'Euroscepticism, Minority Rights, and Identity Politics: The Cases of Croatia and Serbia', Chapter 3, Cross-regional Ethnopolitics in Central and Eastern Europe: Lessons from the Western Balkans and the Baltic States, 2022, (Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke) (original) (raw)

the patterns of Euroscepticism among smaller political parties. Primary attention is paid to why and how the management of ethnic relations may interweave with Eurosceptic sentiment in the two country cases. Complementary attention is paid to the intersections between Euroscepticism and the thematic areas of: geopolitics; gender-related issues and rights for sexual minorities (LGBTQI communities); and the 'new' identity politics of immigration. Euroscepticism among Croatia's political parties appears to be multifaceted, with an emphasis on domestic ethnopolitics; gender-related themes; and, to a certain extent, economic anxieties. Meanwhile, the Euroscepticism of Serbian political parties seems to have become 'singleissue' with a major stress on geopolitics. Nevertheless, the governing apparatuses of Croatia and Serbia converge on their pragmatic and adaptive employment of Euroscepticism. This demarcates the tactical and 'situationally adaptive' adjustments of HDZ and SNS from the more ideological and pervasive dominance of socially conservative agendas among ruling parties of the conservative right in the 'Visegrad Four' group of states (e.g. FIDESZ and PiS). The timeframe of this chapter concentrates on Euroscepticism in Croatia and Serbia from the 2000s until nowadays with references to earlier stages where deemed necessary. This chapter is situated inside the framework of a qualitative political analysis and has been organised as a thematic and paired comparison (Tarrow, 2010). A paired comparison can correct generalisations from single case studies and test the validity, or universality, of older conclusions that the researcher has reached. It can operate as an intermediate step between a single case study, which suggests a general relationship, and a multi-case analysis that tests or refines a theory. This chapter has additionally relied on: (a) legal documents concerning minority rights, expert reports, and public surveys; (b) semi-structured interviews with political representatives and government officials, journalists, NGOs, and locally based academic researchers (political scientists, sociologists, and public lawyers) with an expertise in nationalism and Euroscepticism. These interviews were conducted in autumn 2018 and spring 2019. The empirical research is embedded in scholarly, theoretical, and legal literature on: (a) Euroscepticism in Europe and the two country cases; (b) the specificities of minority issues and their management in Croatia and Serbia.