At the Crossroads of Multipolarity: The Western Balkans in a Fragmented Order
As global power disperses across multiple centres, the region finds itself navigating a competitive space rather than a settled one.
The assumption that guided two decades of regional policy — that integration into European structures was the only available trajectory — no longer describes how governments in the Western Balkans actually behave.
Hedging as default
What has replaced it is not an alternative alignment but a hedging posture. States maintain the formal accession track while diversifying security, energy and investment relationships across several partners. This is rational under uncertainty, and it is also unstable: hedging works only while no partner demands exclusivity.
Implications for the accession process
The European Union's leverage was always predicated on being the only game in town. Where that premise weakens, conditionality has to be re-argued rather than assumed. The alternative is a process that remains formally open while losing its capacity to shape behaviour.