To what extent can the observed democratic decline of the Western Balkans – and of Wider Europe in general – be attributed to external geopolitical and geoeconomic influences?
Last year, the (Geo)Politics of Democracy Workshop broached this largely unexplored topic by looking at how regional and global non-democratic actors (Russia, China, Turkey, the Gulf States) affected transitioning democracies through strategic action, transnational linkages, and channels of influence. A key finding was the entanglement between these ‘external’ influences and the illiberal power bases built within the boundaries of the Euro-Atlantic world.
This year’s workshop will broaden this focus to include the effects of the dramatic recent erosion of democracy within the USA, the axis of NATO and a major former sponsor of democracy. This adjustment of focus will follow not only the official – institutional and political – fallout of the US’s backsliding, but also the transatlantic linkages between the religious right and other right-wing groups, which facilitate the transfer of money, talking points, and policy initiatives from the American to the European side of the ocean.
The workshop is organised into four panels in order to assess the combined effect of these antidemocratic tendencies. The first two panels address individually the six Western Balkan countries, for which special rapporteurs have prepared in-depth analyses of foreign antidemocratic influence. The third panel zooms out of the Western Balkans to offer a comparative perspective from Central and Eastern Europe. The fourth panel considers, from the wider European perspective, the interplay between democracy and the transatlantic transfer of authoritarian rhetoric and practices.
This activity is funded/co-funded by the EUI Widening Europe Programme. The EUI Widening Europe Programme, backed by contributions from the European Union and EUI Contracting States, is designed to strengthen internationalisation, competitiveness, and quality in research in Widening countries, and thus foster a more cohesive European Higher Education and Research Area.
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