Macedonia joined the Partnership for Peace in 1995, and in 1999 it adopted its first Action Plan for NATO Membership (MAP). On 5 December 2011, the International Court of Justice ruled in favor of Macedonia that Greece violated the Interim Accord by blocking the accession of Macedonia into NATO at the Bucharest Summit in 2008. Members of the Macedonian Foreign Policy Committee will discuss how their nation transitioned into a NATO security provider.

Drawn from a larger project which examines the relationships between ethnic identity and anti-Ottoman insurgency in early 20th century Macedonia, Keith Brown, an associate professor at Brown University will focus on the specific instance of the Ilinden Uprising of 1903.

"Embracing Democracy in the Western Balkans" explores the complex and challenging facets of state-building and nation-building in weak states with little democratic experience and daunting socio-economic problems.

The sixth Working Group meeting: Setting an Agenda for Transatlantic Cooperation was hosted in Washington, D.C. The meeting took place on November 29, 2011.

This presentation will discuss both the domestic political background for Croatia’s application for EU membership and the EU’s decision making process in Croatia´s negotiations which begun in 2005. It will give an analysis of the current state of play for Croatia’s entry into membership.

"Worlds Apart: Bosnian Lessons for a Global Security" tells of a well-meaning foreign policy establishment often deaf to the voices of everyday people. Its focus is the Bosnian War when Ambassador Hunt served in Vienna and was intimately involved in American policy toward the Balkans.

Nearly three and a half years after Kosovo unilaterally declared independence from Serbia, the EU is bringing both sides back to the negotiation table. This meeting will address: why Serbian and Kosovar governments are negotiating now; what is the nature, format and context of these negotiations, and what are the goals that the EU hopes to achieve?

The fifth Working Group meeting: Reinforcing Conditionality was hosted by the Wilson Center in collaboration with the Centre for International Studies, University of Oxford; and South East European Studies at Oxford (SEESOX), University of Oxford. The Working Group meeting took place on October 28^th, 2011 and was held in Oxford, UK.

On June 5, 2011, Macedonia held parliamentary elections. The outcome confirmed the fears of many observers, analysts, and democracy advocates that the ruling VMRO-DUI government coalition (both ultra-nationalist parties) will remain in power for the next four years with dire consequences for the future of Macedonia. Over the last four years, the government strongly protected nationalist projects and ethnic alliances, rather than the rule of law. The re-elected government has already shown disrespect for the rule of law, democracy, civil society, human rights, and freedom of speech in its earliest actions, which jeopardizes Macedonia’s attempt to accede to the European Union.

This comparative study explores the conditions and causal pathways through which conflict-generated diasporas become moderate or radical actors when linked to homelands experiencing limited sovereignty.

The fourth Working Group meeting: Confronting Illegitimacy was hosted in Washington, D.C. The meeting took place on June 27, 2011.

Angelos Giannakopoulos, Assistant Professor,Department of History and Sociology, University of Konstanz, Germany

Support for international interventions around the world is more often driven by the relative success of the most recent experience of intervention, rather than on the merits and context of each specific case, according to Gerald Knaus. With the current debate about NATO's intervention in Libya in the news, Knaus evaluated the methods recently employed to assess and plan interventions, and offered his own framework for how to conduct international interventions, based on lessons learned in the ongoing intervention in Bosnia.

Since the Dayton Peace Accord was signed 16 years ago, the European Union (EU) has been actively involved in Bosnia and Herzegovina in various capacities and has created a number of local institutions to support its four current missions. At the same time, the complicated state institutional structure in Bosnia means that the EU must simultaneously interact with a number of local and state-level institutions. Mujo Hadzic discussed a central puzzle: Does EU conditionality work in such a complex environment? Given this institutional complexity, Hadzic argued, both the Bosnian government and the EU struggle to speak with one voice, which dilutes the EU's impact and diffuses the energies of Bosnian institutions.

The 20 years of Serbia's transition to a market economy was discussed, explaining why a country that had among the best starting conditions in 1989 to implement the transition ended up substantially lagging behind.

The book Bosnia Remade: Ethnic Cleansing and Its Reversal (Oxford University Press, 2011) is an authoritative account of ethnic cleansing and its partial undoing from the onset of the 1990s Bosnian wars up through the present. Gerard Toal and Carl Dahlman combine a bird's-eye view of the entire war from onset to aftermath with a micro-level account of three towns that underwent ethnic cleansing and--later--the return of refugees.

The recent January events in Albania have proved once again that more needs to be done in order to strengthen democracy, democratic institutions and rule of law. As a NATO member country Albania was expected to radiate stability in the still fragile region and to behave as a proper candidate for the EU integration status. However the recent events and the sudden damage these events brought to Albania's image, after years of stability, moderate foreign policy, economic and social developments, have once again put forward the idea that democracy or stability alone can not be a paradigm for a country's or regional development, but only a combination of both well-harmonised by social development and reforms which will make possible a clear separation from the communist past, would guarantee a steady development to the country which until not long ago was considered a regional hub.

Erion Veliaj, a former civil society activist and coordinator of the Albanian opposition parties, discussed the demonstration held on January 21, 2011. The demonstration ended in violence, with four shot and killed by the Republican Guard. Prime Minister Sali Berisha characterized the event as an attempted coup d'état in an attempt to justify the violent response, and said that the demonstrators had been carrying weapons disguised as umbrellas. Veliaj argued at the meeting that these contentions were "ludicrous": according to Veliaj, this was just another in a number of peaceful demonstrations organized by the opposition to protest what they see were unfair elections in 2009. The Albanian government, Veliaj said, was trying to force the population to choose between stability and freedom.

Southeast Europe—a region still vulnerable from recent conflict, underdevelopment and reliance on foreign direct investment—has been uniquely effected by the global economic crisis. Citing his recent publication, Vassilis Monastiriotis explained that the region's underdevelopment had in part protected it from the financial crisis and that good policies have helped some countries to rebound more quickly.

Despite the nearly two decades that have passed since Yugoslavia's dissolution, its successor states continue to be grouped together as the "Western Balkans," "Former Yugoslav republics," or "Southeast Europe." However, this categorization belies the wide divergence between them in terms of their democratic progress.

Ambassador Davor Božinovic, State Secretary for Political Affairs in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and European Integration of the Republic of Croatia and Special Envoy of the Prime Minister for South Eastern Europe; Martin Sletzinger, Senior Scholar, Woodrow Wilson Center

 The third meeting of the Working Group was co-sponsored by the Hellenic Foundation for European & Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP), with the support of the EU Delegation and Civitel Olympic Hotel. The meeting was held November 12-14, 2010 in Athens, Greece.

See ELIAMEP's event report and photos here: www.eliamep.gr/en/european-integration/events-european-integration/reaching-out-to-the-balkans-in-times-of-crisis/

In the process of nation-building, states attempt to make the state and the demographic nation overlap. In this process, national minorities become a problem and European nation states have a checkered past in terms of dealing with them, with variable policies reflecting ethnic antipathy at one moment and cooperation at another. Conventional wisdom holds that ethnic antipathy is the result of cultural distance or "age-old ethnic hatreds." However, according to Harris Mylonas, these theories neither predict outcomes nor account for variation in minority policy over time. His research focuses on the relationship between minority treatment and interstate relations, in an effort to gain a broader understanding the complexity of state-building and minority policies in Europe.

The Wilson Center, with the support of a grant from the EU Delegation, held the second meeting of the Working Group on the Western Balkans on October 19, 2010.

Commemorations (and counter-commemorations) of the World War Two antifascist resistance movement in Croatia continue to be a source of debates over both political and ethnic identities. This talk examines the transformation of several memorial days in Croatia during the post-communist transition, in particular focusing on the content of the commemorative speeches given at these political rituals.

The WilsonCenter, with the support of a grant from the EU Delegation, held the first meeting of the Working Group on the Western Balkans on June 29, 2010.

Director's Forum with His Excellency Dr. Teodor Baconschi, Foreign Minister of Romania
 

John Lampe, Professor of History, University of Maryland-College Park

Vladimir Cupic, Chairman, Executive Board, Hypo Alpe-Adria Bank (Serbia); Wojtek Ksiazkiewicz, Vice President, SNC-Lavalin (Poland); Anthony O'Sullivan, Head of Private Sector Development Division for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD);and Goran Radman, Dean VERN University of Applied Sciences (Croatia)
 

James Gow, Professor of International Peace and Security, Director of the International Peace and Security Programme, King’s College-London

Elton Skendaj, PhD Candidate, Department of Political Science, Cornell University
 

Ljiljana Smajilovic, President, Journalists' Association of Serbia

His Royal Highness Crown Prince Alexander II, Crown Prince of Serbia

Ryan Kennedy, Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Houston

Franjo Štiblar, School of Law, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia; Vesna Copic, Ministry of Culture, Slovenia.

Organized by the Harriman Institute/East Central European Center, Columbia University, and the East European Program, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
 

Jens Bastian, Senior Economic Research Fellow, ELIAMEP, Athens, Greece

Aleksandar Vucic, Deputy President, Serbian Progressive Party

Michael Leigh, Director-General for Enlargement, European Commission

Srdjan Darmanovic, Professor and Dean of the Facutly of Political Science, University of Montenegro

Jelena Subotic, Georgia State University

East European Studies presents a Title VIII Alumni Symposium:
Evaluating the Effects of EU Accession in Central and East Europe: Lessons for the Western Balkans
 

Ivan Vejvoda, Executive Director, Balkan Trust for Democracy
 

Milica Uvalic, Professor of Economics, University of Perugia and current WWICS Public Policy Scholar
 

Keynote Speaker: Jason Hyland, Director of Balkans Affairs, Department of State

Panelists:

Wade Jacoby, Brigham Young University and Fernand Braudel Senior Fellow, European University Institute; Gulnur Aybet, University of Kent and current Southeast Europe Policy Scholar; Ioannis Tsorbatzoglou, SECIPRO and current Southeast Europe Policy Scholar; Othon Anastasakis, Oxford University; Ivan Grdesic, University of Zagreb and current WWICS Public Policy Scholar; Milica Uvalic, University of Perugia and current WWICS Public Policy Scholar; Gordon Bardos, Harriman Institute, Columbia University; Islam Yusufi, Analytica Think Tank; Elena Jileva, Center for Political and Constitutional Studies, Madrid; Sharon Fisher, IHS Global Insight; Anthony Gaeta, World Bank; and Bruce Hitchner, Dayton Project, Tufts University.

Lenard Cohen, Professor of Political Science, Simon Fraser University; John Lampe, Professor of History, University of Maryland-College Park
 

His Excellency Nikola Spiric, Prime Minister of Bosnia and Herzegovina
 

Mimoza Kusari-Lila, Executive Director of the American Chamber of Commerce in Kosovo and current Fulbright fellow at Georgetown University
 

Andrew Konitzer, associate professor of political science, Samford University
 

Mark Baskin, senior associate and research professor, Center for International Development, Rockefeller College, University of Albany; Paula Pickering, associate professor of government, College of William and Mary
 

Julie Mostov, Associate Vice Provost for International Programs and Professor of Political Science, Drexel University
 

Douglas Davidson, Visiting Transatlantic Fellow, German Marshall Fund
 

Ivan Vujacic, Ambassador of the Republic of Serbia to the United States
This event will take place in the 5th floor conference room.

James Lyon, senior associate, Democratization Policy Council

Julia Gray is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Pittsburgh.
 

Valerie Bunce, Aaron Binenkorb Professor of International Studies and Professor of Government, Cornell University; Sharon L. Wolchik, Professor of Political Science and International Affairs, George Washington University and Reagan-Fascell Fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy
 

Christopher J. Borgen is Associate Professor at St. John’s University School of Law in New York City

Arben Hajrullahu is a Fulbright Humphrey Fellow and WWICS public policy Scholar.
 

Keith Brown is Associate Professor at Brown University’s Watson Institute.

Naum Panovski is Associate Professor and Director of the Graduate Program in Performance and Society, Rhode Island College.
 

The Wilson Center’s East European Studies program, in cooperation with the American College of Thessaloniki, the University division of Anatolia College, held a workshop November 30-December 1, 2007, which aimed at trouble-shooting the complex process of European integration of the Western Balkans. This meeting was sponsored by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation.