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LGBT Rights in Bosnia: The Challenge of Nationalism in the Context of Europeanization

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Abstract

Nationalism has been one of the domestic constraints to progress on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights, especially in the Balkans that are dealing with multiple postwar transition realities. Ethno-nationalist challenges, often influenced by religion, have been significant in Bosnia-Herzegovina given weak state identity and democracy, competing institutionalized ethno-national identities, and slow Europeanization. Through the lenses of gendered nationalism, the societal security dilemma, and political homophobia, this article analyzes how the politics and discourse of LGBT rights during the past decade in Bosnia reveal tensions between competing and multiple identities and narratives—European, multiethnic, ethno-nationalist, and religious—using the violent response to the 2008 Queer Sarajevo Festival as a key illustration. However, in the past decade, LGBT rights have progressed and antigay backlash to LGBT visibility (in addition to stronger external leverage and other factors) has resulted in stronger activism and change. The public discourse and response to the announcement of Bosnia’s first Pride Parade represents another turning point in LGBT visibility that seems to reveal that ethno-nationalist challenges may be lessening as LGBT rights norms gain strength.

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... Depending on the criteria they use to define the nation's members, national ideologies can vary in terms of their inclusiveness of sexual minorities. Research shows that when national ideology is mixed with specific visions of sexuality (Mosse, 1985;Pryke, 1998), masculinity (Mayer, 2000), religion (Brubaker, 2012;Sremac & Ganzevoort, 2015;Thomson, 2019) or ethnicity (Anthias & Yval-Davis, 1989;Swimelar 2020), it can provide the background for exclusive attitudes towards sexual minorities. ...
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... The success stories, such as the legal mobilisations that have led to an increase in the rights and freedom of assembly of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) populati- on, provide evidence that such mobilisation is possible. 69 This mobilisation would send a message that there is a strong network of lawyers and experts willing to challenge the steps taken against those victimised by the ruling regimes, and would require no legislative action since all measures undertaken against individuals are illegal under the laws of the WB6 countries. In addition, many watchdog CSOs that conduct extensive monitoring activities could easily extend their operations to this fi eld and contribute their expertise to legal mobilisation. ...
... Both of these have been criticised; pointing to the problematic notion of the EU as a "teacher" of norms (Slootmaeckers 2017), and alerting to the effects and in some cases backlash against EU conditionality (Kmezić 2019;Zhelyazkova et al. 2019) as well as unintended consequences of the accession processes, such as the above-mentioned examples of Roma and biometric passports or Bosnia's enduring two-schools-under-one-roof policy. The sphere of LGBT rights has particularly highlighted the complex and multifaceted nature of Europeanisation's domestic effects ): in addition to the plethora of domestic conditions, such as the transnational embeddedness of domestic LGBT institutions that determine the effectiveness of policy diffusion across new and potential member states (Ayoub 2014), unintended on-the-ground effects had the ability to derail or strengthen the effect of these measures: in Serbia and Bosnia, despite the initial violent backlash against increased LGBT visibility-widely perceived in the public as "selling out" to the EU's endless conditionality demands (Pavasović Trošt and Kovačević 2013)-the antigay backlash seems to have led to an improvement in LGBT rights norms (Swimelar 2019). On the other hand, the recent regression in LGBT rights in Poland, an "old" EU member state that seemed to have already passed the EU test in terms of LGBT rights, shows the absence of long-lasting post-access changes in norms, suggesting that social learning might not be able to fill the gap following the removal of external incentives under particular domestic conditions (O'Dwyer 2010). ...
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... Both of these have been criticised; pointing to the problematic notion of the EU as a "teacher" of norms (Slootmaeckers 2017), and alerting to the effects and in some cases backlash against EU conditionality (Kmezić 2019;Zhelyazkova et al. 2019) as well as unintended consequences of the accession processes, such as the above-mentioned examples of Roma and biometric passports or Bosnia's enduring two-schools-under-one-roof policy. The sphere of LGBT rights has particularly highlighted the complex and multifaceted nature of Europeanisation's domestic effects : in addition to the plethora of domestic conditions, such as the transnational embeddedness of domestic LGBT institutions that determine the effectiveness of policy diffusion across new and potential member states (Ayoub 2014), unintended on-the-ground effects had the ability to derail or strengthen the effect of these measures: in Serbia and Bosnia, despite the initial violent backlash against increased LGBT visibility-widely perceived in the public as "selling out" to the EU's endless conditionality demands (Pavasović Trošt and Kovačević 2013)-the antigay backlash seems to have led to an improvement in LGBT rights norms (Swimelar 2019). On the other hand, the recent regression in LGBT rights in Poland, an "old" EU member state that seemed to have already passed the EU test in terms of LGBT rights, shows the absence of long-lasting post-access changes in norms, suggesting that social learning might not be able to fill the gap following the removal of external incentives under particular domestic conditions (O'Dwyer 2010). ...
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This book offers a close study of the rapidly evolving politics of LGBT rights in postcommunist Europe, where social attitudes have historically marginalized the issue and where the legacy of weak civil society has handicapped activism in general. What happens in societies such as these when increased exposure to transnational institutions such as the European Union and the minority-rights norms that they promote brings new visibility to LGBT issues? Is activism boosted by the infusion of resources from transnational networks? Or does transnational pressure bring backlash, inflaming antigay attitudes and driving activism underground? This study uncovers and explains the surprising divergence in the organization of LGBT activism in postcommunist Europe, focusing on Poland and the Czech Republic from the late 1980s through 2012. Hungary, Slovakia, and Romania form additional case studies. It argues that domestic backlash against transnational rights norms has been a primary catalyst for organizational development in the region’s most robust LGBT movements. It offers a comparative framework of broader relevance describing the conditions under which transnational pressure and domestic politics may interact to build robust activism, or not. This theorization offers resolution for a striking puzzle of LGBT politics in the countries examined: Why is the most organized and influential activism often found in societies where attitudes toward homosexuality are least tolerant? The book uses a multimethod research design drawing on field interviews, original sources, and participant observation to process trace how the framing of homosexuality and the organization of LGBT activism change in historical time.
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LGBT rights have come to be seen as allied with the idea of “Europe” and a European identity, particularly in the process of European Union enlargement to the East. Scholars have examined the ways in which external norms interact with more local, often “traditional” norms and identities. In this process, nationalism and conceptions of national identity and gender/sexuality norms can be seen as important factors that influence the domestic adoption of LGBT rights, particularly in the post-war Balkans. Croatia and Serbia (from approximately 2000 to 2014) present two interesting and different cases to analyze how discourses and dynamics of national and state identity construction, nationalism, and LGBT rights relate to discourses of “Europeanness” and European identity and how these affect the political dynamics of LGBT rights. This article finds that in Croatia, national identity was constructed in terms of convergence with European norms and identity, homonationalism was used to distinguish themselves from a “Balkan” identity, and there was a lower threat perception of the LGBT community framed primarily as a “threat to the family.” In Serbia, state and national identity was constructed in opposition to Europe and homosexuality had stronger threat perception, framed primarily as “threat to the nation.” In short, nationalism and national identity were less disadvantageous as a domestic constraint to LGBT rights in Croatia than in Serbia. The dynamics between nationalism and LGBT rights played out, for example, in the politics of the marriage referendum, Pride Parades, and public discourse more generally. This research contributes to the scholarship on LGBT rights and nationalism by empirically analyzing the different ways that nationalism, gender/sexuality, and European identity interrelate and influence LGBT rights change in a changing post-war identity landscape and how domestic constraints affect human rights norm diffusion.
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Research Methods: Information, Systems, and Contexts, Second Edition, presents up-to-date guidance on how to teach research methods to graduate students and professionals working in information management, information science, librarianship, archives, and records and information systems. It provides a coherent and precise account of current research themes and structures, giving students guidance, appreciation of the scope of research paradigms, and the consequences of specific courses of action. Each of these valuable sections will help users determine the relevance of particular approaches to their own questions. The book presents academics who teach research and information professionals who carry out research with new resources and guidance on lesser-known research paradigms. © 2018 Kirsty Williamson and Graeme Johanson. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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This article investigates and compares the extent to which LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) rights norms have diffused and become empowered within Bosnia and Serbia as part of their European Union (EU) accession process across three particular arenas: institutional/legal, state authority, and civil society. It inquires as to whether EU candidate status and a “credible membership incentive” affect norm empowerment, given that Serbia is an official EU candidate state, while Bosnia is not. Building upon models of human rights norm diffusion and the most recent scholarship on LGBT rights and Europeanization, this article finds that LGBT rights have moved from a period of systematic denial and indifference to a “tactical concessions” phase of greater empowerment and visibility, while domestic challenges to these rights still persist. EU conditionality and pressure have played important roles in pushing forward new LGBT friendly legislation in both countries and indirectly increasing the visibility of LGBT organizations and rights. Serbia has gone farther due to a greater EU membership incentive and a stronger domestic LGBT civil society. Bosnia has responded less to EU pressure, and its domestic ethno-political dynamics have made LGBT rights diffusion more challenging. As post-war states still struggling with questions of identity and democracy, Bosnia and Serbia are critical cases to examine the ability of controversial new norms to diffuse in states that are seeking membership to the European Union.
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On Extremism and Democracy in Europe is a collection of short and accessible essays on the far right, populism, Euroscepticism, and liberal democracy by one of the leading academic and public voices today. It includes both sober, fact-based analysis of the often sensationalized "rise of the far right" in Europe as well as passionate defence of the fundamental values of liberal democracy. Sometimes counter-intuitive and always thought-provoking, Mudde argues that the true challenge to liberal democracy comes from the political elites at the centre of the political systems rather than from the political challengers at the political margins. Pushing to go beyond the simplistic opposition of extremism and democracy, which is much clearer in theory than in practice, he accentuates the internal dangers of liberal democracy without ignoring the external threats. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in European politics, extremism and/or current affairs more generally.
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In Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), tolerance of homosexuality has been portrayed as a value associated with the idea of Europe (or the West, or America) both by local queers aspiring to attaining rights in their own countries and perhaps even more by nationalists who want to exclude homosexuals from the nation by portraying homosexuality as a foreign import. It is part of a tradition I have followed since the early 1990s (Moss 1995). I have found numerous examples of right-wing nationalists in Czech Republic, Hungary, Russia, and Yugoslavia defining national identity as purely heterosexual, while portraying homosexuality as an import from Western Europe. Wiktor Grodecki’s three pseudo-documentaries about Prague rent boys, for example, present the boys as innocent straight Czechs who fall into the clutches of depraved gay clients from Western Europe (Moss 2006). Recently the best analysis of this kind of mapping has come from Agnieszka Graff in Poland (Graff 2006, 2008, 2010). Anxieties about joining the European Union (EU) were expressed in Poland via attitudes toward lesbians and gay men, and for the nationalists “homophobia” became a mark of national difference. The conflict, she writes, “was more about cultural identity and national pride than about sexual orientation or public morality” (Graff 2010: 584). In other words, Poles were homophobes not because they were Catholic or because homosexuality is immoral or unnatural, but because they were Poles, and homophobia is a sign of patriotism. Tolerance of gay people became a litmus test for attitudes toward EU accession.
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Operating inside the complex state apparatus that has been constructed in a way which perpetuates ethnic divisions, LGBT activism in BiH has to face the relatively uninformed and homophobic public, on the one hand, and the poorly coordinated state institutions that are often not accountable to the citizens whom they are supposed to represent and protect, on the other. Sexual matters in the still highly patriarchal BiH socio-political context struggle to find a way out of religious doctrines and nationalist agendas. As the country’s political deadlock regarding its integration into the EU provides little hope for a meaningful improvement of the current state of political and economic affairs, LGBT advocacy could hold a certain creative potential to, in cooperation with other progressive forces, imagine a different—non-ethnocratic—kind of BiH polity.
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The 1992-95 war in Bosnia-Herzegovina following the dissolution of socialist Yugoslavia became notorious for "ethnic cleansing" and mass rapes targeting the Bosniac (Bosnian Muslim) population. Postwar social and political processes have continued to be dominated by competing nationalisms representing Bosniacs, Serbs, and Croats, as well as those supporting a multiethnic Bosnian state, in which narratives of victimhood take center stage, often in gendered form. Elissa Helms shows that in the aftermath of the war, initiatives by and for Bosnian women perpetuated and complicated dominant images of women as victims and peacemakers in a conflict and political system led by men. In a sober corrective to such accounts, she offers a critical look at the politics of women’s activism and gendered nationalism in a postwar and postsocialist society. Drawing on ethnographic research spanning fifteen years, Innocence and Victimhood demonstrates how women’s activists and NGOs responded to, challenged, and often reinforced essentialist images in affirmative ways, utilizing the moral purity associated with the position of victimhood to bolster social claims, shape political visions, pursue foreign funding, and wage campaigns for postwar justice. Deeply sensitive to the suffering at the heart of Bosnian women’s (and men’s) wartime experiences, this book also reveals the limitations to strategies that emphasize innocence and victimhood. © 2013 The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System. All rights reserved.
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Noting the significance of the twentieth anniversary of the signing of the Dayton Peace Agreement, the author offers a view in which the ethno-nationalist structures of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) maintained by the protocols of the Agreement could be understood as a particular form of ‘class subjection’ through ethnic alienation, enforced by the wider ideological mechanisms of control and discipline characteristic of the ethno-politically predetermined position of citizens in BiH society. Dayton-era BiH is thus better viewed as consisting not of the three constituent ethnic peoples but of the two constituent classes: the class of agents of ethno-political entrepreneurship and the class of objects of these entrepreneurs’ appropriation. The sequence of protests throughout BiH in which a wide variety of citizenry participated undermined the rarely questioned ethno-nationalist ideological hegemony, suggesting that the ‘solution’ to BiH’s still charged ethnic politics lies perhaps in reclaiming class a category of social mobilization. Thus, the author analyses how the 2013 and 2014 protests and floods, opened new political space and a chance for different political possibilities and for the rise of genuine democratic counter-power in BiH.
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Ethnic Violence and the Societal Security Dilemma explores how the phenomenon of ethnic violence can be understood as a form of security dilemma by shifting the focus of the concept away from its traditional concern with state sovereignty to that of identity instead. The book includes case studies on: * ethnic violence between Serbs and Croats in the Krajina region of Croatia, August 1990. * ethnic violence between Hungarian and Romanians in the Transylvania region of Romania, March 1990.
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This review discusses three books by Benedict Anderson, David D. Laitin, and Anthony D. Smith in light of the perceived rivalry between constructivist and modernist theories of nations and nationalism and primordialist and perennialist ones. The concept of the imagined community is inadequate, and Anderson's contribution to theory is limited and possibly contradictory. Laitin's use of the tipping game and his version of rational choice theory are flawed, and his theory of identity change in the former Soviet Union is unsupported by his own data. Finally, Smith's notion of the ethnie, while conceptually unpersuasive, serves the theoretical purpose of reconciling modernism with perennialism.
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This paper introduces the notion of “nesting orientalisms” to investigate some of the complexity of the east/west dichotomy which has underlain scholarship on “Orientalism” since the publication of Said's classic polemic, a discourse in which “East,” like “West,” is much more of a project than a place. While geographical boundaries of the “Orient“ shifted throughout history, the concept of “Orient” as “other” has remained more or less unchanged. Moreover, cultures and ideologies tacitly presuppose the valorized dichotomy between east and west, and have incorporated various “essences” into the patterns of representation used to describe them. Implied by this essentialism is that humans and their social or cultural institutions are “governed by determinate natures that inhere in them in the same way that they are supposed to inhere in the entities of the natural world.” Thus, eastern Europe has been commonly associated with “backwardness,” the Balkans with “violence,” India with “idealism” or “mysticism,” while the west has identified itself consistently with the “civilized world.“
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This article compares two international attempts to promote reform of power-sharing institutions in Bosnia-Herzegovina: failed European Union-led efforts to promote reform of the country's constitution, which was established by the 1995 Dayton Agreement; and the recent successful reform of Bosnia-Herzegovina's institutions of football governance, promoted by the game's international and European governing bodies, FIFA and UEFA. The article outlines the history of these two reform processes and seeks to explain why FIFA and UEFA have been more successful in promoting reform in this post-conflict setting than the EU. It argues that, in contrast to the EU, which has been vague about the precise reforms expected of Bosnia-Herzegovina's politicians, leaving the details to be negotiated by domestic political elites, FIFA and UEFA were more precise in their demands and were also willing to capitalise on popular frustration with the governance of the sport and to bypass nationalist elites who stood in the way of reform.
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The article addresses the ways in which the homonationalist discourses and “leveraged pedagogy” of sexuality present in the context of the EU accession process in Croatia and Serbia have been negotiated by the local pro-EU political elites. The paper argues that while contributing to positive, though limited, transformations of national legal frameworks, homonationalist discourses have simultaneously facilitated the increased resistance to struggles for sexual equality. Based on comparative analysis, the article shows how global and European homonationalism produces uneven, differential, and heterogeneous effects on sexual citizenship in the locations and within communities that are objects of its “othering.” Therefore, in order to make productive use of positive examples when addressing the existing inequalities based on sexuality, the article concludes that both global and local constellations should be taken into account.
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Bosnia and Herzegovina is politically fragmented, and so is the memory landscape within the country. Narratives of the 1992–1995 war, the Second World War, Tito's Yugoslavia, and earlier historical periods form highly disputed patterns in a memory competition involving representatives of the three “constituent peoples” of Bosnia and Herzegovina – Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks – but also non-nationalist actors within BiH, as well as the international community. By looking especially at political declarations and the practices of commemoration and monument building, the article gives an overview of the fragmented memory landscape in Bosnia and Herzegovina, pointing out the different existing memory narratives and policies and the competition between them in the public sphere, and analyzing the conflicting memory narratives as a central part of the highly disputed political identity construction processes in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina. The paper also discusses the question whether an “Europeanization” of Bosnian memory cultures could be an alternative to the current fragmentation and nationalist domination of the memory landscape in BiH.
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The notion of security in international relations has been broadened and reconceptualized and now rightly includes an understanding of education as a potential security threat, not just a socializing tool. In post-war Bosnia-Herzegovina, the education system is decentralized, politicized and nationalistic, and promotes competing visions and identities of Bosnia. Some students attend segregated schools, while almost all study only with others from their same ethnonational group and learn from a mono-ethnic curriculum that does not foster understanding or tolerance of others, but breeds suspicion. This paper argues that these educational practices constitute a societal security dilemma. Many Bosnian Muslims, Croats and Serbs use the education system to gain rights and security for their group, which is viewed by others as a potential threat to their own security and identity within a fractured state. This paper shows that while these attempts to reinforce group security and identity (and increase power) may be beneficial to the group and nationalist leaders themselves, they paradoxically may have negative consequences for the security of other groups and for the security and stability of the Bosnian state itself, understood in terms of national cohesiveness and territorial integrity.
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List of contributors Preface 1. The socialization of international human rights norms into domestic practices: introduction Thomas Risse and Kathryn Sikkink 2. Transnational activism and political change in Kenya and Uganda Hans Peter Schmitz 3. The long and winding road: international norms and domestic political change in South Africa David Black 4. Changing discourse: transnational advocacy networks in Tunisia and Morocco Sieglinde Granzer 5. Linking the unlinkable? International norms and nationalism in Indonesia and the Philippines Anja Jetschke 6. International norms and domestic politics in Chile and Guatemala Stephen C. Ropp and Kathryn Sikkink 7. The Helsinki accords and political change in Eastern Europe Daniel C. Thomas 8. International human rights norms and domestic change: conclusions Thomas Risse and Stephen C. Ropp List of references Index.
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This article explores the intimate historical and modern connection between manhood and nationhood: through the construction of patriotic manhood and exalted motherhood as icons of nationalist ideology; through the designation of gendered 'places' for men and women in national politics; through the domination of masculine interests and ideology in nationalist movements; through the interplay between masculine microcultures and nationalist ideology; through sexualized militarism including the construction of simultaneously over-sexed and under-sexed 'enemy' men (rapists and wimps) and promiscuous 'enemy' women (sluts and whores). Three 'puzzles' are partially solved by exposing the connection between masculinity and nationalism: why are many men so desperate to defend masculine, monoracial, and heterosexual institutional preserves, such as military organizations and academies; why do men go to war; and the 'gender gap', that is, why do men and women appear to have very different goals and agendas for the 'nation?'
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This article explores the normative framework within which international administrations engage in post-conflict statebuilding. By looking at the aims and justifications for the involvement of the international community in the reform of the civil service in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), it shows how this intervention is shaped by a liberal conception of state sovereignty that emphasizes legitimate state authority. The international administration tries to establish legitimate state authority by pushing for certain reforms. The article concludes that international involvement can be characterized as a'paradoxof sovereignty': the international administration compromises aspects of Bosnia's sovereignty to enable BiH to fulfil its obligations as a sovereign. The tensions this creates have important implications for liberal thinking about the subject of international relations, and for the policymaking of international administrations.
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In the past decade, feminists have produced a considerable and important literature that critically analyses the gendering of the state and state-centric nationalism. This article draws from and shifts the focus of these studies to examine nationalism not simply as gendered but as heterosexist. I first locate nationalism as a subset of political identities and identification processes, then take (heterosexist) gender identities as an indispensable starting point in the study of political identities. I next turn to early western state making and its writing technologies to materialize the normalization and practice (divisions of power, authority, labor). Finally, I chart five gender-differentiated dimensions heterosexist presumptions - and enduring problems. of (hetero)gender binaries in thought (western metaphysics/phallogocentrism) of state-centric nationalism that expose the latter's
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1 Political developments in South Eastern Europe raise serious doubts that the European Union will be able to repeat its success story of democratization via political conditionality as it is widely acknowledged in Central Eastern Europe. This article shows that incentive-based instruments are only suitable for triggering democratic change under certain domestic preconditions in countries characterized by legacies of ethnic conflict. It argues that if national identity contradicts democratic requirements, it will 'block' compliance by framing it as inappropriate action. The argument is empirically demonstrated using the example of one of the most problematic issue areas in Croatia, for which the EU has only partially succeeded in bringing about democratic change: the prosecution of war crimes.
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Why does Europeanization—the process of adopting European rules—advance in some countries, while it stalls in others? What explains different European trajectories of otherwise similar candidate states? This article explains foreign policy choices of EU candidate states with an identity-based theoretical framework. In states where European identity is a widely shared social value, the inevitable short-term costs of Europeanization—economic, social, and political—will still be worth the price of admission because becoming “European” trumps other domestic political concerns. In contrast, in countries where the European idea is not broadly shared, pro-European groups will find it hard to forge crosscutting coalitions needed to successfully promote Europeanization with all its associated costs. To illustrate these theoretical insights, I compare Europeanization in Croatia and Serbia, the two Balkan states with similar regional status, shared legacies of communism, and ethnic war, yet quite different European trajectories. I argue that the process of identity convergence explains Croatia’s rapid compliance with controversial EU requirements, while in neighboring Serbia, identity divergence has derailed Serbia’s EU candidacy.
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The European Union (EU) has closely correlated different aspects of the peace process in Bosnia with progress towards European accession. The ‘power of attraction’ of EU membership would presumably induce the Bosnian authorities to accept the adaptation costs of political and economic transformation. However, the Europeanisation approach has not produced the expected results. The track record of the EU’s policies towards Bosnia represents a paradigmatic case of what would happen if almost nothing works as efficiently as in the case of the countries that joined the EU in 2004 and 2007. The article investigates the causes of EU policy failure in Bosnia and claims that the EU has not effectively responded to three challenges: 1) adjust the process to the needs of an ethnically divided post-war state; 2) preserve the credibility of accession conditionality, and 3) convey the proper messages on how to comply with EU rules. Therefore, the article argues for a more cohesive and consistent EU approach towards Bosnia.
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This paper considers why attitudes towards gays and lesbians in Latvia appear to be more intolerant than in all other EU member states. The paper argues that while the legacy of communist discourses on homosexuality and the impact of post-communist transition have played a role in shaping attitudes towards sexuality and sexual minorities in Central and Eastern Europe, these factors cannot sufficiently explain the divergence among post-communist states and, in particular, do not account for Latvia’s extreme position. While acknowledging that intolerance towards non-heteronormative sexualities cannot be explained by a single factor, the paper argues that homosexuality has become particularly reviled in Latvia because it has been widely discursively constructed as a threat to the continued existence of the nation.