Liberalism and Tradition in the Nineteenth-Century Balkans: Toward History and Methodology of Political Transfer

In: East European politics and societies: EEPS, Band 26, Heft 4, S. 668-692

Abstract

The article sets off from a discussion of some methodological and theoretical issues pertinent to the study of ideological and institutional transfer between "centre" and "periphery" in nineteenth-century Europe. While taking into account the asymmetry in radiation and reception, it probes into the (Balkan) periphery's political and cultural agency in reformulating and re-institutionalizing the "western model." Rather than simply tracing movements, flows and circulation – the conventional concern of the transnational approach – the focus is on studying the transformations which occur in the process. This makes it possible to highlight the dynamics and versatility of ideational and institutional selection, interpretation, adaptation and transformation (or subversion) – in brief, the process of re-signification of ideas and institutions. The article then proceeds by exemplifying this approach in two directions. First, it examines several main channels and agents of transfer to and within the Balkan periphery illuminative of the ways ideas, practices and institutions traveled and mutated in the course of their journey; second, it surveys several characteristic instances of transfer of liberal ideas and institutions in the Balkans focusing on their legitimization and "domestication" which underscore the semantic and functional reinterpretations of modernity and tradition in the process.