of German policy makers on EU policy and the impact of EU membership on foreign policy making at the national level. The book concludes that limitations remain on the Europeanization of German foreign and security policy and Germany's ability to play a leading role in military crisis management.

Since the end of the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of Yugoslavia, the Mediterranean and Black Sea regions have been faced with multiple upheavals of interethnic violence, bloody secessions and ethnic cleansing. Up to the present, both regions are confronted with unresolved border, minority and security issues, matters of recognition, protracted traumata and claims for justice. After the fall of the iron curtain, simmering ethnic tensions turned into hot wars that created new states, new power-political hierarchies and a heritage of violence. Reaching back to the early 1990s, several international and national transitional justice measures have been applied to face these heritages and lay the foundations for a common future. For the former Yugoslavia, they range from broad criminal trials to a series of restorative justice mechanisms; in the North and South Caucasus they encompass numerous mediation measures and primarily restorative justice efforts. The present volume is concerned with strategies of conflict resolution and prevention subsumed under the concept of reconciliation. It aims at understanding the socio-emotional root causes of political cleavages and daily realities of (post-) conflict societies, especially regarding the impact of competing narratives and unprocessed pasts on exclusive identities and strategic political choices. Applying reconciliation theory, insights from collective memory and transitional justice to a series of selected field studies, it sheds light on the origins of interethnic violence, aims at finding explanations for the fact that many of the above-mentioned conflicts have become intractable and discusses the chances and challenges for transforming interests, emotions, perspectives, roles and identities between and within the respective societies.

The history of the Balkans has been a distillation of the great and terrible themes of 20th century history-the rise of nationalism, communism, fascism, genocide, identity and war. Written by one of the leading historians of the region, this is a new interpretation of that history, focusing on the uses and legacies of nationalism in the Balkan region. In particular, Professor Veremis analyses the influence of the West-from the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the rise and collapse of Yugoslavia. Throughout the state-building process of Greece, Serbia, Rumania, Bulgaria and later, Albania, the West provided legal, administrative and political prototypes to areas bedevilled by competing irredentist claims. At a time when Slovenia, Rumania, Bulgaria and Croatia have become full members of the EU, yet some orphans of the Communist past are facing domestic difficulties, A Modern History of the Balkans seeks to provide an important historical context to the current problems of nationalism and identity in the Balkans.

This volume offers an analysis of the activities of the international community in the Balkans since the 1995 Dayton Agreement. There has been substantial investment in the region but so far the gains have been limited and doubts remain as to the extent that sustainable security has been enhanced. There is a need for serious reassessment of policies and priorities, but this depends on a careful analysis of past successes and failures. The contributors seek to provide this by examining intervention, not just in terms of military action and the activities of major international agencies at state level, but also the activities of outside NGOs within the local environment.