ABSTRACT
This chapter engages with the debates on hybridity in critical liberal-peace building scholarship to explain the outcomes of EU interventions in the Western Balkans. We adopt a relational analysis, which focuses on the relational aspects of human interaction to account for multiple local dynamics that are both embedded in the fabric of society as well as altered through interaction with the peace-building and state-building intervention. Such an analytical perspective reveals differentiated effects of Europeanisation across and within policy areas. Empirically, we investigate EU policies that have either produced unintended consequences, had counter effects with respect to stated objectives, or proved a qualified success. We propose that these outcomes can be traced to three main shortcomings in the existing EU approach: its state-centric focus, fragmentation across EU’s policy domains and instrumental use of conditionality, which networked actors have been able to exploit to undermine EU’s goals in the region.
