Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans最新文献

{"title":"Understanding banking sector reforms in Turkey: assessing the roles of domestic versus external actors","authors":"Aytül Ganioğlu","doi":"10.1080/14613190802493808","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14613190802493808","url":null,"abstract":"Prudential regulation and supervision is a major condition for successful financial liberalization and the proper sequencing of financial liberalization. However, the early ‘sequencing literature’ puts less emphasis on the role of prudential regulation and supervision of the banking system. While the combination of macroeconomic stabilization, trade and financial liberalization was strongly emphasized in the Washington Consensus policies in the early 1990s, less attention was given to the institutional/governance issues within appropriate sequencing. Hence, McKinnon (1998, p. 57) criticized the ‘Washington Consensus’ approach for underemphasizing the need to invest in institutional infrastructure before introducing liberalization reforms, while favouring financial liberalization. Inclusion of prudential regulation and supervision of the banking system to the Washington Consensus approach and to stabilization programmes as an important precondition of successful financial liberalization follows the severe crises in emerging market economies in the 1990s. Especially after the Asian crisis, weak prudential regulation and supervision is regarded to have led to financial sector vulnerability, which was claimed to be at the root of the Asian crisis. Then, the Washington Consensus approach composed a new agenda through encompassing the importance of prudential regulatory framework in its policy line, while financial liberalization continued to be promoted as welfare","PeriodicalId":313717,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126810393","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Leaders, political behaviour and decision-making: the case of the former President of the Republic of Cyprus, George Vasiliou","authors":"Nicos Christodoulides","doi":"10.1080/14613190802493709","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14613190802493709","url":null,"abstract":"The operational code is the most commonly used psychological/attitudinal approach applied by international relations scholars to the study of political leadership. Its basic assumption is that the belief system of a leader plays a decisive role in the way he/she understands a political event and the way he/she makes decisions. In this paper, I will first present the operational code of the former President of the Republic of Cyprus, George Vasiliou (1988–93), by using quantitative and qualitative analysis of primary and secondary sources. Then, three major policy decisions of Vasiliou over a period of time will be examined in order to determine if they have a direct linkage with his beliefs. If all three decisions have a consistency with his belief system, then we can conclude that his belief system played a decisive role.","PeriodicalId":313717,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124874840","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Southern European model of immigration: do the cases of Malta, Cyprus and Slovenia fit?","authors":"Russell S. King, M. Thomson","doi":"10.1080/14613190802493550","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14613190802493550","url":null,"abstract":"The 2004 enlargement of the European Union brought in 10 new member states: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the Czech and Slovak Republics, Hungary, Slovenia, Malta and Cyprus. Echoing concerns...","PeriodicalId":313717,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-11-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124678507","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Building institutional, economic and social capacities through discourse: the role of NGOs in the context of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia","authors":"J. Ateljević","doi":"10.1080/14613190802493774","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14613190802493774","url":null,"abstract":"As part of ongoing research, this paper attempts to explain how a nongovernmental organization (NGO) engages in activities of social and institutional entrepreneurship in developing capabilities at different levels: social, human, economic and institutional. In this study, tourism provides the empirical context in the cross-border regional tourism development of the eastern part of the Republika Srpska (RS), BiH (Bosnia and Herzegovina) and western Serbia. The region, known as the Drina Valley Tourism Region (DVTR), encompasses eight municipalities, four from each side of the Drina River which forms the border between the two countries. The DVTR, situated in the Drina River Valley, comprises fragile ecosystems and equally fragile open economies facing unique sustainable development problems and opportunities. The economy is strongly dependent upon agriculture and a few tourism activities with good prospects for tourism rejuvenation and development. A sizeable influx of concessionary finance, official grants and net private transfers from abroad sustain development programmes in some parts of the region, particularly in Srebrenica and Bratunac (RS–BiH). One of the main problems facing all the municipalities is negative population growth and an increasing number of younger people permanently leaving the region. The area provides a specific political and historical context due to its dynamic history associated with perpetuated ethnical and religious struggles amongst the communities along the river since the Ottoman invasion in the 15th century. The dissolution of the former Yugoslavia following the civil war in the early 1990s revived the historical tensions that were controlled in the former Yugoslavia. Bridges over the Drina River have never lasted long. In such a context like BiH","PeriodicalId":313717,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-11-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122695173","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Europeanization of Turkey and its impact on the Cyprus problem","authors":"Kivanç Ulusoy","doi":"10.1080/14613190802493634","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14613190802493634","url":null,"abstract":"The European Council Summit in Helsinki in 1999 was a turning point in Turkey–EU relations. It radically transformed the nature of the relations through granting Turkey an official candidate status. The Summit also brought the EU to Turkey’s political agenda as a credible actor, difficult to disregard. The crucial aspect of this change in the nature of EU–Turkey relations is increasing pressure on Turkey to adopt European standards in several policy areas, including democracy and human rights. The current process of change, recently labelled as Europeanization, turns actually into a process of democratization, showing its clear impact even on the transformation of Turkey’s policy on such issues like the Cyprus problem with highly nationalist resonance and hard security content. The process of Europeanization in the post-1999 period gave the government of the Justice and Development Party (JDP) in Turkey a better chance to make manoeuvres on this issue dominated by the overwhelming power of military perspectives. However, the Europeanization process did not give a major change on the issue. The changes in Turkish foreign policy together with EU involvement only made the government vulnerable to the charges coming from circles of hard security as its initiatives did not deliver a positive result. The structure of the conflict preceded the changes in the action of the parties and the regional balance of power preceded the power of an external anchor, the EU, to change the balance. The EU involvement in the conflict only transformed the situation into a new impasse. The study will proceed as follows. Firstly, a theoretical background will be provided on the processes of Europeanization, democratization and foreign policy with special reference to the Turkish case. This will be followed by an examination of the Cyprus issue in Turkey–EU relations together with an analysis of the impact of Greek–Turkish rapprochement on the prospects of solution. The paper will be concluded by an assessment of the impact of Turkey’s Europeanization on the Cyprus issue.","PeriodicalId":313717,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-11-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114822595","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"EU enlargement in the Western Balkans: strategies of borrowing and inventing","authors":"A. Elbasani","doi":"10.1080/14613190802493600","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14613190802493600","url":null,"abstract":"At the turn of more than a decade of violent and rather uncertain transitions to democracy, the EU has envisaged a new vision for the Balkans - stable, self-sufficient democracies, at peace with themselves and each other, with market economies and the rule of law, and which will be either members of the EU or in the road to membership. The ambitious project builds on a new strategy, the so-called Stabilisation and Association Process (SAP), which for the first time comprises the perspective of European membership and outlines the tools of achieving that for all the countries in the region. The SAP has, thus, created high expectations for change, which are further nourished by the strong assumptions on the EU transformative power in the last wave of enlargement. Still, enlargement in the Western Balkans (WB) lacks both comparative analysis and depth of research, when compared to the bourgeoning literature on Central and East European Countries (CEEC). This article questions whether the SAP justifies the strong assumptions on the EU transformative power in the region. The article suggests that although the EU policies have advanced to embrace the promise of membership and outline the accession stages for all the Balkan countries, the loaded agenda of both stabilization and association coupled with a weaker promise of membership can arguably erode the power of enlargement conditionality in the region.","PeriodicalId":313717,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-11-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127880806","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Motivations and barriers of export performance: Greek exports to the Balkans","authors":"P. Liargovas, Konstantinos S. Skandalis","doi":"10.1080/14613190802493840","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14613190802493840","url":null,"abstract":"Foreign market entry can play a very significant role in a nation’s economic prosperity. There are essentially four principal means of foreign market entry: exporting, licensing, joint-venture partnering and wholly owned foreign investment. Exporting represents one of the most common entry modes to international markets. A country’s ability to compete successfully in world markets reflects its economic strength and marginal competence over other nations. Cavusgil, in integrating various export development strategies, identified five distinct stages: domestic marketing, pre-export stage, experimental involvement, active involvement and committed involvement. Exports can result directly or indirectly in a decrease in the unemployment rate and an increase of domestic production and economic growth. The process by which a firm demonstrates exporting behaviour is usually conceived as evolving through various stages. Greek exports in South-Eastern European countries (Balkans) are exceptionally high. Within the Balkans, the Greek export share has shown a significant increase in the last 15 years and has reached one of the first places in the ranking of the region’s leading exporters. The increased exports towards the neighbouring countries indicate a major change in the structure of Greek export activity over a short time. This increase comes in a period when Greek exports to EU markets have been declining. Furthermore, many Greek firms expanded into Balkan countries through foreign direct investment or participation in the construction of large infrastructure projects. The majority of these investment initiatives are concentrated in the fields of trade, finance services and manufacturing. For example, Greek firms are the region’s biggest investors in the telecommunications sector. In the context of our study, the case of Greek exporting firms is of particular interest since it exemplifies very well a situation in which exporters have to decide on the level of involvement and follow strategies in regions perceived to be close at the physical or psychological distance. Greek exporting firms would consider Eastern Europe as physically closer than other","PeriodicalId":313717,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-11-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125726351","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Response to Sabrina P. Ramet and John R. Lampe, ‘Debates’, JSEB, Vol. 10, No. 1, April 2008, in relation to Aleksa Djilas' review article ‘The Academic West and the Balkan Test’, published in JSEB, Vol. 9, No. 3, December 2007","authors":"Aleksa Djilas","doi":"10.1080/14613190802219013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14613190802219013","url":null,"abstract":"Professor Sabrina P. Ramet complains that I have ‘dismissed out of hand’ her book Thinking About Yugoslavia: Scholarly Debates About the Yugoslav Breakup and the Wars in Bosnia and Kosovo. Yet, curiously, her reply is longer than that part of my review essay ‘The Academic West and the Balkan Test’ in which I deal solely with her work. My starting point in rejecting Thinking About Yugoslavia owed much to the critical views of America’s leading historical sociologist Michael Mann, which I considered applicable to Ramet’s book. Central was Mann’s insight: scholars who see the nation as a singular actor are themselves thinking like nationalists. Ramet, however, now claims that she agrees ‘wholeheartedly’ with Mann when he ‘rejects any attempt to chastise entire ethnic groups as perpetrators of expulsions and genocide’ (Ramet’s quote from my review essay). After supposedly establishing that this is not what she had done with the Serbs, Ramet delivers a harsh verdict: ‘ . . . Djilas is guilty of false attribution, attributing to me the accounts and views of others, which I merely report’. But does she, in fact, ‘merely report’ those numerous extremist narrations, descriptions and opinions? Are her own thoughts and beliefs different? I think not. Allow me a brief summary of what I have shown in my review essay. When Ramet informs us about various all-encompassing and unqualified attacks on","PeriodicalId":313717,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116612046","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Europeanization and party system mechanics: comparing Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro","authors":"Danica Fink-Hafner","doi":"10.1080/14613190802146216","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14613190802146216","url":null,"abstract":"About a decade ago distinctions between ‘old’ European Union (EU) members and prospective members started to be made in the literature. Pointing out differences between the ‘old’ and ‘new’ EU member states has become a common approach in the current Europeanization literature since the 2004 EU enlargement wave. By now the number of countries expressing an interest in European integration processes has grown: differences have also increased among the prospective member states. Their geopolitical statuses and internal characteristics have brought about different characteristics and dynamics in the Europeanization process which still have to be fully researched. These ‘grey zones’ include analyses of domestic factors. So far they have usually been cited in the Europeanization literature as important variables, but they are still mostly treated as ‘a black box’ or have only been partially revealed (e.g. by taking into account veto players, NGOs, domestic costs, etc.). Of course, in the search for an answer to the question why governments facing very similar EU pre-conditions behave very differently in fulfilling them it is very important to look at the whole range of relevant international, regional and domestic political characteristics. By focusing on domestic factors in this paper we seek to contribute to closing the mentioned gap in research. Our focus is further narrowed to national party system mechanics in their responses to EU demands. We hypothesize that possible explanatory variables leading to the very different characteristics seen in party system mechanics are: (a) the institutionalization of the party system; (b) the European socialization of national parties; and (c) the characteristics of voters’ attitudes to their country’s integration with the EU. The hypothesis is tested on three countries with different relations with the EU at the time of writing: Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro. While testing the hypothesis we also take into account common Europeanization (European Union) pressures and common characteristics (controlled variables) such as former communist rule, involvement in a war and a postponed transition to a democracy. For the analysis we use data gathered within the framework of several research projects","PeriodicalId":313717,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-07-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128800700","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Have democratization processes been a catalyst for the Europeanization of party politics in Slovenia?","authors":"Alenika KraŠovec, Damjan Lajh","doi":"10.1080/14613190802146315","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14613190802146315","url":null,"abstract":"It was connected very closely with two main processes of political modernisation that had happened at the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s. First, there were gradual processes of liberalisation and later democratisation, which were results of social and political struggles between the old Slovenian political elite and the growing civil society, which was the base for new opposition parties","PeriodicalId":313717,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-07-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130481939","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}