Scholars have documented a tendency of (semi-)authoritarian regimes to undermine university autonomy, mainly through organizational (de jure) changes. This paper presents a case study of a publicly ...triggered plagiarism investigation by the University of Belgrade into the doctoral thesis of the Serbian Minister of Finance, one of the key members of the increasingly authoritarian regime. The analysis finds a proceduralized and delayed response of the university’s leadership, which indicates lowered de facto autonomy from politics, despite the university’s continually high de jure autonomy. The investigation was closed only after a mobilization within the academic community which resulted in a university’s blockade that forced its leadership to retract the contentious thesis. The case study shows that, in contexts of democratic backsliding, political capture can extend farther than usually thought, impacting even the implementation of internal university standards. On the other hand, the analysis also shows that political capture is not necessarily irreversible and that academic community can mobilize to ‘undo’ it. This reinforces the notion of academic communities as value-driven groups capable of exerting peer pressure to override even authoritarian pressures. In order to understand the dynamic of the plagiarism inquiry in its entirety, we apply insights from theory of power to complement and overcome the limitations of the conventional theoretical frameworks on democratic backsliding and academic autonomy.
A review essay covering books by 1) Sergey Aleksashenko, Putin’s Counterrevolution (2018), 2) Andrew Monaghan, Power in Modern Russia (2017), 3) Matthew Light, Fragile Migration Rights. Freedom of ...Movement in post-Soviet Russia (2017) and 4) Alexandar Mihailovic, The Mitki and the Art of Postmodern Protest in Russia (2018).
The normalization of relations between Belgrade and Moscow in the mid-1950s and the Yugoslav authorities' decision to develop closer relations with the West coincided with Yugoslavia's intention to ...seek its own way forward, characterized by self-management at home and a lead role in the international Non-Aligned Movement. Later, following the establishment of official relations between the European Community and Yugoslavia in 1968, the Community accepted that Yugoslavia remained where it stood ideologically and continued to provide it with new trade agreements. However, a careful examination of official debates and archival collections reveals that it did not take long before the appreciation for the policy of non-alignment was overshadowed by uncertainty (due to the death of President Tito, but also the end of the Cold War and collapse of communism), with the movement eventually losing its significance with the outbreak of the Yugoslav state crisis and consequent policy-making preferences.
This paper examines the repercussions of the 2015 European migrant/refugee crisis, which culminated with the 2018 dispute between Italy and France. It is concerned with the Dublin Regulation and the ...New Pact on Asylum and Migration, which are critical to the division and consequent polarizations across the EU. The Member States' failure to show solidarity and agree to share the burden in relation to the distribution of immigrants and asylum seekers has brought the European integrationist project into question. In addition to considering the general theoretical explanations, the paper also looks into the African-origin migration/displacement as a proper trigger of widespread disagreements among European governments. The deliberate and systematic impoverishment of the local inhabitants - largely through the use of the French Treasury-tied Communaute Financiere Africaine (CFA) franc - exposes the neo-colonial nature of the current practices and thus jeopardizes all those discourses and policy initiatives focused on the provision of peace and stability.
In 1992 Yugoslavia finally succumbed to civil war, collapsing under the pressure of its inherent ethnic tensions. Existing accounts of Yugoslavia's dissolution, however, pay little regard to the ...troubled relationship between the Yugoslav Federation and the European Community (EC) prior to the crisis in the early 1990s, and the instability this created. Here, Branislav Radeljic offers an empirical analysis of the EC's relations with Yugoslavia from the late sixties, when Yugoslavia was under the presidency of Josep Broz Tito, through to the collapse of the Yugoslav federation in 1992, after the rise of Slobodan Milosevi? and the beginning of the Yugoslav Wars. Radeljic explores the economic, political and social elements of these discords, and also places emphasis on the role of Slovenes, Croats and other diasporas - focusing on their capacity to affect policy-making at a Europe-wide level. Radeljic argues convincingly that a lack of direction and inadequate political mechanisms within the EC enabled these non-state actors to take centre-stage, and shows how EC paralysis precipitated a bloody conflict in the Balkan region.
A review essay covering books by 1) Riccardo Mario Cucciolla (Ed.) The Power State Is Back? The Evolution of Russian Political Thought After 1991 (2016), 2) Lena Jonson, Art and Protest in Putin's ...Russia (2015) and 3) Svetlana Stephenson, Gangs of Russia. From the Streets to the Corridors of Power (2015).
This article examines Russia's involvement in the Kosovo question. It shows that the Russian leadership has generally favored the Serbian authorities, but more importantly for its own influence, that ...it felt the urge to oppose the 1999 NATO intervention and the post-interventionist Western rhetoric. The argument that Russia has been primarily concerned with strengthening its own position and that involvement in the Kosovo question was expected to serve such an ambition can also be better understood by looking at some recent discrepancies. Namely, the fact that Russia has strongly insisted on the principle of territorial integrity in the case of Serbia but then completely ignored it in the case of Ukraine shows that its loud advocacy of Serbian territorial integrity was merely a strategic instrument to be deployed in European official debates, especially when the post-1999 discussions about Kosovo's final status took place.
A review essay covering books by 1) Nevena Nancheva, Between nationalism and Europeanization: narratives of national identity in Bulgaria and Macedonia (2015), 2) Gorana Ognjenović and Jasna Jozelić, ...Politicization of religion, the power of symbolism: the case of former Yugoslavia and its successor states (2014), 3) Aleksandar Pavković and Christopher Kelen, Anthems and the making of nation states: identity and nationalism in the Balkans (2016) and 4) Tanja Zimmermann and Aleksandar Jakir (Eds.), Europe and the Balkans: decades of 'Europeanization'? (2015).
The EU's ability to protect common interests and effectively address the challenges faced by its members relating to external threats is one of the most debated questions in the European landscape. ...Understandably, the war in Ukraine has had a major impact on discourses regarding the EU Common Security and Defense Policy, granting them more space and thus visibility in the media and public debates. Our study examines Spanish media discourses about the EU's geopolitical role and, more specifically, to what extent such discourses foster or hamper European integration processes. To collect data and carry out this study, we selected six media outlets based on their ownership, ideological stance, consumption frequency, and impact on public opinion. Our sample includes 540 news items, collected between July 2021 and March 2022. Our discourse analysis benefits from, inter alia, a Foucauldian framework that focuses on the sayable, conservation, memory, reactivation, and appropriation. In addition, we also identify communicative strategies that are employed to promote different discourses, as well as possible policy alternatives, concerning the EU's geopolitical role and future prospects.
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