Balkans in Europe Policy Advisory Group and the CEU Democracy Institute and the will jointly organize the online launch of the new BiEPAG policy brief: ‘Outta trust? (Post-)pandemic trust and democratic resilience in the Balkans.’ on Monday, December 13th at 12:00. The event will be streamed live on BiEPAG and Institute’s Facebook page.
The latest BiEPAG study, based on a public opinion poll carried out in the six countries of the Western Balkans, shows that the pandemic has exacerbated the region’s issues with trust in public institutions even further. The analysis finds that the reticence of publics to undergo vaccination is directly linked with mistrust in governments, supporting last year’s research by BiEPAG that warned about the wide diffusion of coronavirus-related conspiracy theories in the region and their relationship with vaccine scepticism.
However, the study also identifies a ‘constituency of change’ with similar characteristics across the region: a picture that opens space to invest trust in new actors able to advance genuine progressive causes in Southeast Europe, beyond and instead of captured institutions and the respective party establishments.
Speakers:
- Tena Prelec, BiEPAG Member, Research Fellow at the Department of Politics and International Relations (DPIR), University of Oxford.
- Jelena Vasiljevic, BiEPAG Member, Research Associate at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory.
- Florian Bieber, BiEPAG Coordinator, Professor of Southeast European History and Politics and Director of the Centre for Southeast European Studies at the University of Graz, Austria.
- Marko Kmezic, BiEPAG Member, Lecturer and Senior Researcher at University of Graz, Center for Southeast European Studies.
- Vedran Dzihic, BiEPAG member, Senior Researcher with the Austrian Institute for International Affairs (OIIP)