With more than 25 years since the collapse of communism, the end of the wars and billions of dollars in aid, the Balkans are still characterized by corruption, state capture, and decidedly unmodern states that are often either weak or authoritarian. Taking the contemporary Balkans as a starting point, Making and Remaking the Balkans studies the region’s history combined with observations based on more than twenty years of field experience.
Robert C Austin is an Associate Professor at the Centre for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies. Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto. In the past, Austin was a Tirana-based correspondent for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty; a Slovak-based correspondent with The Economist Group of Publications; and a news writer with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in Toronto. Austin has written articles for The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star, Southeast European Times, Orbis, East European Politics and Societies and East European Quarterly along with numerous book chapters and two books published separately in Tirana and Prishtina. In addition to his most recent book, Making and Remaking the Balkans, he is the also the author of Founding a Balkan State (2012).