EU ACCESSION PRESSURES AND FOREIGN POLICY DILEMMAS: THE CASE OF ROMANIA IMPLICATIONS FOR PROSPECTIVE BALKAN EU CANDIDATE STATES
It is widely recognized in the relevant literature, as well as acknowledged in the political practice that the wish of candidate countries to join the European Union (EU) implies a strong will on their part to pursue policies which aim at satisfying the Copenhagen political and economic criteria set by the Union. Although bringing the candidate countries in line with the European Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) does not fall directly within these criteria, the contents of these policies do constitute part of the EU Acquis Communautaire, which, in turn, forms a part of what has been termed ‘EU conditionality’...
MARIOVO: “MEMORIALS”
Mariovo Plateau, at 600-900 meters above sea level, is a magnificent balcony of the Nidze and Selecka Mountains in Southern Macedonia. This huge region of about 500-600 square km is seductive, graced by clean mountain rivers like Crna, Bela and Gradeska, with their deep canyons permeated by the intense fragrance of trees, flowers and herbs...
Political and Security Crisis in Macedonia
There have been a lot of similar conflicts in the world. The several brutal ethnic wars after 1990 in the areas of the former Yugoslavia and Soviet Union, unfortunately, created sufficient empirical evidence on the basis for which a new scientific discipline for ethnic-political conflicts was born. The structure and the dynamics of this kind of conflict have already been identified, as has the policy (instruments and techniques) for its prevention.
Could Social Sciences be a Factor of Democratic Dialogue: the Case of Macedonia
Why interethnic relations? Considering Macedonian society during this period, the most important conflicts were interethnic ones. Fortunately, these conflicts were not always open conflict situations, but still, throughout all that period, they were more or less expressed through clear tensions between ethnic Albanians and ethnic Macedonians, or more precisely, between the Macedonian nation and the Albanian ethnic minority in the state.
Bulgarian ‘Macedonian’ Nationalism in the Post 1989 Decade
In the present context, the understanding of nationalism builds on the insights of two authors. The one is Gelner’s view of nationalism as a principle of political legitimacy according to which political borders should match cultural ones (where ‘culture’ = ’nation,’ since the latter, unlike the state, is par excellence a culturally defined community). The other stems from Breuilly’s important differentiation of nationalism as mass sentiment, ideology and politics, and his consequent claim that nationalism should be understood as a form of politics.