The Rise and Fall of Peacebuilding in the Balkans

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-x

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2. Peacebuilding in the Balkans

   • Roberto Belloni

   Pages 1-25

3. The Evolution of Peacebuilding

   • Roberto Belloni

   Pages 27-52

4. Dayton, or Liberal Imposition

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 53-53

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   2. Stability and the Anti-corruption Agenda

      • Roberto Belloni

      Pages 55-79

   3. Addressing the Symptoms Through Civil Society Building

      • Roberto Belloni

      Pages 81-106

5. Brussels, or the Power of Attraction

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 107-107

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   2. EUtopia and the Pull of Integration

      • Roberto Belloni

      Pages 109-134

   3. Western Balkans Transitions and the Role of the European Union

      • Roberto Belloni

      Pages 135-169

6. Tuzla, or the Local Turn

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 171-171

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   2. Local Views: Scepticism Towards Europe and Its Consequences

      • Roberto Belloni

      Pages 173-202

   3. Undoing International Peacebuilding from Below?

      • Roberto Belloni

      Pages 203-228

   4. Conclusions

      • Roberto Belloni

      Pages 229-243

7. Back Matter

   Pages 245-250

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This book examines the evolution of liberal peacebuilding in the Balkans since the mid-1990s. After more than two decades of peacebuilding intervention, widespread popular disappointment by local communities is increasingly visible. Since the early 2010s, difficult conditions have spurred a wave of protest throughout the region. Citizens have variously denounced the political system, political elites, corruption and mismanagement. Rather than re-evaluating their strategy in light of mounting local discontent, international peacebuilding officials have increasingly adopted cynical calculations about stability. This book explains this evolution from the optimism of the mid-1990s to the current state through the analysis of three main phases, moving from the initial ‘rise’, to a later condition of ‘stalemate’ and then ‘fall’ of peacebuilding.

• peacebuilding
• Balkans
• pragmatism
• European Union
• corruption
• informal actors
• informal institutions
• clientelism
• civil-society
• anti-corruption
• NGOs
• EU englargement
• soft power
• local ownership
• unemployment
• self-determination claims
• Euroscepticism
• geopolitics
• social movements
• civic activism
• european union politics

“The Rise and Fall of Peacebuilding in the Balkans does an excellent job of weaving together insights from Belloni’s early work on civil society, institutional design and refugee return with his more recent focus on topics such as corruption and Euroscepticism. … the book is well suited to researchers and students looking for a one-stop overview of the rise and fall of the international peacebuilding experiment through the prism of one of its most prominent regional laboratories.” (Laurence Cooley, International Peacekeeping, October 13, 2021)

• Sociology and Social Research, University of Trento, Trento, Italy

  Roberto Belloni

Roberto Belloni is Professor of International Relations at the University of Trento, Italy. He has written extensively on peacebuilding and democratization, with particular reference to the Balkans. He is the holder of the Jean Monnet Chair ‘The European Union and the Western Balkans: Enlargement and Resilience’ (2018-2021).   

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