Sažetak
The paper seems to analyse in which ways EU accession can act as a potential source of ontological (in)security by using the case of North Macedonia. After outlining the social and material environment that constitutes the Macedonian identity and in turn acts as a source of ontological security, a qualitative content analysis of 61 text units that were authored by members of Macedonian parliamentary parties is employed. The sample of texts is thereby centred around two critical situations that contested the social and material environment of the Macedonian identity, namely the announcement of the Bulgarian veto in 2020 and the acceptance of the French proposal in 2022. The results of the analysis demonstrate that EU enlargement can both serve as a source of ontological security and insecurity. While governmental parties see EU membership as a protection of the Macedonian identity, the opposition connects the current enlargement framework to its disappearance. Through support from the public and the low credibility of the enlargement policy, the perceived threat towards the own identity that is articulated by the opposition can further slowdown North Macedonia’s pathways to EU membership. The article, therefore, illustrates how an accession process can become deadlocked due to ontological insecurity of parts of the political elite, underlining the importance of intra-state dynamics for the understanding of cases of ontological security.
Ključne reči
Reference
Authors retain copyright of the published papers and grant to the publisher the non-exclusive right to publish the article, to be cited as its original publisher in case of reuse, and to distribute it in all forms and media.
The published articles will be distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY). It is allowed to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format, and remix, transform, and build upon it for any purpose, even commercially, as long as appropriate credit is given to the original author(s), a link to the license is provided and it is indicated if changes were made. / The published articles will be distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 4.0 International license (CC BY-SA). It is allowed to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format, and remix, transform, and build upon it for any purpose, even commercially, as long as appropriate credit is given to the original author(s), a link to the license is provided, it is indicated if changes were made and the new work is distributed under the same license as the original.
Users are required to provide full bibliographic description of the original publication (authors, article title, journal title, volume, issue, pages), as well as its DOI code. In electronic publishing, users are also required to link the content with both the original article published in Journal of Regional Security and the licence used.
Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
Authors are permitted to deposit author’s pre-print / author’s post-print (accepted version) / publisher's version (PDF) of their work in an institutional repository, subject-based repository, author's personal website (including social networking sites, such as ResearchGate, Academia.edu, etc.), and/or departmental website prior or during the submission process / at any time after the acceptance of the manuscript / at any time after publication.
Full bibliographic information (authors, article title, journal title, volume, issue, pages) about the original publication must be provided and links must be made to the article's DOI and the license.