Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The promotion of order in the Balkans (within the context of a larger European context) has been the central policy concern of states and international organizations since the early 1990s. The existence and the persistence of the conflict seemed to challenge the new possibilities for security and stability in Europe. It is very much in response to the Balkan crises that the EU had to develop its order-promotion identity. In the wake of the Kosovo crisis this identity was transformed into committed policy-making both towards the region as well as its larger external relations. This was reflected in the understanding that the countries of the Balkans no longer represented a distant abroad but potential candidates. This shift of policy suggests that the accession, association and partnership activities of the Southeast European states can extend the EU's order to the region by initiating the development of a nascent security community in the region. The justification for such supposition derives from the history of trust-promotion among the member states of the EU. The establishment of order in the region is made out in the promotion of security community practices in Southeastern Europe through the socialization by and in EU-initiated activities. It is significant that at the current stage, the EU involvement in the Balkans is actively engaging regional state elites in activities that intend to bring their decision-making in line with promoted standards. Therefore, the current state of affairs in Southeastern Europe can be described as the establishment of an elite security community. It is a type of a nascent security community that promotes a framework for strategic interaction between the EU and Balkan state elites, through which the EU advances its interests and values, while building regional consensus on the objectives of policy-making. The EU's power of attraction (i.e. coercion) maintains a broad agreement on the fundamental rules of such contractual relations. The interaction among elites within this context promotes the transfer of Euro-Atlantic standards to their policy-making. In such pattern of relations, Balkan state elites are bounded by the norms of prescribed behavior (which includes regional cooperation) or risk punishment. Thus, the experiences from following prescribed patterns of behavior inform the decision-making process and modify its framework towards expected habits and policy outcomes.

Publication Type: Proceeding

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This project attempts to deepen our understanding of some of the motivating factors that lead people to opt for armed struggle as a conflict resolution strategy. It does so through a unique case study of the attitudes of men from Serbia towards the wars in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina (1991-1995), specifically through a comparative study of armed volunteers and draft-dodgers. I explore why certain people joined the war voluntarily while others decided to evade it. On a macro level of investigation, I make a distinction between the social groups for which the messages of radical political leaders were most plausible, and those for which these messages were insufficient motivation to join the war effort. On a micro level of investigation, I look into the ways in which masculinities and femininities intersect and overlap, influence and are influenced by war participation or non-participation.
First, I explore the traditional configuration of gender practices, the changes that occurred during socialism, and the transformations in gender identities and practices that occurred prior to and during the wars that took place after the break up of Yugoslavia. Second, I explore dominant models of masculinity and femininity and cultural values attached to them, as well as the alternative ways of imagining and enacting masculinity and femininity. Third, I look into gender related practices and discourses among volunteers and draft dodgers and explore they ways in which they positioned themselves with respect to the “others” – “others” being other men and other women.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The article takes the notion of international society as its conceptual framework and claims that weak regional bonds within Europe are unable to sustain the negative impact that the process of EU enlargement exerts on them. Notwithstanding the large number of joint infrastructure projects in the region of South-East Europe encouraged and funded by the Union, on a wider institutional and ideational level the ongoing process of its enlargement fails to materialise the region’s integrative potential in the way it does in Central Europe and in the Baltic countries. The main reason is twofold: the lack of institutional and conceptual tools in the Union’s architecture and, what is more important, the lack of positive identification with each other among the very countries of the region.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper examines the under-explored criminal side effects of international sanctions. Focusing on the diverse mechanisms of clandestine sanctions evasion in the former Yugoslavia (particularly the smuggling of arms and oil), I argue that international sanctions can perversely and unintentionally help to criminalize the state and economy of the targeted country, fostering a symbiosis between political leaders, local black market entrepreneurs, and transnational smuggling organizations. This symbiosis, in turn, can become entrenched and persist long after sanctions have been lifted, fueling illicit trade and corruption and undermining the rule of law. While much of the sanctions literature has focused on whether sanctions work and has documented their humanitarian collateral damage, far less attention has been given to both their immediate and longer term criminalizing consequences