Dear colleagues,

Issue 1, 2017, of “Südosteuropa. Journal of Politics and Society” has just been published. Timofey Agarin is guest editor of this issue’s thematic section focusing on “Changes in the Narratives of Europeanization.”
Is Europeanization still a pertinent project? Does it designate a process or a narrative and what are the effects of either approach upon the scholarly engagement with Europe? Is Europeanization simply a normative framework or the result of the interaction between the EU and its member and candidate states? Questions such as these are at the focus of the current issue of Südosteuropa, which takes a critical view at the concept of “Europeanization” from the background of the contemporary European crisis. With an explicit political science focus, this issue’s contributions examine practices and discourses of and about Europe in their interaction with the states of the Western Balkans and the local dynamics that they engender.
Through a comparative study of Macedonia and Bulgaria, Nevena Nancheva ponders on whether EU’s supranational context can provide an apposite framework of desecuritization with the capacity to improve minority/majority relations in the Balkans. Michael Potter examines the position of minorities in Kosovo with reference to the power sharing mechanisms installed through the local constitution and Kosovo’s status as candidate state of the EU. Anastasiia Kudlenko focuses on police and intelligence reforms as state-building tools in Bosnia-Herzegovina and exemplifies on the basis of the local security sector reform, the multifaceted and complex Europeanization policies of the EU. Niké Wentholt analyses the reasons, why cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was made part of the conditionality for accession to the EU and zooms in on the case of Serbia. She explains the reasons why the EU gave precedence to transitional justice over restorative justice in the region. Laura Wise and Timofey Agarin scrutinize local and national elections in Kosovo in 2013 and 2014 in order to understand voter choices and elite agendas while reflecting simultaneously on the larger question whether the context of European aspirations has led to the normalization of electoral politics in Kosovo. Anna-Lena Hoh emphasizes the explosive political nature of censuses in Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Macedonia, all cases where population numbers are used to determine group rights and/or proportional representation. Timofey Agarin and Gözde Yilmaz analyze the changing narratives of Europeanization and critically evaluate relevant scholarship regarding several issues in relation to EU candidate countries in the Western Balkans and Turkey.

Finally, in an illustrated report, Paul Reef analyses Macedonia’s Colourful Revolution and the elections of 2016 against the background of the criticism and protests aroused by the Skopje 2014 urban reconstruction project.

The journal is available in print from De Gruyter Oldenbourg and online at https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/soeu.2017.65.issue-1/issue-files/soeu.2017.65.issue-1.xml. The book reviews are available in open access at recension.net.

Best regards,
Augusta Dimou