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Introduction: Contentious Politics and International Statebuilding in Southeast Europe
Introduction: Contentious Politics and International Statebuilding in Southeast Europe

Author(s): Nemanja Džuverović, Julia Rone, Tom Junes
Subject(s): Civil Society, Government/Political systems, Politics and society, Comparative politics, EU-Accession / EU-DEvelopment, Sociology of Politics
Published by: SAGE Publications Ltd
Keywords: Statebuilding; Southeast Europe; the Balkans; Contentious politics;

Summary/Abstract: In February 2016, the Citizens’ Initiative “We Deserve Better” in North Macedonia (until recently Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia) organized a peaceful protest called “How many shoes were left unworn,” leaving in front of the government building the shoes of people who had emigrated from the country. Two months later, massive protests started in North Macedonia that ultimately led to government change and to paving the way for the country’s membership in the European Union (EU) through the historic deal to change the country’s name. Protesting among monuments of Alexander the Great and other newly constructed buildings glorifying the ancient history of North Macedonia, student protesters and opposition parties welcomed the intervention of international actors in order to break the political impasse. The same year a flagship development plan called “Belgrade Waterfront” drew widespread criticism from thousands of Serbian protestors that declared their right to the city and formulated a more general criticism of international statebuilding efforts in Serbia that brought neither prosperity nor democracy to the country. These two very different protests that unfolded in neighboring countries in the same year point, on the one hand, to the increasing political tensions in the region and the mobilization of bottom–up indignation, and on the other, to the very different forms that local protests could take and their different attitudes to international statebuilding efforts in the region.

  • Issue Year: 35/2021
  • Issue No: 01
  • Page Range: 182-189
  • Page Count: 8
  • Language: English