Publications

Marking International Women's History Month, Political Trends and Dynamics newsletter brings to the fore the phenomenon of women as emerging leaders in the regional sustainable energy sector. While Southeast Europe largely remains inefficient in tackling energy transition, and with an already visible toll of climate change, one of the most prominent exceptions to the unspoken rule of disengagement is women.

The current covid-19 pandemic, as ‘an hour of the executive’, offers an unprecedented opportunity to elected incumbents for a power grab and erosion of checks and balances. We have been witnessing a curtailing of civil and political rights on a massive scale, which is unprecedented in peacetime, accompanied by the adoption of new laws and measures that vested extra powers in the executive. There remains the danger that the COVID-19 crisis will make the already fragile democracies in Southeast Europe even less resilient and more susceptible to executive takeovers.

The Coronavirus crisis has laid bare both the strengths as well as the weaknesses of political systems, democratic institutions and the political parties throughout the region, mirroring the real state of democracy on the ground. The already weakened democratic institutions have deteriorated even further, and the fragile checks and balances systems have demonstrated their inefficiency in practice. Political leaders rarely managed to resist the temptation to use the unprecedented opportunity of power up for grabs, misusing restrictive measures as a convenient instrument to strengthen the position of government and weaken political opposition.

A snapshot of relations among neighbours over the course of nine months shows that vulnerability caused by COVID-19 has not been exploited against neighbours. It also, however, has not engendered significant solidarity, except in cases where it already exists. The pandemic has allowed some friendships to be strengthened at the expense of pragmatic ones, but in general each country has pursued its existing foreign policy orientation. The pandemic offered China a window of opportunity to present itself as a friend in tough times. China’s donations of personal protective equipment, publicly endorsed and praised by Western Balkan politicians, led to a new concept – ‘mask diplomacy’.

Activism in Southeast Europe takes a unique path, that is not an imitation of the Western patterns of activism. Moreover, local contexts in a specific way encourage the expression of activism in the community, providing truly innovative examples of mobilization and organization. Activists have recognized that structural change in their societies is impossible to achieve without taking their struggle to the realm of electoral politics and developing genuine platforms for political change.

In the long run, an education approach based more on how than about what to learn would help enable the students to critically approach their own in group wrong doings and historical delusions and build critical thinking about the past.

Our last issue in 2020 introduces this topic, in the context of the Western Balkans and the EU's attempts to encourage substantive reforms in the region's judicial and law enforcement communities. With contributions from Nedim Hogić and Jovana Marović, as well as an interview with the primary author of the EU's „Priebe Reports “, Reinhard Priebe, we are certain that this edition will remain a relevant read well into the new year.