Europeanization of Montenegro as a Factor in the Evolution of Montenegrin National Identity

Abstract

The article examines the transformation of national identity in Montenegro, which is influenced by the country’s involvement in the Euro-integration process. The issue of national identity of the orthodox majority is controversial and closely related to the political orientation of the dominating groups — the Montenegrins and the Serbs. The paper argues that the EU has demonstrated both direct and indirect impact on the national identity in Montenegro resulting in ethnocultural polarization and the emergence of strong civilizational cleavage between pro-western and anti-western forces, which, in its turn, is also linked to the split between the Montenegrins and the Serbs. The decline of the socialist Yugoslav socialist model which contradicted the EU normative framework caused the search for the alternative sources of national legitimacy and led to the archaization of identity discourse. These claims are observable only if the EU normative documents and the enlargement conditionality principles are taken into consideration. The EU transformative impact on the national identity of the candidate states is regarded as a consequence of adaptive pressure from Brussels. The methodology of the study in based on the radical constructivism optics that aims to identify transformations in the discourse but ignores the variables approach common in neo-institutional Europeanization research.