Public Apologies in the Western Balkans: The Shadow of Ambiguity

The path of the Western Balkan countries towards accession to the European Union, together with the presence of legacies of the conflicts of the 1990s, has an impact on the ongoing reconciliation process among these countries. Common foreign policy goals, together with the presence of a large stock of memories of the conflicts, lead to public apologies marked by ambiguities, allowing political actors to reap the benefits of reconciliation while keeping at bay the risk of a domestic backlash. The historical analysis of the different occasions for political apologies among Western Balkan states in the last decade supports such a framework. After the first exploratory approach, several apologies surfaced in the 2003-2007 period but remained partial and ambiguous, with mixed results. A renewed cycle of apologies, in 2010, saw a more comprehensive approach to atonement put in place by the various political actors, with higher perceived sincerity but also a stronger domestic backlash.