Search results

The bases of the political divisions in Macedonia are hard to explain solely through the traditional theoretical approach based on social structures and values. We include the perceptions of the communist past together with the social structures and values; and use survey data to run a multinomial logistic regression with undecided voters as the base category. Results show that perceptions of communism have the strongest influence on political divisions. Diverging perceptions of communism combine with attitudes toward religious values and shape a cultural left-right dimension. On the other hand, there is an absence of a left-right distinction in economic policies. The finding could be a useful explanation for political divisions in other post-communist countries, where there is an absence of distinction in economic policies.

Many analyses and international reports point out that there is a significant lack of judicial control over the state executive power in the Republic of North Macedonia. This article aims to analyze the deficiencies that contribute to the lack of control, and special attention is also devoted to the administrative judiciary as a basic external form of providing judicial control over the legality of the decisions of public authorities and their officials, in order to ensure objective legality, as well as the protection of individual rights of citizens against unlawful administrative acts and actions of public administration. The first part of the article focuses on challenges for judicial control of the executive government. It shows the results of semi-structured interviews conducted with 36 stakeholders such as judges and prosecutors about the limits to judicial control of the executive. The second part focuses on weaknesses and challenges of the administrative judiciary, and makes proposals on how to improve the administrative judiciary as a special type judiciary within the framework of the judicial system of the Republic of North Macedonia. Therefore, it presents a crucial illustration to detect the specific problems and to offer possible solutions. ; Mnoge analize i međunarodna izvješća ukazuju na to da u Republici Sjevernoj Makedoniji postoji značajan nedostatak sudske kontrole nad izvršnom vlašću države. Ovaj članak ima za cilj analizirati nedostatke koji doprinose nedostatku kontrole, a posebna se pažnja posvećuje i upravnom sudovanju kao osnovnom vanjskom obliku pružanja sudske kontrole zakonitosti odluka državnih tijela i njihovih službenika, kako bi se osigurala objektivna zakonitost, kao i zaštita pojedinačnih prava građana od nezakonitih administrativnih akata i radnji javne uprave. Prvi dio članka fokusiran je na izazove koji se pojavljuju u sudskoj kontroli izvršne vlasti. Iznose se rezultati polu-strukturiranih intervjua provedenih sa 36 sudionika, poput sudaca i tužitelja, o ograničenjima sudske kontrole izvršne vlasti. Drugi dio se fokusira na slabosti i izazove upravnog sudovanja, te daje prijedloge kako poboljšati upravno sudovanje kao posebne vrste sudovanja u okviru pravosudnog sustava Republike Sjeverne Makedonije. U tom smislu nalazi predstavljaju ključnu ilustraciju za otkrivanje specifičnih problema i za pružanje mogućih rješenja.

Despite the remarkable scholarly attention to populism and populist parties, the relation between populism and religion remains understudied. Using evidence from two long-term ruling populist parties – Turkey's Justice and Development Party and Macedonia's Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organisation-Democratic Party for Macedonian National Unity – this study focuses on how and why religion can be an instrument for populist politics at three levels: (i) discursive, (ii) public policy and (iii) institutionalised alliances with religious authorities. The study highlights that religion comes into play at these three levels once populists attain comfortable electoral margins but encounter mounting political and economic challenges that can potentially weaken their grip on power. Ruling populists co-opt and monopolise the majority religion in the name of 'the people's will' as they increasingly undermine democratic legitimacy but they need to justify their systematic crackdown on dissent, the system of checks and balances, the rule of law and minorities. The empirical findings of the study also demonstrate the dual function of religion for populists: its catch-all potential to create cross-class and cross-ethnicity popular support, and its instrumentality to discredit dissent as 'religiously unfit' while constructing an antagonism of 'the people' versus 'the elites'.

This article explores the EU's role in ethnic conflict management in Macedonia-once a favourite success story, now a case whose outcome appears increasingly uncertain. Through a historic and conceptual overview of the relations between EU/EEC and the Republic of Macedonia, this study analyses whether the EU's intervention can be considered a success. The paper examines the impact of the EU during the pre-conflict period, in the armed conflict in 2001 itself, in shaping the mediation effort leading to the Ohrid Framework Agreement, and in the management of the post-conflict phase. The EU's role as a power broker in de-escalating the armed conflict in 2001 and in securing the Ohrid Agreement occurred, it is argued, because of the EU's promotion of a perception that Macedonia had a clear perspective for EU membership. The prolonged stalemate in the accession process between Macedonia and the EU since the agreement has induced widespread skepticism about the credibility of the EU's incentives for compliance and the good faith of the EU as a conflict manager, thus threatening to destabilize Ohrid. (Ethnopolitics)

"Im Jahr 2001 stellte Makedonien seinen EU-Beitrittsantrag, vier Jahre später erhielt das Land den Kandidatenstatus. Sowohl die politische Elite als auch große Teile der Bevölkerung verbinden viele Hoffnungen mit der EU-Mitgliedschaft. Gleichzeitig herrscht aber auch das Bewusstsein, dass diese kein Allheilmittel gegen die größten Probleme des Landes wie Arbeitslosigkeit und Korruption sein wird." (Autorenreferat)