CALL FOR PAPERS, "The Western Balkans at the crossroads of European integration and emerging powers", CEFIR - ULiège, deadline December 14, 2018

Call for papers

International conference

 The Western Balkans at the crossroads of European integration and emerging powers

Center for International Relations Studies (CEFIR)

Faculty of Law, Political Science and Criminology

Liège University (ULiège)

Thursday, 28 march 28, 2019

Liridon Lika, researcher at CEFIR, ULiège

The Center for International Relations Studies (CEFIR) of the Department of Political Science of the University of Liège (ULiège) is launching a call for papers for an international conference entitled: The Western Balkans at the crossroads of European integration and emerging powers.

The Western Balkans region is currently composed of six states: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia. As part of this event, both the bilateral relations between the six countries of the Western Balkans and the triangular relations between the Western Balkans, the European Union (EU) and the emerging powers will be analyzed simultaneously.

The EU enlargement process has slowed down in recent years for reasons both internal and external to the Western Balkan countries and to the EU itself.

The financial and economic crisis in the EU between 2007 and 2014 affected the economies of the Western Balkans, particularly in areas of foreign direct investment (FDI), private finance and remittances. The overall bilateral political and economic problems of the Western Balkan countries combined with the political and economic setbacks of the EU and the ‘fatigue of enlargement’ have contributed to the creation of a relative power vacuum in the region. Meanwhile, emerging countries, such as Russia, Turkey, China or Saudi Arabia, are steadily increasing their presence in the region. The projection of their influence in the Western Balkans is to varying degrees and fields as diverse as political, economic, financial, commercial, military, cultural or religious.

Therefore, in the face of this changing international context, the EU and some of its Member States have raised awareness by recently launching several enlargement initiatives (the Berlin Process since 2014, a new enlargement strategy of the European Commission of 2018 or the Sofia Summit of 2018).

This conference aims to answer the central question of the challenges posed by the penetration of emerging powers in the Western Balkans for the EU’s deployment in this region. In other words, it aims to analyze the new international balance of power in the context of the diffusion of global power. This question comes in several sub-questions: what are the interests of the EU in the Western Balkans? What are the interests of the emerging powers in the region? How do Western Balkan countries position themselves in relation to the EU and the emerging powers? Does the assertive presence of emerging powers in the Western Balkans present challenges for European enlargement? Are the strategies of the EU and the emerging powers competing or complementary? This conference will try to provide answers to these various questions.

Calendar and practical arrangements:

We are waiting for your proposals for papers (maximum 500 words) and your biographies (maximum 200 words), by Friday, December 14, 2018, at the latest. They must be sent to Liridon Lika at the following address: Liridon.Lika@uliege.be

The proposals will be evaluated anonymously by the scientific committee.

The decision of the Scientific Committee will be communicated to you on Monday, January 14, 2019.

In case the communication proposal is accepted, we are waiting for the final contribution for Friday 1st March 2019.

A publication will flow from this event. All participants will have the opportunity to publish an original contribution – after positive external evaluation – in a collective book. Contributions must not exceed 35,000 characters (spaces included), Times New Roman, font size 12, line spacing 1.5.

The deadline for receipt of texts for the realization of a collective book will be Friday, May 31, 2019.

The conference will be held on Thursday, March 28, 2019 in the room “salle du Conseil” at the Faculty of Law, Political Science and Criminology of the University of Liège, Quartier Agora, Place des Orateurs 3, Building B31, Sart-Tilman, 4000 Liège (Belgium).

Additional Information:

Conference languages: French and English

Language of the publication: French

The communication of each speaker will last a maximum of 20 minutes, in order to leave about fifteen minutes to the discussant as well as to the assembly to discuss the contribution presented.

Scientific committee:

Afrim Krasniqi, Academy of Albanian Studies, Albania

Bashkim Iseni, Friborg University, Switzerland

Jacques Rupnik, Research Director, CERI, Sciences Po, France

Jean-Christophe Defraigne, University Saint-Louis – Brussels, Belgium

Kamal Bayramzadeh, University Paris XIII and Liège University, France and Belgium

Sebastian Santander, CEFIR, Liège University, Belgium

Vjosa Musliu, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium

Xhabir Hamiti, Prishtina University, Kosovo

Organizer

Liridon Lika, CEFIR, Liège University, Belgium