Covid-19, State-Power and Society in Europe. Focus on Western Balkans

Abstract

Covid-19, State-Power and Society in Europe: Focus on Western Balkans by Neven Andjelic focuses on the changes in political and social freedoms in the Western Balkans before and during the pandemic. In relation to this aim, it draws on the reports of 20 research organizations, including Freedom House, Friedrich Neumann Stiftung and the World Bank, and develops categories such as "open society", "fairly open society", "opening society", "suppressed society" and "closed society" and includes the Balkans, the European Union, the countries in the region and Türkiye in the analysis. Although this study is important because it has been carried out from a perspective dealing with the course of freedoms based on a comparison of pre-pandemic and pandemic process, it should be indicated that lack of an inquiry into the reliability and validity of the studies used and the lack of sufficient employment of other relevant researches are among the prominent shortcomings of this study.