No Stability without Accountability – The West’s Responsibility in Macedonia
No Stability without Accountability – The West’s Responsibility in Macedonia

Author(s): Kurt Bassuener
Subject(s): International relations/trade, Peace and Conflict Studies
Published by: DPC Democratization Policy Council e.V.
Keywords: North-Macedonia; Republic of Macedonia; VMRO-DPMNE, Nikola Gruevski; Western Balkans;
Summary/Abstract: The Republic of Macedonia, once considered an island of relative stability in a troubled region, is now once again in the news, for the first time in almost a decade and a half, on account of internal turmoil. The hostility or opportunism of Macedonia’s neighbors has in the past decade abetted the degeneration of an already clientelistic domestic political culture into one in which neo-authoritarianism has taken strong hold. The Social Democratic Union of Macedonia (SDSM), the political opposition to Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski and his ruling party, the nationalist Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization-Democratic Party for Macedonian National Unity (VMRO-DPMNE), has for months been releasing voice recordings which appear to record internal government deliberations – and demonstrate widespread (and widely believed) malfeasance. Public dissatisfaction with malgovernance has led to demonstrations, while an ethnic separatist narrative which had been in remission for over a decade has been revived with a bloody – and still opaque – security operation against armed ethnic Albanians in the northern town of Kumanovo in early May.

• Details
• Contents