Skopje 2014 – Between Belated Nation-Building and the Challenges of Globalisation A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of doctor philosophiae to the Department of Political and Social Sciences of Freie Universität Berlin by Zan Ilieski Berlin, 2017 1 Reviewers: Prof. Dr. Manuela Boatca Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg Institute of Sociology Global Studies Programme Prof. Dr. Katharina Bluhm Freie Universität Berlin Department of Political and Social Sciences Institute for East-European Studies Date of defense: 19 July, 2017 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS TABLE OF CONTENTS...............................................................................................................................3 SUMMARY...............................................................................................................................................9 ZUSAMMENFASSUNG............................................................................................................................12 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION..................................................................................................................16 CHAPTER 2: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK..............................................................................................27 Research problem..................................................................................................................................27 Democracy – a contested notion...........................................................................................................34 Democracy and Populism......................................................................................................................41 National identity and Democracy..........................................................................................................47 Insistence on West-Rest dichotomy.........................................................................................47 Eastern Europe and the Balkans..................................................................................48 Other actors in identity and development politics (transnational non-state elites)................49 Constructing national identity in neo-liberal conditions..............................................53 National development and Democracy.................................................................................................57 The argument for authoritarian rule (economic development first school)...........................57 Political culture determinism (political reorganisation first)..................................................62 Research questions................................................................................................................................68 Hypotheses............................................................................................................................................69 CHAPTER 3: HISTORICAL AND SOCIAL EMBEDDEDNESS OF SKOPJE 2014.........................................72 Political and historical context...............................................................................................................72 The period after Macedonias independence.......................................................................................80 Urban context........................................................................................................................................88 Situational context.................................................................................................................................91 Summary................................................................................................................................................94 3 CHAPTER 4: METHODOLOGY AND METHOD.........................................................................................96 CDA as methodological framework.......................................................................................................96 The principles of CDA according to Wodak...........................................................................................98 Limitations of CDA.................................................................................................................................99 Research design...................................................................................................................................100 The method.........................................................................................................................................101 Macro strategies............................................................................................. .......................101 Linguistic tools........................................................................................................................103 Argumentation analysis..........................................................................................................104 Commemorative public speeches...........................................................................................107 The genre of commemorative speech and myth-making.......................................................107 Data collection.....................................................................................................................................109 Newspapers as a source......................................................................................................................109 Corpus-building from written materials.................................................................................110 Video materials as a source.................................................................................................................114 Corpus-building from video materials (snowballing procedure)............................................116 Documents as source for CDA.............................................................................................................117 Structure of the chapters (a topic and themes oriented study)..........................................................118 Summary..............................................................................................................................................119 CHAPTER 5: ANTIQUISATION POLICY...................................................................................................121 Research question and hypotheses.....................................................................................................121 Governing elites discourses................................................................................................................124 Antiquisation discourses and mythopoesis.........................................................................................124 Understanding of the national identity statically...................................................................126 Genetic versus cultural foundation of identity...................................................................... 128 Rebirth in 100 Steps............................................................................................................................130 Utilisation of the Skopje 2014 as a scene for identity change......................................................131 4 Pro-government cultural elites discourses.........................................................................................133 Understanding of the national identity statically................................................................................133 Challenging the position of Hellenism in world history..........................................................137 Genetic versus cultural foundation of identity....................................................................................139 Renewal of the nation (ethnie)............................................................................................................148 Desired social identity of the supporters (legitimisation discourses)..................................................153 Summary..............................................................................................................................................158 CHAPTER 6: SKOPJE 2014 AS IDENTITY-ALTERATION PROJECT........................................................160 The content and composition of the monuments...............................................................................160 Exaggerated volume and height.............................................................................................163 Inconsistency during the project............................................................................................164 Buildings as elements of the project Skopje 2014...........................................................................166 Disguising the shameful past and subversion of the exiting.................................................167 Belated nation-building using the West as paradigm...........................................................169 Mixing styles and functions....................................................................................................170 Imposing new hegemonic narrative....................................................................................................171 The Museum........................................................................................................................................171