BB: Between Empowerment and Domination
The picture features a large crowd of people, with a blue overlay. Superimposed on the image is a circle of yellow stars, representing the European Union (EU) flag.
This brown bag presentation introduces PhD research on the European Union (EU)’s engagement with civil society in candidate countries, using Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) as a critical case study. BiH constitutes a particularly relevant case because, as in all EU candidate countries, EU enlargement governance relies heavily on civil society organizations (CSOs) to advance reforms, monitor governance, and support political advocacy. At the same time, the EU deploys largely standardized civil society support frameworks in post-conflict and weak-governance contexts, allowing insights from BiH to speak beyond the specific enlargement setting. Finally, EU engagement in BiH unfolds in a politically, socially, and institutionally fragmented environment, where EU-driven models of civil society are promoted, internalized, negotiated, or resisted, making underlying power relations especially visible.
Robert Dopchie is a research fellow at the Fund for Scientific Research (F.R.S.–FNRS) and a doctoral researcher at the University of Liège (Belgium). His PhD dissertation, Between Empowerment and Domination: The EU’s Civil Society Engagement in Candidate Countries, examines the European Union’s efforts to strengthen civil society organizations in the Western Balkans—particularly in Bosnia and Herzegovina—through the lenses of postcolonial and post-development theories. The research highlights the power dynamics between the EU, Bosnian authorities, and local civil society organizations.
He is the author of several scientific publications, including an article in the European Foreign Affairs Review (2024) and a book chapter published with Palgrave Macmillan (2025).