Works on the Balkans currently face a crisis of representation--from Ivo Andric's fictionalized memory to Joe Sacco's humanitarian witnessing, the occidental reader must examine the Balkans within a historical context of colonialism to avoid misrepresentation. The goal of this study is threefold: to provide a firm historical grounding while observing the instruments of colonialism, to give an overview of Occidental travel writing on the Balkans with a particular focus on the formation and dissolution of Yugoslavia, and to suggest examples of travel texts that strive to read colonized worlds without losing sight of their own Occidental positioning or pretending that it does not exist. When approaching a contested space that involves a multitude of competing discourses, a hefty responsibility is thrust on both the reader and writer of Balkan representations to retain an awareness of counter and hidden discourses while resisting the urge to define, or even pursue, the definitive "true story" of the Balkans. Thus, an occidental reader of East Europe must be able to contextualize various and often contradicting texts without naturalizing recorded experiences. He or she must also maintain a poignant awareness of how Western imperialism has constructed and reconstructed the region by journalism, memoir, artificial borders, ethnography, classification, historical absolutism, and financial exploitation. If this work simplifies or answers "What is Balkan?" then it has failed utterly. We can only hope to further complicate and challenge the dominant discourse of Balkanism to keep the reader's mind alive and questioning rather than dead and assured. / Master of Arts

Since the establishment of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) in 1991, the European Union has quickly been developing as an international security and defense actor. However, the fall of Yugoslavia exposed the EU's shortcomings regarding its foreign policy initiatives. Its failure in the region became a turning point for EU foreign and security policy decision making. Since the crisis in Yugoslavia, the EU has been able to overcome national interests, political disagreements, and failed operations to establish itself as a powerful actor in the international community. It has been able to display its military capability as well as bring political stability to troubled areas around the world. This thesis explores the history of European foreign policy decision-making as well as the difficulties associated with its development. The goal of this research is to determine what effect the crisis in Yugoslavia has had on the European Union's Common Foreign and Security Policy. I analyze the policies and actions of the European Union towards the Western Balkans as well as the development of the EU's foreign and security policy since the crisis in Yugoslavia ended. This research will provide an explanation as to how the European Union was able to recover from its failure in Yugoslavia by creating its own military capability, increasing cohesiveness among its member-states, and eventually improving its status in the international community.

The focus of this research paper is to analyze three Swedish travelogues and news paper reportage of Yugoslavia between the years 1950 and 1970. This is achieved through applying three theoretical concepts on the source material: Yugoslavism, Tourist gaze and Gender. The theoretical structure has aimed to understand how the sources define and write about Yugoslavia and how it relates to the concepts. With two research questions that focus on how Swedish writers saw Yugoslavia, the paper aims to build an understanding of what Yugoslavia as a tourist destination was like according to the source materials. This is achieved and the results of the paper are discussed. They include how the writers construct their own image of Yugoslavia according to the concept yugoslavism, how they don’t see the reality (tourist gaze) and how much they describe women and their role in the society (gender). These results are not accompanied with a negative undertone, which nuances the material as the writers simply were fascinated by the region. The results are analyzed and set in context with previous research and their relevance for research are discussed.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) has been both contentious and successful. By examining the ICTY from a Levinasian ethical standpoint, we might be able to understand how the court uses language to enforce ethical and moral standards upon post-war societies. Using linguistic methods of analysis combined with traditional data about the ICTY, I empirically examine the court using ordinary least squares (OLS) in order to show the impact that language has upon the court's decision making process. I hypothesize that the court is an ethical entity, and therefore we should not see any evidence of bias against Serbs and that language will provide a robust view of the court as an ethical mechanism.

This theses deals with the research on the development of attitude of main Serbian political parties to the nationalist question and Serbian nationalist program. Results of this research reveal how in the past quarter century changed the attitude of the Serbian parliamentary parties on the Serbian national question, depending on the key milestones of development (origins and development of multi-party system, the war in the early 90s; escalation of the Kosovo crisis). Among others things theses deals with differences between the declared programs and principles and the real party politics. During the research were also analyzed programming and factual modifications of attitude to the mentioned issues for the following parties: Socialist Party of Serbia, Democratic Party, Serbian Renewal Movement, Serbian Radical Party, Democratic Party of Serbia and the Citizens Union of Serbia. Heuristically work is primarly based on published sources: the relevant programs; resolutions of the party congresses and conferences; speeches of key representatives of the ementioned parties.

The aim of the thesis is to map and analyze the Czech public debate about the bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia by NATO air forces in 1999. The North Atlantic Alliance attack on the FRY, which followed shortly after the Czech Republic had joined the Organization. Part of the political representation reacted to NATO's actions with restraint or regret, while the current, represented mainly by President Havel, became a principled supporter of the attack, even on the international political scene. The work deals with various levels of this debate: the initiation of individual actors in the problems of the NATO Operation in Yugoslavia, the starting points, argumentation strategies or links with other topics. It tries to reveal secondary motivations in the formulation of individual opinions (considerations of the security interests of the Czech Republic, worldview, prejudices, etc.). The source base of the work is mainly periodicals, especially the most read dailies. Klíčová slova (anglicky): Czech Republic, Serbia, Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Yugoslavian crisis, The conflict in the Balkans in 1999, NATO Air Strikes Against Yugoslavia in 1999, NATO

This master's thesis examines the possibilities of correction and change in a classification scheme, with regard to the changes that occur in the world the classification system intends to describe. Applying a comparative method and classification theory, the classification of the example of the former Yugoslavia (1918-1941, 1945-1991), its republics and successor states, and the languages, formerly known as Serbo-Croatian are examined through a comparison of the main classes and divisions of language, geography, and history, in Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC), and Klassifikationssystem för svenska bibliotek [Classification for Swedish Libraries] (SAB). Eight editions of DDC, from 1876 to 2014, are compared to seven editions of SAB, from 1921 to 2013. The editions have been selected in order to show the changes prior to, and following, the First World War, changes after the Second World War, and changes following the collapse of Yugoslavia in 1991. The examination shows that both systems have updated their editions according to the changes in former Yugoslavia over the years. DDC has well constructed facet schedules, especially Table 2 concerning geography, but fails, in some cases, to construct a logic and hierarchical structure for the republics and languages of Yugoslavia, partly due to the fixed classes and divisions that survive from the very first edition of DDC from 1876, but also as a result of the decimal notation, and its limitations, itself. SAB seeks to construct a hierarchically logic and equal scheme for the languages, areas, and states of the former Yugoslavia. Although the facets for geography and chronology aren't as developed as the ones in DDC, the overall result is that of a logically consistent and hierarchically clear classification, with short notation codes, thanks to the alphabetic mixed notation, which allows more subdivisions than the numerals and the pure notation of DDC. This study is a two years master's thesis in Archive, Library and Museum studies.

The positive contribution of finance to the process of economic development has been debated ever since Joseph Schumpeter famously argued in 1911 that services provided by finance are essential for technological innovation and growth. A substantial theoretical literature has produced increasingly sophisticated economic models endogenising the role of finance into the growth process, while empirical studies have put forward data to detect the link between the two. Yet a large part of the empirical surveys operate with macroeconomic or cross-section data and have little to say about the channels through which finance affects growth. This is where this dissertation comes in. It provides firm-level data from Bulgaria and Yugoslavia from the period 1919-1941 to tackle a number of questions related to finance, banking, and economic performance of the European economic periphery. The analysis is broadly divided into three parts – capital flows and the effects of international investment on domestic firms, banks and the real sector during the Great Depression, and the political economy of government intervention during the Depression and post-Depression period. The first substantive chapter (chapter 2) contributes to the literature on growth and capital flows by testing the hypothesis that foreign direct investment brings about productivity improvements to host economies via the channels of technology, liquidity and know-how transfer, as opposed to market access or increased competition. Chapter 3 revisits the prominent debate over the origins of the banking crises during the Great Depression and the effects these had on the real sectors. Evidence is provided in support of the debt deflation theory of banking crises, but the broad effects of the Depression on banks’ and firms’ balance is also explored. The higher the involvement of banks with industry both directly (via interlocking directorates or equity ownership), and indirectly, via the lending channel, the greater the negative effects of the crisis on banks’ balance sheets. The evidence points to negative feedbacks from bank distress to firms’ output losses in the form of a credit crunch. Chapter 4 uses a political economy framework to analyse the state interventions in the Balkan economies during and after the Depression. The data suggests that direct and indirect bailouts of banking and industry defined the role of the state. Government cronies from the financial and economic elite, as well as the agricultural sector ended up as winners from the process, while semi-skilled and unskilled labour paid the tax bill. These quantitative findings are in agreement with the broad conclusions of transaction cost economics where finance can play an important sorting role. They also support the empirical literature that rejects the contributions of portfolio investment but argues that direct foreign investment is a source of technological progress. The conclusions of the thesis, however, call for caution as market failure in the financial sector was abundant and political economy frictions could cause lasting damage to development.

The master's thesis represents an analysis of the sources of law, case law and literature concerning the doctrine of command responsibility. Analysis itself is preceded by the description of historical development of command responsibility. Aim of the analysis is to identify requirements of command responsibility set out by the ad hoc tribunals and requirements of command responsibility according to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, to compare those requirements and to find out most significant differences between the two approaches. Analysis provides that according to the Rome Statute there are two more requirements than according to the ad hoc tribunals' case law. Firstly there is the requirement of causal relationship and secondly there are two categories of superiors introduced - the military or military-like commanders and other superiors. Newly, there are slightly stricter requirements of responsibility for the former category than for the latter. Benefits of this thesis include the identification of requirements of command responsibility in Czech language.

Crime and turbofolk as a cover to autocracy? Nationalism in Serbia at the end of the 20th century Abstract: In this MA. thesis it will be investigated how, by the influence of the politics of Milosevic in the 1990s, implemented by the political elite gathered around him, a rise of crime, war profiteering and the development of a new popular culture genre of turbofolk appeared in Serbia. Such socio-political conditions, supported by a strong media propaganda by the regime, turned out to be the key pillars of Milosevic's autocratic rule. Special emphasis will be given to a new cultural phenomenon that struck this region in the period - the phenomenon of "turbofolk" as the dominant music genre of the time, that completes the picture of Serbian society during the 1990s. Overwhelmed with elements of kitsch and baroque, this popular music genre which originated in the restaurants of central Serbia suburbs, has become an unavoidable part of everyday life of young people, whose new idols were individuals who measured their success by the number and importance of their criminal ventures. The emergence of turbofolk, therefore, is considered in light of the birth of the new socio-political circumstances. But it is interesting to note that turbofolk, with some adjustments, remains the dominant musical genre in Serbia...