Explaining an Activist
Military: Greece until 1975.
DIMITRIS TSAROUHAS
The
paper aims at explaining the high degree of the military's
involvement in Greek politics in the 20 century. It argues that
focusing either on Huntington's "professionalization"
thesis or the more sociological accounts of socio-economic
development can hardly give an explanation for the Greek armed
forces' military interventions in political life in general, and
the 1967 coup in particular. In contrast to such explanations, I
suggest an approach based on the Greek armed forces' "dual
character" and the political environment of the post-war
era. The army's tendency to intervene should be viewed primarily
as a result of two major factors: a) the co-existence of two
antithetical syndromes in the self-perception of the officer
corps, and b) the army's identification with the monarchy and
the political right after 1949 in the context of the Cold War.
Bulgaria's Demographic Crisis: Underlying Causes and Some Short-Term
Implications.
ROSSEN VASSILEV
This
article explores the major reasons for the population implosion
in Bulgaria, a Southeast European country that is said to be
threatened with "demographic death." Bulgaria has the
lowest total fertility rate (TFR) ever recorded for a European
country in peacetime-just 1.09 births per woman per lifetime in
2003. It is also the country with the lowest TFR in the world.
What is particularly worrying is that the national fertility
level has dropped well below the replacement level, which is
2.1--2.2 children per woman per lifetime. If that catastrophic
rate persists, each new generation of Bulgarians will be only
about half the size of the preceding one. Because such a
dramatic change in the demographic characteristics of a country
cannot be without serious economic, social, and political
consequences for its future, this article also explores some
implications of Bulgaria's disastrous situation in the field of
demographics.
Who Deserves Kosovo?
An Argument from Social Contract Theory.
MATTHEW WOOD HERBERT1
Talks
to determine the political status of Kosovo will probably begin
this year. Serbia insists it will rule its southern province
again, but 90% of Kosovo's inhabitants demand independence.
Recent policy literature has focused on two themes-the legal
grounds of each side's claim to Kosovo and the security risks of
achieving final status. These approaches, however, plunge
midstream into philosophical issues that must be traced to their
roots in order to answer the question who deserves Kosovo? This
paper argues that state's rights derive from the state's
constitutive obligations, and that Serbia has alienated its
right to rule Kosovo through willful, protracted failure to
uphold its basic obligations there.
The Limits of Conditionality.
RIDVAN PESHKOPIA
In an article that appeared in a previous issue of this journal,
Arolda Elbasani (2004) empirically tested the EU conditionality
effect on Albania. The author argues that Albania's democratic
institutions have been "used and abused" by domestic
political actors in their struggle for power, and she concludes
that "Albanian democratization could have a different
trajectory without the presence of the EU pushing for and
directing reforms."
Without necessarily opposing such a conclusion, I will
argue that both the conditionality approach and Elbasani's
article have shortcomings that preclude them from reaching such
conclusions. Some of the shortcomings in the article are the
product of the theoretical framework in which she places her
argument; others are issues of a problematic research design.
The major flaw in the conditionality approach is that this
theoretical explanation can only fit in with one research
program: the institutionalist one. Second, I think that a
confusing research design in Elbasani's article leads to limited
results. The following two sections discuss each point
separately, while the third, concluding section, summarizes my
argument.
BOOK
REVIEWS
Michael
Mann, The Dark Side of
Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2005. 580 pp., 17.99 GBP/ 24.99 USD, ISBN
0521538548 (paperback), 45GBP/ 70US$, ISBN 052183130X (hardcover).
Reviewed
by EMILIAN KAVALSKI
Paulin
Kola, The Search for Greater Albania. London: Hurst & Co., 2003. 416pp., 21
USD, ISBN 1-85065-596-0 (paperback).
Reviewed by MATHEW HERBERT
Peter Siani-Davies (ed.), International
Interventions in the Balkans since 1995. Routledge. 2003. 224
pp., ISBN 0-415-29834-2 (hardcover).
Reviewed by HAMZA KARCIC
Miroslav Hadzic, The
Yugoslav People's Agony. The Role of the Yugoslav People's Army.
Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002. 293 pp.,49 GBP, ISBN 0-7546-1642-8
(hardcover).
Reviewed by FLORIAN BIEBER
EXCHANGE OF VIEWS:
The New Balkans: Disintegration and Reconstruction edited by George A.
Kourvetaris, Victor Roudometof,
Kleomenis Koutsoukis, and Andrew G. Kourvetaris
TINA
MAVRIKOS-ADAMOU
BILJANA RADONJIC
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