From ‘Balkanization’ to ‘Europeanization’ of the the Western Balkan countries
Tamara Radovanovik, MsC

Abstract
From ‟90s onwards the region had undergone through a number of important transformative processes, moving from a Balkanization paradigm towards an Europeanization one. The paper will try to focus on the major processes and trying to analytically distinguishing among them. Although it acknowledge that the transformations have been sometimes running in parallel and that there is no clear-cut of when a process ends and when the other starts, I will propose – for analytical reasons – three main distinguishable stages to look at the Western Balkans; that of nation- and state-building (the „last Balkanization‟), the (delay) transition and the (pre-) Europeanization process, conceptualizing so the many and complex transformations in the region as „multiple stages‟. What it is argued here is that “the Western Balkans can be Europeanized.The problems with the Europeanization of the Western Balkans do not rest only on the formal compliance to the EU requirements. Their greatest challenge will be to abandon practices of the past, so become „behaviourally Europeanized‟. The success of the Balkans is tied to the integration of all states from the region into the EU and NATO structures. The disintegration in the past must be substituted with the integration into Europe based on values and interests in common.

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