VVThis paper aims to analyze the post-conflict experience of Europe after 1989, specifically whether the European Union provides the essential apparatus, as a result of its soft power and value dynamics, to facilitate integration of minorities into the social, political, and economic shared space of the state. Some attention will also be given to whether transitional justice or power-sharing initiatives are major factors in the endeavour to integrate.
VVThe paper will first illustrate the increasing political and ethnic integration in Central and Eastern Europe after the fall of communism, as well as the EU’s soft power capabilities, Strabac et al.’s modernization theory, and Tepfenhart’s four major causes of ethnic conflict. Next, an analysis of transitional justice mechanisms, power-sharing, and concepts of responsibility (individual, state, societal) in post-conflict regions3 will be illustrated, as well as Horowitz’s ideas on constitution building. Thirdly, attention will be given to EU member states who seem to be shifting back towards xenophobic policies, particularly Hungary and Greece – and what this means for the sustainability of EU soft power as an incentive tool for political, social, and economic integration.
VVThe European climate after the collapse of communism in 1989 was one of massive change in a number of aspects, but particularly in terms of population integration and heterogeneous societies. As the EU expanded in the 1990s to include a now-unified Germany, Austria, Finland, Sweden, Spain, and Portugal, the continent became increasingly integrated politically, and the eastern states looked to the expanding EU as a beacon4. The EU also integrated economically through the adoption of a common currency and the creation of the “Eurozone” – resulting in another sphere where the EU represented influence, economic power. Even more so today, after the 2004 (Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia), 2007 (Bulgaria and Romania), and 2013 (Croatia) enlargements, less-developed former Soviet and former Yugoslav states are seeing that it may be within reach to have successful partnerships or even full accession to the EU. The southeastern European region can be described using regional security complex theory[2]; there is significant system-level interplay of global institutions and leading powers around the southeastern European situation, but there also exists a subsystem interplay of the states within the region themselves, and their immediate security concerns driven by ethnic tensions.
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3. Subotic 2011
4. Strabac et al. 2012