Wilson Center Experts
John R. Lampe
Senior Scholar
European Studies
Contact Information:
T 202/691-4000
// F 202-691-4001
Expertise:
Europe
Affiliation:
Professor Emeritus, Department of History, University of Maryland, College Park
Wilson Center Project(s):
"Embracing Democracy in the Western Balkans: From Post-Conflict Struggles to European Integration"
Term:
Jan 02, 2006
May 28, 2013
Professor Lampe has proceeded with two current book projects. One, with Emeritus Professor Lenard Cohen, Department of Political Science, Simon Fraser University in Vancouver Canada, Embracing Democracy in the Western Balkans: From Postconflict Struggles Toward European Integration, was published in October 2011 by the Woodrow Wilson Center Press and The John Hopkins University Press. The other is an edited volume, with Professor Constantin Iordachi of Budapest’s Central European University and a group of younger Balkan historians. Battling over the Balkans: Questions and Controversies is scheduled for completion in 2012. Recent publications are Balkans into Southeastern Europe: A Century of War and Transition (London: Palgrave, 2006), now contracted with Palgrave for an expanded Second Edition, and Jugoslavija kao istorija, Dvaput bila jedna zemlja (Belgrade: Dan Graf, 2004) as translated from his Yugoslavia as History, Twice there was a country, 2nd ed. (Cambridge University Press, 2000). Dan Graf is currently preparing a Serbian translation for Embracing Democracy in the Western Balkans. Beginning with Balkan Economic History, 1550-1950 (Indiana University Press, 1982), he has published four other books and numerous journal articles on Balkan issues past and present, while also commenting on current affairs for American radio and television.
Professor Lampe served as Director of the East European Studies program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington from 1987 to 1997. He was a Fellow at the Center in 2003-4 and and has been a Senior Scholar there since 2007. He joined the Washington Institute for Foreign Affairs in 2010. A Foreign Service Officer in the U.S. Department of State from 1964 to 1967, he was Adjunct Chair of Southeast European Area Studies at its Foreign Service Institute from 1980 to 1988. He served as Chair of the Department of History at the University of Maryland from 1997 to 2003.
Expertise
Balkan history and current affairs, European economic history
Major Publications
- Balkans into Southeastern Europe: A Century of War and Transition (Palgrave, 2006)
- Yugoslavia as History, Twice there was a country (Cambridge University Press, 2nd. ed., 2000)
- Yugoslav-American Economic Relations since World War II, co-author (Duke University Press, 1990)
- The Bulgarian Economy in the 20th Century (Croom Helm, 1986)
- Balkan Economic History, 1550-1950, From Imperial Borderlands to Developing Nations, co-author (Indiana University Press, 1982)
Previous Terms at the Wilson Center:
Fellow 2003-2004
Related Content for this Expert
The Politics of Nation-Building: Making Co-Nationals, Refugees and Minorities
May 07, 2013 // 3:00pm — 4:30pm
What drives a state's choice to assimilate, accommodate, or exclude ethnic groups within its territory? In this pathbreaking work on the international politics of nation-building, Harris Mylonas argues that a state's nation-building policies toward non-core groups - any aggregation of individuals perceived as an unassimilated ethnic group by the ruling elite of a state - are influenced by both its foreign policy goals and its relations with the external patrons of these groups.
Information Session: First Agreement Between Serbia and Kosovo of Principles Governing Normalization of Relations
April 24, 2013 // 10:00am — 11:30am
On 19 April 2013, in Brussels, under the auspices of the European Union and EU foreign policy chief Baroness Catherine Ashton, the leaders of Serbia and Kosovo signed “The First Agreement of Principles governing Normalization of Relations.” While there is opposition in both Serbia and Kosovo to the Agreement, it has since been approved by both the parliaments in Belgrade and Prishtina. This information session explores the background to the Agreement and its political implications.
The Third Side of the Cold War: Movement of the Non-aligned States, Yugoslavia and the World
April 03, 2013 // 12:00pm — 1:00pm
Drawing on the private document collections of two former Yugoslav ministers of foreign affairs, Tvrtko Jakovina renders an account of Tito's last years in office and the role Yugoslavia played as the leader of the Movement of the Non-aligned Countries from 1960s until 1990s.
1989 After 1989: Memory in Transition in Central and Eastern Europe
March 14, 2013 // 12:00pm — 1:00pm
The eastern European revolutions of 1989 were a watershed in global history. Despite this, in the two decades since, their meaning has become a source of debate. While they have been promoted as a founding myth for a newly unified Europe, eastern Europeans have repeatedly represented them as a moment of betrayal, martyrdom, liberation, victory, disappointment, loss, colonization, or nostalgia.
The Working Group on the Western Balkans: Confronting Illegitimacy
June 27, 2011 // 10:00am — 3:00pm
The EU and the US agree that the long-term goal for the Western Balkans is European integration. For a variety of reasons, however, progress on this goal has stalled. This series aims at launching a discussion on the hurdles to enlargement in the Western Balkans, the tools available to various international actors in the region, and how these resources might best be applied to reach the goal of integration most efficiently. These meetings, therefore, address issues that are at the core of the making the Transatlantic relationship work.
Embracing Democracy in the Western Balkans
December 07, 2011 // 1:00pm — 2:00pm
"Embracing Democracy in the Western Balkans" explores the complex and challenging facets of state-building and nation-building in weak states with little democratic experience and daunting socio-economic problems.
Serbia and the EU: Assessing the Economic Prospects
April 21, 2010 // 12:00pm — 1:00pm
As elsewhere in the Western Balkans, Serbia made significant strides in the period 203-8 toward becoming the "functioning market economy" specified by the Copenhagen Criteria as a major credential for membership in the European Union.
Embracing Democracy in the Western Balkans: A Progress Report
April 29, 2009 // 12:00pm — 1:30pm
Lenard Cohen, Professor of Political Science, Simon Fraser University; John Lampe, Professor of History, University of Maryland-College Park
Embracing Democracy in the Western Balkans
Dec 08, 2011In this volume, Cohen and Lampe offer a comparative, cross-regional study of the politics and economics of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Kosovo, and Albania from 1999 until the present.
133. Bulgaria's Best and Worst of Times
Jul 07, 2011March 1997 - Two March meetings at the Wilson Center outlined the economic catastrophe and unprecedented political promise which have crowded into this small country. The political promise, only in part the consequence of catastrophe, must fulfill the long-delayed privatization of major enterprises and banks and construction of an iron-clad framework for legal business and transform the Bulgarian economy. Its partial criminalization over the past few years makes the legal framework, as John Lampe's recent trip reminded him, a crucial priority. Only full-scale reform will allow the economy to service its present foreign debt, attract private investment, and mobilize its domestic resources, human as well as financial.
131. Pluses and Minuses In The Croatian and Macedonian Economies
Jul 07, 2011January 1997 - Two American economists resident in Croatia and Macedonia weighed the balance of pluses and minuses in the economies of these two former Yugoslav successor states in a joint presentation at an EES Noon Discussion. Evan Kraft and Michael Wyzan both found inflation well under control and industrial production rising in the respective economies, but they also emphasized a number of daunting structural problems, particularly the slow pace and politically manipulated nature of privatization.
343. Bulgaria's First Year in the European Union: Progress, Problems and Pessimism
Jul 07, 2011December 2007 - Western attention in Southeastern Europe is focused on Kosovo, Bosnia and the surrounding Western Balkans. But, I ask that some attention also be paid to neighboring Bulgaria. This core state of the historical Ottoman Balkans is completing its first year as a member of the European Union and its fourth year as a member of NATO. I resist the temptation of dwelling on how unlikely this prospect seemed when I first went to Sofia as a young Foreign Service Officer some 40 years ago. Now, with the same special interest in wider economic prospects and the same domestic pessimism about its own political process that has repeatedly surfaced over the past century, Bulgarians should nonetheless be looking back with satisfaction on their initial year as a full member of the largest common organization in European history. On a personal level, a Bulgarian friend traveling to Italy welcomed the smile and a wave that replaced a scowl and a Schengen visa check at the Rome airport. Some 60 percent of Bulgaria's foreign trade is now with the EU, and as a new member, it is expecting 11 billion euros of adjustment assistance over the next six years. But before turning to the clouds that I found gathering over Sofia, let me first address the silver lining.
330. Serbia's Elections of January 21, 2007: More Pluses than Minuses
Jul 07, 2011February 2007 - These comments draw on my visit to Belgrade this past January, initially arranged as a research trip for my ongoing and optimistically titled book project with Lenard Cohen, "Embracing Democracy in the Western Balkans: From Post-Conflict Struggles to European Integration." The visit's overlapping with January 21 meant that the elections dominated most of my conversations and also the current press that I collected. I met with a variety of scholars, the editors of the daily Danas, for which I provided an interview, Slobodan G. Markovic of the Institute for European Studies, Srdjan Gligorijevic of the International and Security Affairs Center, and Sonja Licht, now President of the Belgrade Fund for Political Excellence. Supplementing their varied impressions for this balance sheet are articles from the daily papers Danas and Politika, and the weekly magazines Vreme and NIN.
321. Rocks and Hard Places: Serbia between Kosovo and the European Union
Jul 07, 2011March 2006 - Back from a February visit to Belgrade, I concluded that simply situating Serbia between one rock—Kosovo—and one hard place—the European Union—will not suffice. A number of rocks and hard places need to be identified. Start with Mladic and Montenegro as well as Kosovo and the European Union, then add a dispirited public, a troubled economy and a discouraged electorate, suspicious of all political parties. And they feed off each other. Both Bosnia's suit against Serbia in The Hague's International Court and anniversary dates of the NATO bombing campaign were also impending, even before the demonstrations that followed the death of Slobodan Milosevic. Yet their limited extent and impact is one positive sign.
311. Working toward the EU: Bulgaria's Progress and Serbia's Struggles
Jul 07, 2011February 2005 - Two recent trips to the region, to Sofia in October and to Belgrade in January, inform these observations. Beyond simply reporting on the latest in my long series of visits to both cities, I welcome the chance to call attention to Southeastern Europe at a time when American interest is flagging. Since 9/11 and the occupation of Iraq, the Middle East has understandably moved to the forefront of policy-relevant regions. But that priority does not justify neglecting Southeastern Europe. Its problems may be "forgotten but not fixed," as Edward Joseph put it in "Back to the Balkans," Foreign Affairs (Jan.-Feb. 2005).
282. Bosnia and Kosovo...Afghanistan and Iraq...Connecting the Dots Constructively
Jul 07, 2011Exploring the wider relevance of US policy in Bosnia was hard enough when I first addressed it in the early 1990s. Then, the fate of all Southeastern Europe was in the balance—whether these countries would be connected to a Europe whole and free or detached as the dangerous, dysfunctional Balkans. Today, our continuing commitments in Bosnia and Hercegovina (BiH) and Kosovo are inviting comparison and contrast to the much larger and more daunting American commitments in Afghanistan and Iraq.
270. Bulgaria's Delayed Transition: Problems but Progress
Jul 07, 2011December 2002- Bulgaria's post-1989 transition to a multi-party democracy and market economy, both functioning under the rule of law, has obviously been slow if judged by Hungary's exemplary standard. Ten governments and five parliaments in 12 years have hampered the political pursuit of sustained policies. The shock of a collapsing Soviet trade regime hit Bulgarian exports – one half of which had gone to the USSR – particularly hard. Legal foreign trade suffered and illegal activity mushroomed with Western sanctions against Serbia and Greece's embargo against what it still calls the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. But that was the 1990s, and now in the new century, there are enough signs of progress to hope that impending NATO membership will indeed be followed before the end of the decade by EU membership.
217. Bosnia and Bulgaria: Crossroads for Two Economic Transitions
Jul 07, 2011October 2000- Bosnia-Herzegovina and Bulgaria share more than a common border with Serbia. Both of their disparate governments are engaged in a common enterprise, which if unsuccessful, will render their proper connection to Europe, their democratic prospects, and indeed their very survival unlikely. That common enterprise is not "nation-building," understood across Southeastern Europe to mean the construction of nation-states on the basis of the respective ethnic majority. Such ethnic states override the rights of individuals or ethnic minorities.