The main aim of this thesis is to analyze EU-Western Balkans relations with regard to the prospective EU membership of the Western Balkans, and to make an analysis of the EU&rsquo / s Western Balkans enlargement strategy and the scope of membership conditionality imposed on the Western Balkans from post Dayton period (1995) to present (2006). This thesis examines how the EU membership conditionality worked in the Western Balkans&rsquo / preparatory stages for pre-accession, and to what extent it is different from the CEE enlargement process. Lastly, considering the discussions on rediscovered absorption capacity and the commitment of EU for further eastward enlargements after the CEE enlargement of 2004, it is looked into whether there has been a shift in EU&rsquo / s Western Balkans strategy. This thesis argues that the dominant factor determining the dynamics of the EU-Western Balkans relations are preferences, priorities and internal dynamics of the EU. The comparison between the CEE&rsquo / s and Western Balkans&rsquo / EU integration process reveals that EU tailored a long term and flexible enlargement strategy with increasing conditionality within SAP framework for the Western Balkans. Hence as long as the EU does not feel a sense of urgency straining the stability and EU integration of the region, a motivation for presenting an immediate enlargement platform will not emerge. In this sense, after the CEE enlargement, EU rediscovered its absorption capacity as a main membership condition and further differentiated the regional countries in terms of their own merits in fulfilling EU&rsquo / s conditionality and standards.

"Thesis presented to the University of London in June 1930 for the degree of Ph. D." / "Bibliographie": p. [47]-50.

Much of the academic discussion on the topic of radicalization and terrorism in the Balkans has been centered on the conditions and the processes by which individuals become radicalized and indoctrinated, even to a point of engaging in violence. Comparatively speaking, this ethnographic research addressed the factors that prompt Kosovo's Muslim extremists, a small number of them engaged in the conflict, to disengage from terrorist groups fighting in the Syrian and the Iraq conflict. Data were collected from 12 government officials with direct knowledge on the issue of disengagement from terrorist groups in Iraq and Syria. Cognitive dissonance theory served as the theoretical framework for this ethnographic study, while the conceptual framework was built around social, psychological, and physical factors associated with disengagement from terrorism. Interviews served as primary methods of data collection. The content analysis technique was applied to identify emergent themes. The findings highlighted the crucial role of psychological and social factors in individuals' decision to abandon terrorist organizations engaged in the Iraq and the Syrian conflict. The findings also suggested that affecting ideological values of extremists or terrorist groups may not be sufficient. Recommendations include incorporating a combination of â??softâ?? and â??hardâ?? power measures in addressing the issue of disengagement from terrorist groups. The findings generated from this study may inform the development of more efficient counter-radicalization and counterterrorism policies in Kosovo and the Balkans in general. The findings may also add value to the global literature on disengagement from terrorism.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:27:59Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2009-06-22Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T18:56:58Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 dallevedove_lu_me_mar.pdf: 777815 bytes, checksum: b018ab0f827300baf43f15d384f965d6 (MD5) / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) / Neste trabalho, avaliamos se a intervenção da OTAN no Kosovo corresponde a uma nova concepção de segurança desenvolvido pela Organização, conforme defendem seus países-membros em documentos oficiais da década de 1990. A Organização do Tratado do Atlântico Norte (OTAN) constituiu-se, desde sua fundação no final da década de 1940, numa aliança militar entre Estados Unidos e Europa Ocidental contra a ameaça de invasão a partir da União Soviética. Seu aparato defensivo e uma série de outros arranjos cooperativos foram articulados com base nessa premissa, que teria sido revista a partir do fim da Guerra Fria. Nos anos 1990, portanto, a organização reviu seu conceito estratégico e propôs um novo conceito de segurança, apregoando adaptar-se a um novo ambiente internacional. Em 1999, a OTAN interveio militarmente na então República Federal da Iugoslávia com vistas a interromper o enfrentamento entre seu governo, organizações autonomistas ou separatistas da província autônoma do Kosovo e a população civil daquele local, alegando garantir auxílio humanitário e a interrupção de violações de direitos humanos, algo associado a sua nova concepção estratégica. / The pursuit of this work is to analyze if NATO‟s intervention in Kosovo corresponds to a new security conception developed by the organization, as its member States argue in official documents at the 1990‟s. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was constituted, since its foundation at the end of the 1940‟s, of a military alliance among United States, Canada and West Europe against a threat of invasion by the Soviet Union. Its defensive structure and a wide range of cooperative arrangements were based on this argument having it been reviewed by the end of the Cold War. At the 1990‟s the organization remodeled its strategic concept and purposed a new security concept, affirming to adapt itself to the new international environment. In 1999, NATO intervened militarily against the former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia aiming to interrupt the conflict among its government, autonomist or separatist organizations from the autonomous region of Kosovo and the civil population of that region, alleging to guarantee humanitarian aid to interrupt hard human rights violations, something associated later to its new strategic concept.

Esta pesquisa levanta os elementos formadores da identidade nacional croata; faz um acompanhamento das conquistas da União Europeia; analisa os atores sociais que se posicionam a favor da Croácia como membro da União Europeia, bem como o posicionamento daqueles que são contra o ingresso da Croácia na União Europeia. Os posicionamentos teóricos, entrecruzados com os dados práticos coletados, faz-nos refletir sobre ganhos e perdas dos croatas em sua relação com a União Europeia. Há tendências negativas da União Europeia, aqui expostas, que não estão explícitas em seus tratados, nem expressos por suas instituições. Importa, nesta pesquisa, alcançar um posicionamento crítico com relação aos atos econômicos, políticos e sociais relacionados com a soberania nacional dos países periféricos do Leste Europeu. Este trabalho coloca em discussão as estratégias dos países ricos da Europa no sentido de perseverarem competitivos em âmbito global, incorporando o mercado do Leste Europeu. Por isso, este estudo se debruça sobre o Alargamento e acordos assinados entre os países-membros da União Europeia; mudanças na legislação croata; influência estrangeira no desenvolvimento humano da Croácia, dados estatísticos da Croácia e de países da União Europeia que espelham fatores positivos e negativos relacionados com a sustentabilidade da soberania nacional. / This research raises the formative elements of Croatian national identity; makes a follow-up to the achievements of the European Union; it analyzes the social actors that are positioned in favor of Croatia as a member of the European Union, as well as the positioning of those who are against the ingress of Croatia into the European Union. The theoretical positioning, intercrossed with practical data collected, makes us reflect on gains and losses of the Croats in their relationship with the European Union. There are negative trends of the European Union, exposed here, that are not explicit in its treaties, nor expressed by its institutions. It is important, in this study, achieving a critical positioning with respect to economic, political and social acts related to national sovereignty of peripheral countries of Eastern Europe. This work puts into discussion the strategies of the rich countries of Europe in order to persevere competitive in global scope, incorporating the East European market. For this reason, this study focuses on the \'Enlargement\' and agreements signed between the member countries of the European Union; changes in Croatian legislation; foreign influence in human development of Croatia, statistical data of Croatia and the European Union countries that reflect positive and negative factors related to sustainability of national sovereignty.

The process of region building and regionalization is an emerging phenomenon examined in the same time by historians, geographers, political scientists, economists diplomats and other scientific profiles. The concepts of region and regionalization could appear at different spatial scales, such as supra-state, sub-state or as a cross-border units and processes. Furthermore region and regionalization are complex for defining because they incorporate different narratives and categories as regional identity, spatial borders and delineating, cultural and social homogeneity, political and economic interdependence etc. Regions are invented, re-invented or constructed with purpose to reply to different functional, territorial and administrative purposes. In the era of ongoing globalization and deepening of the European integration, regions are becoming powerful tool for achieving different goals and interests. Nowadays regions, regional cooperation, regional identity are becoming a terms very often used in political and public discourses for different kind of mobilization. Western Balkan, similarly as Visegrad and Baltic regional formats is one of the emerging spatial formation that is appearing in the context of EU integration policies. In Macedonian political and public discourse these tendencies are...

This study is concerned with the particular relationship between the process of nationalism and a group’s salient identity. It proposes that nationalism as the independent variable serves as a principal factor and facilitator for a change of identity, which is seen as the dependent variable. The Bosnian Muslim emergence as an independent nation with the new salient Bosniak identity was used as a case study to test the main proposition. The inquiry was completed through a mixed research method, using grounded theory and the historic process tracing technique, a large survey analysis collected specifically for this study, and a logistic regression as a concluding test. The historic process tracing method describes the Bosnian Muslim group’s development from a distinct Balkan Ottoman religious millet group, through a stage of its own ethno-religious cultural crystallization, another stage of nationality during the Communist era, to an independent nation that now shares the country of Bosnia-Herzegovina with two other nations. Through their struggle to survive and re-assert themselves as an important local political entity, Bosniaks built their nationalism upon three important themes: B-H integrity, Bosnian Islam, and the Bosnian language. A 68-question survey regarding these three themes designed specifically for this study was conducted, and 670 survey responses were collected from the Bosnian Muslim diaspora population living throughout the Midwestern and Eastern U.S. in their Appadurai-type neighborhoods. The data collected from those surveys were manipulated in preparation for a final analysis. The two nationalism indexes measuring intensity and type, and six categories of Bosniak identity, were constructed to observe interactions between nationalism and identity. As the final step, a statistical analysis with multinomial logistic regression confirmed the proposition and showed that the factor which stimulates selection of a new desired salient identity is intensity of nationalism, not type of nationalism . This work contributes to the ongoing discussion on the true role of nationalism as a collective action. At the same time, it provides the field of comparative politics with a comprehensive description of the emergence of Bosnian Muslims as a nation, and with details of their nationalism project and their now salient Bosniak identity.

National identity is an important part of not only newly created state's identification and is reflected also in its foreign policy. This diploma thesis deals with the external (re)construction of Slovenian national identity within a political discourse since 1991, when Slovenia gained its independence till 2004, when it was integrated into the EU. The subjects of interest are addresses and texts of the country's top political officials, presidents, prime ministers and ministers of foregin affairs, who were involved in a presentation of the country abroad, and documents of foregin policy. The main aim of the thesis is to answer the question how the Slovenian national identity was being constructed on the outside and what was the goal of this conctruction using the Critical discourse analysis of mentioned sources. At the beginning of 1990s Slovenes gained for the first time in history their independent state and they had to cope with many problems such as their long-standing Yugoslavian history and existence as a part of the Eastern Bloc, geographical location on the crossroad of European regions or its immediate neighbourhood of the disturbed and negatively perceived Balkans. The general agreement of the political landscape on the country's future was one of the main advantages. Tools and goals of...

Over the past years, a body of literature have emerged exploring FRONTEX’s work along the EU’s borders. It suggests that FRONTEX not only frame migration as a security issue, but also as a humanitarianist issue. The literature argues the framing of migration as both an issue of security and humanitarianism legitimizes FRONTEX’s operations in the Mediterranean. However, there is a lack of understanding in how FRONTEX frames migration at the Western Balkans border, one of the EU’s busiest borders and indeed the busiest during the summer of 2015, registering over a million migrants. Therefore, by investigating how FRONTEX framed migration at the Western Balkans border between the years 2014-2017, this thesis sets out to make a unique contribution to the research field, furthering the understanding of how FRONTEX as an organization frames migration. To examine FRONTEX’s framing of migration, a theoretical framework consisting of theories of framing, risk and threat construction, and humanitarianism is deployed. The concepts of framing devices and reasoning devices are used in a qualitative content analysis to identify the presence of frames in the material consisting of FRONTEX published reports and press releases. The empirical results indicate that FRONTEX frames migration in the Western Balkans as primarily a security issue through language connecting migration to risk and threat. The humanitarianist frame, mainly evoked by references to migrants’ vulnerability, appears relatively few times in contrast to the security frame.

The aim of this thesis is to contribute to the understanding of ethnic consciousness in the territories of the Balkans and of Great Britain by focusing on the tendencies towards ethnical inclusion (crossing of ethnical boundaries) and ethnical exclusion (strengthening of the above mentioned). Inspired by B. Anderson's definition of nation (nation = imagined community), the author has chosen the languages of the investigated areas as the actual subject of his research. In three chapters he has studied first the structural and lexicological aspect of the language, then the terminological one (study of ethnonyms) and finally the textual one (study of national myths and the language used to their description). The conclusion of the research described above clearly shows, that whereas English is being perceived as a highly inclusive language (also due to its grammatical straightforwardness and lexicological richness) by speakers of other native languages in Britain (be it the autochthon minorities or migrants), in the Balkans, on the other hand, languages are being perceived as an exclusive propriety of the given ethnic group, which may even lead to artificial differences being introduced in them. The approach prevailing in Great Britain is clearly the one fostering better inter-ethnic cohabitation....