The Slovenian presidential election picked up a bit of unexpected momentum in the past ten days or so with the emergence of what seem to be the two most credible challengers to current #instapresident Borut Pahor to date. Marjan Šarec (left) and Milan Jazbec (right) are challenging president Borut Pahor this…
Politics
Putting Ideology Aside: An Unholy Alliance to Keep Croatia’s Government Alive
Croatia is (un)fortunately a small enough country not to be on the radar of the world’s major media most of the time, but what has been unfolding on the political scene in recent weeks and months has provided the public with some truly engaging political theater, resembling something between an overwrought…
Albania is Emptying at an Alarming Rate
Since the summer of 2015, the number of Albanians requesting asylum in Western Europe has risen dramatically. Although the number of asylum requests dropped during 2016, the number of people migrating illegally has continued to grow. Balkanist spoke with several Albanians in different countries and asked them why they chose…
Playing With Fire: Using Coordinated Nationalism for Election Success in Croatia
Faced with a political maelstrom, Croatia’s Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic turns to the guaranteed recipe for success in the Balkans – nationalism. Hoping to conceal the failures of his government behind a scandal-ridden right-wing singer, he shows that he is made of the same cloth as many a politician before…
We Asked: What’s Next for Macedonia?
Yesterday, President Gjorgje Ivanov finally granted former opposition leader Zoran Zaev a mandate to form a new government, effectively ending a two-year political crisis. But much work remains to be done. We asked people in Macedonia about what’s next for the country, what kinds of challenges the new government is likely to…
The Toppling of the “Ancien Régime”: New Parties Expected to Transform the French Political Scene
The results of today’s elections will mark the beginning of a new era in French politics. The two parties that have dominated the country’s political scene for the past century suffered humiliating losses in the first round, and must now depend on new parties for entry into the governing coalition and…
A Slow Conservative Revolution? Academia, Clientelism and the Right in Croatia
What’s wrong with Croatian academia? Andrew Hodges explains how new criteria has created barriers to entering academia and is pushing the country’s public discourse further and further towards the political right. (Croatian version follows the English). ‘Rational and National’ reads a poster slogan advertising Bruna Esih’s candidacy for the position of Mayor of…