Chasing the Candidacy Status: Tacit Contestations of EU Norms in Bosnia and Herzegovina

In Vučković V. and Đorđević V. (eds.) “Balkanizing Europeanization: Fight against Corruption and Regional Relations in the Western Balkans”. Peter Lang Publishing. May 2019  [Link]

Book introduction

The main theme of this book revolves around the idea of Europeanization of the Western Balkans. In that respect, the volume discusses the fight against corruption and regional relations in former Yugoslav states, such as Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia. The objective of the book is to detect the level of effectiveness of the EU impact on domestic structural changes in the Western Balkans regarding aforementioned research issues. The contributors argue that the EU impact in the Western Balkans has so far been limited and point to limitations in this regard.

«The book Balkanizing Europeanisation offers timely, detailed, critical and excellently researched insight into the complicated mutual relations of the EU and the countries of the Balkan Peninsula. Based on excellent scholarship, meticulous original research and first-hand experience with the Balkan area, the authors provide a reader with rich and profound analysis of successes and failures of Europeanisation of the Balkan countries. The volume shall become an obligatory reading for many categories of scholars, experts, and people practicing diplomacy with and in the region.»

Chapter abstract

This chapter focuses on tracing transfer models of EU norms to BiH in tackling corruption and identifying policy-making patterns in advancing regional cooperation with other states. We argue that Europeanization processes in the BiH political context are taken as disruptive to the existing normative scheme embedded in the legal system. Settled perceptions of disruptiveness are one of the key reasons why EU norms do not gain foothold