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Introduction -- The EU enlargement approach and conflict transformation -- The EU, Croatia and Serbia, 1990-99 -- EU enlargement : evolution, lesson learning and policy impact -- The impact on Croatia -- The impact on Serbia -- EU intervention : shortcomings and successes -- Conclusion : integrating peace.

Abstract. European Union (EU) enlargement has important implications for the political and economic transition for the candidate and 'potential' candidate states of the Western Balkans. Similarly, the enlargement approach has effects on the functionality of EU enlargement. The article explores the development of the relationships between the EU and the Balkans and the politics and functionality of EU enlargement approach. The article examines how through a process of lesson learning and institutional reflexivity the development of the EU enlargement approach has impacted the technical and political basis and operation of the EU enlargement approach. This has evolved because of the interplay of factors, which includes institutional reflexivity within and among key agencies. Consequently, the EU has significantly extended political conditionality, the timeframe for accession, and the mechanisms for enlargement. Hence, the article concludes that EU enlargement has conformed to the policy-learning model with consequences for the enlargement to the Balkans.

McDowell and Braniff explore the relationship between commemoration and conflict in societies which have engaged in peace processes, attempting to unpack the ways in which the practices of memory and commemoration influence efforts to bring armed conflict to an end and whether it can even reactivate conflict as political circumstances change.

Commemoration as Conflict provides an exploration of how the various practices and processes of commemoration, which involve both intangible representations and tangible material forms, can contribute both to the success or failure of peace processes in societies attempting to make the transition from armed conflict to some form of political accommodation. It considers the difficulties faced by conflictual parties in a peace process in reconciling their partisan practices of commemoration and material landscapes of memorialisation, which are often aimed at enhancing ethnic or group solidarity and integrity and territoriality, with the more pluralist context of a peace process. In thinking about these issues it draws upon a range of examples including Israel/Palestine, the former Yugoslavia, Northern Ireland, Sri Lanka, the Basque Country and South Africa. In this unique book, McDowell and Braniff attempt to unpack the ways in which processes of memorialisation can influence efforts to bring armed conflict to an end and asks whether it can exacerbate or even reactivate conflict as political circumstances change.

Brexit poses unique and disproportionate challenges to Northern Ireland, and has laid bare the frailties of power‐sharing, argue Máire Braniff and Sophie Whiting. Political leaders, they urge, must come together from across the spectrum and place Northern Ireland before the deeply embedded fault lines of nationalism and unionism.