ABSTRACT
The central political and economic challenges (some would say requirements) in the post-Communist Balkan states, as in most of the former Soviet republics, are to move away from the ascendancy of often gangsterish ‘power clans’ based upon massive and clientelistic power relations and corruption, the primacy of ‘ethnic collectivism’ and what Russians call ‘the verticality of authority’, towards ‘horizontally structured’ civil societies and civil economies based upon limited government, the rule of law and ‘level playing fields’. As this book has repeatedly argued, such changes are required to lay the indispensable foundations for more liberal, accountable and law-governed forms of democracy and capitalism. Since 1999, the prospect of eventual EU membership has been giving the formerly Communist-ruled Balkan countries the most powerful opportunities, incentives, support and political leverage to make these very difficult changes. This is the main reason why such changes have latterly been making so much more headway in the Balkans than in most of the former Soviet republics, which have been given much less reason to hope that they can realistically aspire to EU membership in the foreseeable future (although that hasn’t stopped some of the latter from indulging in a lot of wishful thinking).
