Understanding the Complexity: Europeanization in the Western Balkans

This paper aims to review some important ideas, conceptualizations and definitions of  Europeanization from the perspectives of the European integration processes in the Western Balkans region. Europeanization can be understood not only as a modernization process with its norms and values, but also as changes in the substance and process of democratic governance. The region provides further explanatory tools of Europeanization, such as “Balkanization,” in terms of closing up the process of establishing stable nation-states or a “quasi-Metanarrative” which provides a virtually new meaning to political life in the region. The paper’s goal is also to explain the specificities related to the processes of Europeanization in this rapidly transforming region of Europe.