The gravest challenges facing democracy in the Balkans are problems not of ethnicity or postcommunism, but of citizen disaffection and disillusionment.
About the Author
Ivan Krastev is chairman of the Centre for Liberal Strategies in Sofia, a permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, and a New York Times contributing writer.
After a half-century of brutal communist rule and two decades of troubled postcommunist life, this small Balkan state surprised many by achieving a successful turnover of power by means of the…