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21. The Specter Haunting Europe: The Unraveling of the Post-1989 Order

Author:
Ivan Krastev
Publication Date:
10-2016
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Democracy
Institution:
National Endowment for Democracy
Abstract:
This article argues that the unraveling of the post–Cold War liberal order is manifested by the West’s declining influence in international politics; the waning attraction of liberal democracy; and the maturing tensions within liberal democratic regimes. This unraveling renders problematic the European project of trying to extend democracy beyond the nation-state—a project that has enhanced the appeal of illiberal democracy, defined by majoritarian regimes in which the majority transforms the state into its own private possession. These regimes have become an answer to the pressures of a world where popular will is the only source of political legitimacy, and global markets are the only source of economic growth. Their rise portends devastating and far-reaching consequences throughout Europe.
Topic:
Democracy, Global Markets, Legitimacy, and Post Cold War
Political Geography:
Europe

22. The Specter Haunting Europe: Distinguishing Liberal Democracy’s Challengers

Author:
Takis S. Pappas
Publication Date:
10-2016
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Democracy
Institution:
National Endowment for Democracy
Abstract:
This article takes issue with the common practice of uncritically lumping together as “populist” the various and distinct challengers to democracy in contemporary Europe. It disaggregates and then classifies such challengers into three analytically distinct categories: antidemocrats, nativists, and populists. In so doing, the article reveals the geographical distribution of these categories across Europe, and highlights the value of treating each category based on its unique set of symptoms. It further shows that the gravest threat to contemporary liberalism comes from populist rather than from antidemocratic or nativist parties.
Topic:
Democracy, Populism, Liberal Order, Nativism, and Post Cold War
Political Geography:
Europe

23. The Threats and Challenges of a Multipolar World: A Ukraine Crisis Case Study

Author:
Oleksil Izhak
Publication Date:
01-2016
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Connections
Institution:
Partnership for Peace Consortium of Defense Academies and Security Studies Institutes
Abstract:
As the post-cold-war unipolar system transforms into a polycentric one, it becomes more complex and less predictable. The new system may be crushed with less effort than needed to keep it on track. The polycentric international system, as it emerges, suffers from hybrid threats. They are difficult to identify and predict. Russia pioneered exploiting the new vulnerabilities to gain unilateral advantages. Russia's hybrid war against Ukraine was just a starting episode of her wider attempt to crush the whole world order. Responsible world powers have either to fix the vulnerabilities of the polycentric world, or to block malicious attempts to exploit it.
Topic:
Imperialism, Military Strategy, Post Cold War, and Armed Conflict
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe

24. Conflict in Kosovo through the Conceptual Framework of Stakeholders

Author:
Aneta Nowakowska-Krystman and Marzena Zakowska
Publication Date:
09-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Connections
Institution:
Partnership for Peace Consortium of Defense Academies and Security Studies Institutes
Abstract:
Kosovo has been one of the longest-running ethnic conflicts in contemporary Europe. It can be characterized by the diverse nature of the participating entities and the heterogeneous complexity of their interactions. These aspects violently surfaced during the civil war that lasted for almost two years, from 1998 to 1999. One of the major frameworks for viewing and analyzing the conflict, as well as one capable of seeing to its ultimate resolution, appears to be an assessment of the issues through the conceptual lens of “stakeholders.” This focuses on the specific investments or “stakes”—be they economic, ethnic, historic, or cultural—that each of the participants “holds” in generating the scene of the conflict. This lens provides a significant focus, and is one of the more important research methods employed within the domain of strategic analysis.
Topic:
Civil War, Ethnic Conflict, Violence, and Post Cold War
Political Geography:
Europe, Kosovo, Serbia, and Southeast Europe

25. Regional Identity in the Post-Cold War Balkans

Author:
Dimitar Bechev
Publication Date:
08-2001
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Institute for Security and International Studies (ISIS)
Abstract:
Facing commonalities and yet fully aware of differences, this paper addresses the question whether there is a broader regional identity in the Balkans, which transcends national boundaries. It is critical to define what that specific identity means, what its political implications are, what the relationship between things national and regional is. Assuming identities and collective solidarities tend to be “discursively constructed, particularly enacted, and historically situated” (Wendt, 1994) or “plural, malleable, flexible” (Ferguson and Mansbach, 1994), I argue that as far as the Balkans are concerned there are both unexplored possibilities and a number of impediments in the quest for broader and multiple conceptions of belonging. The paper proposes a middle way of dealing with the issue of the relationship between national and regional which focuses on the proposition that a regional system of international relations is gradually emerging, which configures state-to-state interactions in particular ways and provides grounds for new identifications. The first section of the paper underlies the merely practical implications of the project of self-determination and particularisation that has governed Balkan politics for at least 200 years and has triumphed with the last wave of national secessionism in the 1990s. The imperative to come up with modes of interstate co-operation inevitably leads to the question what the primary source of disunity is. Making some preliminary theoretical points (second section) and tracing the emergence of national identities and the demise of broader loyalties (third section), the paper proceeds to elaborate on two strategies attempting to reconcile parochialism and regionalism: the revaluation of the exclusivist narratives of ethnocentrism, and the construction of a specific regional political context that the Balkan states participate in. I consider the latter minimalist understanding superior and suggest that it contains the right explanation of Balkan regional identity.
Topic:
Politics, Regionalism, Post Cold War, and Identity
Political Geography:
Europe, Eastern Europe, and Balkans