Arolda Elbasani
Arolda Elbasani is a visiting scholar at the Center for European and Mediterranena Studies, NYU, NY; academic supervisor for a project on new statehood, Open Society Foundation Kosovo; and senior analyst for the Wikistrat Consulting Network. She serves as associate editor for the Southeast European and Black Sea Studies since 2016. She also collaborates regularly with various journals and organizations as an external reviewer.
She held research or teaching positions at the Robert Schuman Center for Advanced Studies, Florence; Columbia University; Social Sciences Research Center, Berlin; European University of Tirana and Free University, Berlin.
Her research interest span the fields of comparative politics, post-conflict state building, EU rule of law promotion, contemporary Islam and state-church relations with a focus on new democracies, particularly the Balkans and Turkey. Her articles have appeared at the Journal of European Public Policy, Europe-Asia Studies, Politics and Religion, Democratization, Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, and Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies among others. She has (co)edited 6 books or special journal issues including: External Governance of State-Building in Post-Conflict Kosovo (Southeast European and Black Sea Studies 2018:2); Governing Islam and Religious Pluralism in New Democracies (Balkans and Near Eastern Studies 2017:1); Localizing Islam: National Paradigms, New Actors and Contingent Choices (Nationalities Papers 2017: 4); the Revival of Islam in the Balkans (Routledge 2015) and European Integration and Transformation in the Western Balkans (2013).
Supervisors: Philippe Schmitter
She held research or teaching positions at the Robert Schuman Center for Advanced Studies, Florence; Columbia University; Social Sciences Research Center, Berlin; European University of Tirana and Free University, Berlin.
Her research interest span the fields of comparative politics, post-conflict state building, EU rule of law promotion, contemporary Islam and state-church relations with a focus on new democracies, particularly the Balkans and Turkey. Her articles have appeared at the Journal of European Public Policy, Europe-Asia Studies, Politics and Religion, Democratization, Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, and Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies among others. She has (co)edited 6 books or special journal issues including: External Governance of State-Building in Post-Conflict Kosovo (Southeast European and Black Sea Studies 2018:2); Governing Islam and Religious Pluralism in New Democracies (Balkans and Near Eastern Studies 2017:1); Localizing Islam: National Paradigms, New Actors and Contingent Choices (Nationalities Papers 2017: 4); the Revival of Islam in the Balkans (Routledge 2015) and European Integration and Transformation in the Western Balkans (2013).
Supervisors: Philippe Schmitter
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Books by Arolda Elbasani
The extension of EU enlargement policy to the Western Balkans has generated high expectations that enlargement will regulate democratic institution-building and foster reform, much as it did in Central and Eastern Europe. However, there is very little research on whether and how unfavourable domestic conditions might mitigate the transformative power of the EU. This volume investigates the role of domestic factors, identifying ‘stateness’ as the missing link between the assumed transformative power of the EU and the actual capacity to adopt EU rules across the region. Including chapters on Croatia, Serbia, Macedonia, Albania, Kosovo, and Bosnia-Herzegovina, leading scholars in the field offer up-to-date comparative analysis of key areas of institutional and policy reform; including state bureaucracy, rule of law, electoral management, environmental governance, cooperation with the International Court of Justice, economic liberalization and foreign policy.
Looking to the future and the implications for policy change, European Integration and Transformation in the Western Balkans provides a new theoretical and empirical focus on this little understood area. The book will be of interest to scholars and students of EU politics, comparative democratisation, post-communist transitions and Balkan area studies.""
The analysis follows on the rational choice premise that the domestic actors’ strategies of compliance depend on the structure of external incentives i.e. rewards and threats, that appeal to their interest. Our account on the impact of EU conditionality upon democratisation assumes that the likelihood of compliance depends on 1) the size of the rewards attached to conditionality; 2) the size of adoption costs; 3) the clarity of
prescriptions and 4) credibility of reinforcement.
The first part consists of developing a conceptual framework for assessing and explaining the impact of EU enlargement conditionality over democratisation processes. The second part explores the case of Albanian democratisation and the specific challenge it poses to
the working of EU conditionality. The third part analyses the association between EU conditionality and reform seeking to identify whether the fortification of the EU conditionality coincides with a pattern-breaking change in each of the partial regimes of our choice.
The thesis concludes that the EU was more successful to foster reforms in the area of electoral competition than public administration and civil service system. The EU seemed to push forward reforms by articulating clear prescriptions regarding the electoral competition; and advancing contractual relations with the country in function of electoral
performance
Articles by Arolda Elbasani
The extension of EU enlargement policy to the Western Balkans has generated high expectations that enlargement will regulate democratic institution-building and foster reform, much as it did in Central and Eastern Europe. However, there is very little research on whether and how unfavourable domestic conditions might mitigate the transformative power of the EU. This volume investigates the role of domestic factors, identifying ‘stateness’ as the missing link between the assumed transformative power of the EU and the actual capacity to adopt EU rules across the region. Including chapters on Croatia, Serbia, Macedonia, Albania, Kosovo, and Bosnia-Herzegovina, leading scholars in the field offer up-to-date comparative analysis of key areas of institutional and policy reform; including state bureaucracy, rule of law, electoral management, environmental governance, cooperation with the International Court of Justice, economic liberalization and foreign policy.
Looking to the future and the implications for policy change, European Integration and Transformation in the Western Balkans provides a new theoretical and empirical focus on this little understood area. The book will be of interest to scholars and students of EU politics, comparative democratisation, post-communist transitions and Balkan area studies.""
The analysis follows on the rational choice premise that the domestic actors’ strategies of compliance depend on the structure of external incentives i.e. rewards and threats, that appeal to their interest. Our account on the impact of EU conditionality upon democratisation assumes that the likelihood of compliance depends on 1) the size of the rewards attached to conditionality; 2) the size of adoption costs; 3) the clarity of
prescriptions and 4) credibility of reinforcement.
The first part consists of developing a conceptual framework for assessing and explaining the impact of EU enlargement conditionality over democratisation processes. The second part explores the case of Albanian democratisation and the specific challenge it poses to
the working of EU conditionality. The third part analyses the association between EU conditionality and reform seeking to identify whether the fortification of the EU conditionality coincides with a pattern-breaking change in each of the partial regimes of our choice.
The thesis concludes that the EU was more successful to foster reforms in the area of electoral competition than public administration and civil service system. The EU seemed to push forward reforms by articulating clear prescriptions regarding the electoral competition; and advancing contractual relations with the country in function of electoral
performance
However, the region’s reputation as Europe’s ‘trouble-making periphery’ promised to change at the turn of the 2000s, when the European Union (EU) expanded its concept of enlargement to include all Balkan countries left out of the previous wave of enlargement. The EU’s ‘unequivocal support for the European perspective of the Western Balkans’ (European Council 2003), coupled with a regiontailored enlargement policy – the Stabilization and Association Process (SAP) – (Elbasani 2008; Noutcheva 2012) were widely promoted as the anchor of future
reforms. By that time, EU enlargement was held as a success story that contributed to creating peace and stability, inspiring reforms, and consolidating common principles of liberty, democracy as well as market economies, in the previous candidate countries in the East. The EU policy shift towards the
region, on the one hand, and increasing domestic demand for integration, on the other, have generated high expectations that enlargement strategy will work to discipline democratic institution-building and foster post-communist reforms in
the same way that it did in the previous candidates in CEE."
The dilemmas about the immediate ‘dramatic’ crisis then, are more of a question of a ‘stable’ and persistent problem of democracy without RoL, which is apt to radicalization and disruptions. We argue that this kind of democracy without RoL builds on two interrelated phenomena – 1) polarization cum radicalization of the political spectrum; 2) weak and captured institutions unable to serve as trusted mechanisms of peaceful resolution of conflict. Both those factors reinforce a vicious cycle where the polarized political class sees unruly conflict as a means to take over institutions, while evolving institutions are incapable of standing such pressure and commonly become a political weapon. Periodic crisis and disruptions are an expected output of this type of democracy.
country, Albania is a rather unique laboratory for Muslim engagement with Europe, but also a historical precursor of European attempts to incorporate Muslims into the institutional fold of the modern State.2 This century-long policy has formed a pool of useful historical legacies commonly referred toas the Albanian tradition, which is crucial to understand in order to trace the evolution and features of Islam in the present day. Yet, as a post-communist country, which experienced the prompt liberalisation of the religious sphere, including the arrival of foreign movements endowed with different origins and ideas, Albania also reflects a competitive market of religiosity marked by new religious discoveries, open channels of communication, diversification of religious
movements, and new transnational influences.
The growing tally of defective democracies shows that power holders’ reversal and disdain for accountability mechanisms, in particular, and institutional restraints, in general, is a widespread problem among new democracies. The emerging democracies without accountability is a hybrid type of regime that typically rely on elections but features strong rulers, weak or façade institutions, prevailing informality, widespread corruption, personal or party control over decision making apparatus and often submission of check and balances to the will of majorities.
Greece and Albania. The analysis suggests that the potentialsectoral and ad hoc consequences of the crisis could prove dangerous when combined with the overall structural weakness of the economy, which suffers from increasing current balance and budgetary deficits as well as a model of development that relies largely on external sources of revenue."
towards their migrants of Muslim origin and the resulting
transformations of European Muslims in the last two decades.
The book has a comparative edge over earlier studies in the field to the extent that it examines seven European countries hosting a
substantial majority of Muslim migrants and, thus, covers an
almost exhaustive sample of European Muslim experiences. The
analysis draws on an impressive amount of hands-on empirical research – extended visits to all the countries under investigation and 200 multilingual interviews with different stakeholders – gathered during a decade of field work. What makes it stand out as an academic enterprise, however, is the use of the new theoretical lenses – a version of neo-corporatism – to scrutinize state policies that aim to incorporate the newcomer Muslims in the institutional structure of the state. Such an approach enables the author to take Muslims out of the unique and uniform category into which they are usually forced (on account of their beliefs) and instead analze them as part of wider resistant minorities (Catholic, Protestant, Jewish communities and new enfranchised working classes) which were gradually incorporated into the states’ institutional framework at different junctures of the European history."
religious traditions, but also the thriving of new religious movements. The spiritual landscape after communism is certainly different from what it was before the advent of communism.
Indeed, one of the paradoxical developments that have emerged across the former Soviet world is the high number of conversions from traditional religions to new forms of Christianity, and the unprecedented success of ‘passionate’ religious movements in the bustling religious market. If anthropologists’ assumptions that religions tangle individuals into larger networks are true,
how is it possible for people to shift their religious affiliation? Moreover, why has conversion assumed such significant proportions at the turn of the twenty-first century? What made it a conceivable option after the fall of communism? And, why were some religions more attractive than others in the open competitive religious market? This volume is a successful attempt to address these questions, combining long-standing debates that have preoccupied students of religious change, and conversion, with detailed context-related empirical analysis of different cases across the former Soviet Union."
search of the distinctive development, erratic trends and widely
perceived failure of Central Asian republics to make a successful
transition to democracy after the disintegration of the Soviet
Union. The volume seeks to explain the region’s specific
trajectory to independent statehood, focusing on processes of
socialization with competing external norms, emanating not only
the main protagonists of the Cold War, Russia and US, but also
an increasingly influential EU, a myriad of international
organizations and European countries, as well as regional powers
such as Turkey, China, Iran, and Pakistan. At the same time, the
book draws attention to the specific domestic context of awkward
statehood of Central Asian polities – a set of authority structures
and state society relations as well as unpredictable international
behavior – which makes it difficult for the conventional
frameworks to capture the current state of affairs."
persistent questions in social sciences – the challenge and perils of democratic systems as a ceaseless struggle
between the political demos and selected few elites. The question is carried to a contemporary, but equally crucial
phenomena – the transformation of the US political system harbouring ambitions of being the world’s longest democratic
champion and promoter of democracy abroad. The book, thus, raises a very provocative question – does democracy
truly describe the US politics, or is it a cynical gesture used to camouflage a deeply manipulative politics? (242) Could we and/or should we think of an American version of totalitarianism? In that case, how can we notice it?"
the role of EU integration with attention to domestic conditions and politics, in order to explain the state of minority protection
policies in the Balkan states; an approach that has lately become increasingly popular. The book is, thus, an academic endeavour with ambitious objectives. It aims to explain the role of the EU in furthering minority protection; to provide a socio-historical
account of minorities in the context of identity formation and nation-building; to outline the state of minority regimes across
Southeast Europe, and to elaborate on the virtues and problems of various modelsm adopted in the region. Furthermore, this book sets out to provide a rich empirical account of the minority rights in each of the nine national cases under review."
Gabriel Almond Award for Best Dissertation in Comparative
Politics) on the unexpected regeneration of the communist
successor parties in East Central Europe. She seeks to explain why the discredited political actors of the ancien régime, widely despised by their own citizens,
could not only survive the collapse of the old order, but also succeed in conditions of democracy. The main hypothesis is that the practices of the authoritarian regimes led to different configurations of elite political resources consisting in portable
skills and usable past, which in turn determined their organizational and programmatic choices. Utilizing an elite driven
approach she establishes a causal relation between the choice of party transformation strategies and the communist parties’
regeneration operationalized in terms of responsive appeals, electoral support and coalition potentials
The Revival of Islam in the Balkans is a timely addition to the literature with its rich insights and innovative, path-breaking studies. Each chapter, including the introduction and conclusion penned by the editors, challenges mainstream scholarship and shifts the focus from a narrow-minded ethno-national approach to instead pay closer attention to local actors and agents who had largely gone ignored. Those actors and agents do – and likely will continue to – represent new Muslim communities that may play an active positive role in the future of the region. For these reasons, the book is a must-read, and the exceptional editorial work makes it even more appealing and easy to follow. There is no doubt that this book will be a useful reference work on Islam and Islamic practices in general, and on the Balkans in particular.
academic literature and sketching a new analytical framework that focuses on believers’ experiences and relations to faith. Part II explores various case studies that demonstrate how the Muslim faithful actually ‘experience, resist and reinvent…classificatory systems during everyday practice’ (15). And finally, the third part examines precisely how localMuslims engage with the public space and construct arguments to legitimize Islam as part of a complicated process of justifying particular choices inside their various post-Communist polities.
the region. They further contextualize Muslims’ expressions and pursuit of faith in the locales where they operate. Furthermore, the volume offers cross-country parallels, attempting to decipher the ways in which
believers discover and experience their new-found faith. Finally, the authors aim to “conceptualize postcommunist trends of revival of faith, establish patterns and draw conclusions regarding the relationship
between nation, state and faith, as well as traits of religiosity after the collapse of communism.
The book identifies three crucial breaks that help to reconfigure the ways in which Muslims in the Balkans grapple with their beliefs and the salience they gain in their religious lives: the consequences of
decades-long socialist secularization, the new competitive market of religiosity, and the ‘EU-ization’ of the religious sphere.
This volume demonstrates that local Muslim communities have
not only been able to reject foreign influences, but also to construct new methods to theoretically and practically defend their traditional practice. The case studies of this volume also indicate the readiness and
capabilities of Muslim leaders to integrate European human rights vocabulary into Islamic discourse, and a resolution to shape an Islam that will become and remain a constituent part of the European religious
and political landscape.
that the specialists of Islam in the Balkans have left ‘the exploration of the Islamic phenomena to the mercy of nationalism and post-conflict paradigms, which have essentialized religion in line with ethnonational divisions of the day’ (1). In this collective work, Elbasani proposes instead
to focus on the individual forms of faith, insofar as ‘the experiences of religiosity have increasingly become a personalized individual attitude, detached from organized religion and doctrinal official prescriptions’
(3). In her view, the current situation of Islam in the Balkans is imbued with the legacy of secularisation during the socialist period, the appearance of a pluralist religious market, and the Europeanisation
of the religious sphere—all processes that cannot be understood with approaches rooted entirely in terms of ethnonational identity. Elbasani endeavours to fill in this gap with eleven contributions by young researchers, based primarily on participant observation, non-directive interviews or, in some cases, discourse analysis.
through different case studies presented in the volume. One is the role of domestic agents in the process of Europeanisation; and the other is the importance of formal and informal political structures for successful Europeanisation. The authors specifically emphasise the issue of ‘stateness’, that is state authority and bureaucratic capacity, as an area of investigation which connects EU transformative power with the willingness and capacity of domestic elites and institutions to accept and implement EU rules.
Importantly, in this volume, Europeanisation is not treated in its classical dimension, as a top-down impact coming from abroad, but as a dynamic relation between the EU and individual Western Balkan countries. From one side, there is one common reform package coming from Brussels, but on the other hand, Europeanisation in each country is differentiated and is strongly influenced by country-specific factors.