RICERCA ITALIANA     

Pluralism and constitutional transition in the Western Balkans: rights and guarantees

Università degli Studi di Trento

Abstract

Comparative analysis of different constitutional aspects of transition from the socialist "Form of the State" to democratic,
pluralistic, liberal and social constitutionalism and evaluation of the influence of externally determined criteria in the process of
gradual integration of the States in the Balkans into the European constitutional space.
The single local research units will analyse the following constitutional aspects in a coordinated and interrelated manner: the
institutions and techniques of democratization, the economic constitutions, the principle of the rule of law and the protection of fundamental rights, forms and models of public administration, in particular at local level, as well as the principle of pluralism in its territorial and socio-cultural dimensions. These aspects can be considered to be the most important elements in the constitutional transitions of the States in the Western Balkans: they are characteristic for liberal-democratic legal systems in general, but at the same time – because of the traumatic experiences of the 1990ies – their full realization and application might serve as a fundamental indicator in the evaluation of the progress made by these States on their way to integration into the European constitutional space.
In the logic of the gradual process of integration into the European constitutional space, the circulation of legal models as well as
the concrete influence of international and >>>

Principal Investigator

Roberto TONIATTI Università degli Studi di TRENTO

Research Objectives

This Research Program will analyse the Constitutions of the States in the Western Balkans (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Serbia and Montenegro, including Kosovo) and their current process of constitutional transition from a comparative perspective and in the light of European constitutional models. The latter can be considered to be the source of external and imposed criteria in the application of the Stabilisation and Association Agreements as well as in the gradual process towards the European constitutional space and the final objective of full integration of the Balkans into the European Union.
The research regarding the complex process of bringing the mentioned States closer to the European constitutional space with its three major areas (European Union, Council of Europe and Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe), will focus on the changes and transformations of their constitutional systems. It will particularly concentrate on the reception and implementation of models which are the expression of the Western Legal Tradition. From a methodological perspective, the research will be mainly based on legal comparison: between the Balkans and other European States as well as between the various States within the Balkans in order to verify the usefulness of a common, regional approach for the entire area.
In the end, a careful study of the application of the criteria for accession to the different organizations of the >>>

Timescale

24 months

National and international background

This Research Program is based on various studies belonging to the emerging sub-discipline of "transitology" which has developed in the last decades of the 20th century, above all in the legal and political sciences (cf. Luca Mezzetti, Teoria e prassi delle transizioni costituzionali e del consolidamento costituzionale, Padova, 2003). This strand of multidisciplinary research studies the phenomena of transition as they have occurred in different periods of time and geographical areas.
In the 1970ies, a first important period is marked by the transformation of some Southern European States – Greece, Portugal and Spain – from an authoritarian "Form of State" towards a liberal model. Some years later, similar phenomena occurred throughout Latin America (see, e.g.: Transitions from authoritarian rule: tentative conclusions about uncertain democracies, Guillermo O'Donnell and Philippe C. Schmitter (eds.), Baltimore et al., Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1989), and, again in a European context, after the fall of the Berlin wall in the States of Central and Eastern Europe. To be more precise, in the latter cases, economic transition added to the political and legal one, marking the change of these systems to a free – and social – market economy (see VERGOTTINI DE G., Le transizioni costituzionali, Bologna, il Mulino 1998). While the Central and Eastern European countries will soon be members of the European Union, and Bulgaria and Romania (Eastern Balkans) have at least acquired >>>