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This chapter offers an in-depth look at health politics and the compulsory health insurance system in North Macedonia. It traces the development of the North Macedonian healthcare system, characterized by the establishment of decentralized free-for-all-at-point-of-delivery health system during communism, which served as a basis for the current system. Since the early 1990s, when North Macedonia declared independence and started a transition towards democracy and a free market economy, North Macedonian health politics focused on permitting private provision, establishing a compulsory health insurance system, and integrating private services in the public insurance. Despite support from international organizations, the reform process was hampered by economic difficulties, inter-ethnic conflict, and the conflict with Greece regarding North Macedonia. As highlighted in the chapter, the main healthcare challenges have been to ensure the insurance system’s fiscal solvency, the conversion of primary care provision from local public health centers into private practices, and, since 2012, the integration of higher level private hospital services into the public system in order to reduce out-of-pocket payments and ensure equal geographical access.

Political conditionality was first introduced by Western governments into their development aid policy a quarter of a century ago, threatening to invoke aid sanctions in the event of human rights abuses or democratic regression in aid recipient countries. This paper examines how political conditionality has evolved in the subsequent years and analyses what has changed and why. It does so through a review of sanctions cases in the EU and the US aid from 2000 to date, with discussion located within the post-2000 international environment in which foreign policy and aid policy are situated. The paper focuses on three regions: sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and North Africa, and Central Asia. Patterns of change and continuity are identified in relation to how political conditionality has been implemented. Our findings are that political conditionality remains a significant policy tool, contrary to the perception that its use has declined. However, while selectivity and inconsistency in policy application continue, security interests have become a more prominent explanatory factor in the post-2000 period. Indeed, the initial normative agenda of political conditionality as a tool for the promotion of democracy and human rights, as stated in policy rhetoric, has been replaced by its use as an instrument to promote Western security interests in line with the securitisation of development.

National minority policies have been considered as one of the most difficult tests of EU conditionality due to their salience at the national level and lack of a common internal standard. As a result, the findings of literature on the role of EU accession conditionality in this policy area have largely been inconclusive. Relying on literature from the Eastern enlargement, this chapter examines the Europeanisation of national minority policies in the pre-accession period studying Croatia and Macedonia, as the first candidate countries for EU membership in the Western Balkans. The analysis focuses on policy areas in which the European Commission has used national legislation as element of conditionality, including the operation of national minority councils in the former and the use of languages in the latter case. The chapter approaches conditionality by tracing the construction of the specific conditions, studying their application and understanding at the national level, and their development over time. It is based on process tracing of official EU documents and data from interviews with EU, national officials and civil society representatives in Brussels, Skopje and Zagreb. The chapter contributes to the study of the role of EU conditionality in national minority policies by demonstrating its flexible nature over time and the potential for polarisation in areas which are not regulated by the EU acquis.

This Introduction explains the origins of the project of exploring citizenship and citizenship-related issues in the framework of Europeanisation in the new states in South East Europe. It defines the terminology used in the contributions and explains the conceptual underpinnings of the project and the structure of the edited collection. Finally, these introductory remarks also give an overview of the contributions to the special issue of Perspectives on European Politics and Societies entitled, ‘The governance of citizenship practices in the post-Yugoslav states: The impact of Europeanisation.'

This paper examines the conditionality in relation to fundamental rights during and after the visa liberalisation dialogues that took place between the European Commission and national governments of the Western Balkans countries in 2009 and 2010. Conceptually, this paper uses the visa liberalisation to study the interactions between the conditionality mechanism and securitisation paradigm in the context of the European Union (EU) justice, freedom and security area. Analysing both the formal benchmarking process and data from stakeholders’ interviews, this paper demonstrates the securitisation and side-lining of fundamental rights during and in the aftermath of the visa negotiations. As a result, this paper informs of unwanted effects of conditionality and questions the role of the EU in promoting fundamental rights.

Summary: The purpose of this article is to examine the different progress of the post-communist world in consolidating democracy, in order to determine the suitability of a collective or group-based examination. The article argues that the post-communist countries should not be analyzed as a single unit, but separately into groups according to the progress in consolidating democracy. Conceptually, the article utilizes Linz and Stepan's five arenas of consolidated democracy. The article employs comparative methodology using empirical data from the Freedom House Nations in Transit reports and specific country reports comparing the particular problems each of the separate groups face. The article highlights the differences in the progress in consolidating democracy between three groups of post-communist countries: the current member of the European Union (EU), the countries of Southeastern Europe, and the non-Baltic former Soviet countries.

This paper examines the implications of the visa liberalisation dialogues which took place between the European Commission and national governments of the Western Balkans for the citizenship regimes of the countries concerned. The visa liberalisation process is approached as a tool of Europeanisation of the area of justice, freedom and security and as an exercise of EU conditionality. The analysis reflects on the negotiations for visa liberalisation as well as the mechanisms established for post-visa liberalisation monitoring. Looking both at the formal benchmarking process and through interviews with stakeholders at the national level, the paper traces how the visa liberalisation process affected the status and rights dimension of citizenship in the region.