Post-Pandemic World and Western Balkans: Transformative Resilience as the Response to the Consequences of the COVID-19 Pandemic
Sanja Arežina[1]
Abstract
The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has triggered a worldwide and multiple crisis, whose consequences will be felt in the post-pandemic world. The European Union (EU), as a significant stakeholder in international relations, will also suffer serious health, political, economic and social consequences. This will significantly affect the change of perceptions that have been formed within the Western Balkan (WB) countries, which aspire to EU membership, but these countries are currently also facing serious political, economic and social problems. In this article, the author examines the different perceptions of the EU formed in the Western Balkans during the pandemic, the factors that influenced the change in the perception of the WB countries about the EU and the consequences they had on the dynamics of their political, economic and social activities. In order to prove the basic hypothesis that the WB countries will continue to cooperate with other important international actors, primarily China, in order to overcome the crisis in the post-pandemic world and improve their societies when it comes to resilience to shocks and structural changes (the so-called transformative resilience), the author will use structural-functionalist analysis, induction and deduction.
Key Worlds: COVID-19 pandemic, crisis, European Union, Western Balkans, perceptions, China
[1] Sanja Arežina, Ph. D, Counsellor at the Government of the Republic of Serbia and Assistant Professor at University of Belgrade, Serbia.