The international socialization of the Balkans

Abstract

A basic question in current debates within international relations is whether intergovernmental organizations influence inter-state conflict behavior. Since the beginning of the 1990s, the major actors of the West European security community have been socializing Balkan elites in the practices of appropriate behavior with the purpose of affecting their foreign and security policies. The claim of this study is that Balkan state-interaction with Euro-Atlantic organizations (principally the EU and NATO) leads the latter to propagate norms on accepted practices to Southeast European states. These practices relate to domestic politics and also to inter-state relations. The rules and norms are propagated in a number of ways. These are looked at as processes of socialization by and in international organizations which, in turn, can encourage inter-state cooperation by the Balkan states (that is, because they have adopted similar norms and thus types of practice) and this can initiate the development of a regional security community.