New Issue "Südosteuropa"

posted by Katalin Teller on 2008/09/13 15:22

[ Bücher | Books ]

The 1st issue of the year 2008 of the journal Südosteuropa, edited by the Südost-Institut Regensburg, has just been published: Denisa Kostovica (guest editor): Comparing the Balkans: War Legacies and State-Building in the Age of Globalisation.




The volume contains following contributions:


Denisa Kostovica: Introduction

Matthew Bolton: Coping with Clandestine Structures in International Intervention: Landmine Clearance Agencies in Afghanistan, Bosnia, and Sudan

  • Abstract: Contemporary conflicts radically reorganize the political and economic systems of societies, empowering 'clandestine structures', built by covert action, smuggling, war profiteering, black markets and organized crime. This 'underground', eschewing transparency and rule-based politics and economics, poses an enormous danger to international peacebuilding efforts. This essay examines how intervening international agencies interact with such structures, by drawing on fieldwork researching landmine clearance programs in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Sudan. Demining agencies offer telling insights into the nexus between international agencies and clandestine structures because they often employ significant numbers of demobilized soldiers, many of whom may have links to clandestine structures, and require information, access and goods that may be controlled by such networks. Using examples from the cases, this paper shows various attempted responses to this problem by international demining agencies, including collusion, avoidance, and building alternative structures.

Marie-Joëlle Zahar: Power Sharing, Credible Commitment, and State (Re-)Building: Comparative Lessons from Bosnia and Lebanon

  • Abstract: The paper offers a critique of power-sharing arrangements as instruments able to sustain peace in deeply divided societies and as the foundations for a stable process of state (re-)building. The success of power sharing - defined as the achievement of a stable endogenously-driven process of state-building - in a post-conflict environment is at best limited, as illustrated by power sharing in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Lebanon. The paper argues that the impact of recent violence affects the stability of power-sharing compacts. Elite accommodation, a pre-requisite of successful power sharing, is unlikely in the wake of civil wars. Further, outside intervention, while stabilizing in the short-term, creates a status quo bias that endangers the ability of power sharing to endure. In sum, the paper argues that power sharing is not a panacea for sustainable peace in post-conflict societies. Especially in the early stages of peace implementation, power-sharing institutions are insufficient on their own to overcome the problem of credible commitment and provide a stable foundation for state (re-)building.

Nina Caspersen: From Kosovo to Karabakh: International Responses to De Facto States

  • Abstract: Both in the Balkans and in the Caucasus, the dominant international response to de facto states, or quasi-states, has been one of isolation; they violate the principle of territorial integrity, they are often based on warfare, and the legitimacy of their frequently ethnically-based claims to independence is rejected. This article finds that pragmatism has occasionally led to some form of reluctant engagement, but this has been ad hoc and its depoliticised nature has been stressed. De facto states have been viewed solely through the lens of ethnicity and there has been insufficient understanding of internal dynamics. International policies for Kosovo have long impacted on the strategies adopted by other de facto states and recent developments have reignited hopes for recognition. The US and the EU have rejected any talk of a legal precedent, but Kosovo's recognition does have important political consequences; it introduces a new dynamism into currently stalled peace processes. This could lead to a hardening of positions, but it could also positively impact on the internal dynamics of the de facto states.

Marlies Glasius, Denisa Kostovica: The European Union as a State-Builder: Policies towards Serbia and Sri Lanka

  • Abstract: This article analyses the European Union's state-building policies with reference to two "ailing" states: Serbia and Sri Lanka. After an introduction on the evolution of the European Union's foreign policy, we discuss commonalities between the Serbian and Sri Lankan polity: their boundaries are contested; the governmental machineries are ineffective and corrupt, and state capacity wanting; there is a lack of social cohesion that goes beyond ethnic divisions; but the agency of citizens is expressed in local civil society initiatives. While the EU's policies towards these states appear at first glance to have been very different, we find significant similarities in terms of the crude use of conditionalities, a neglect of the global and regional context, failure to apply state-strengthening and civil society-strengthening initiatives simultaneously, flawed human rights policies, and above all the continued separation and indeed competititon between security and development policies. Instead, we propose a more holistic approach to state-building by the European Union informed by human security principles.

DOKUMENTATION

Marc Weller: Die Verfassung Kosovos und der Schutz der Minderheiten

BUCHBESPRECHUNGEN

Lenard J. Cohen and Jasna Dragovic-Soso (Eds.), State Collapse in South-Eastern Europe: New Perspectives on Yugoslavia’s Disintegration (Sabrina P. Ramet)

Wilfried Heller u.a. (Hg.), Ethnizität in der Globalisierung. Zum Bedeutungswandel ethnischer Kategorien in Transformationsländern Südosteuropas (Steffi Franke)

 

For further information please contact:

Dr. Sabine Rutar: Südost-Institut, Landshuter Straße 4, D-93047 Regensburg

Tel. +49.(0)941.943-5473

Fax +49.(0)941.943-5485


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