Gulnur Aybet, Lecturer in International Relations, University of Kent at Canterbury (UK) and Dan Hamilton, Director, Center for Transatlantic Relations, Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Johns Hopkins University

The Business Advisory Council for SEE has been serving as the private sector arm and advisory mechanism of the European and international mechanisms for regional cooperation - first under the auspices of US-led SECI, later the Stability Pact for Southeastern Europe and currently with the Regional Cooperation Council.

Following the NATO intervention in 1999, Kosovo became a de-facto international protectorate in which the United Nations led other international organizations and actors, in building democracy and state institutions capable of sustaining peace. My main research question is: Can ambitious political and economic international interventions, as in Kosovo, build democracy and effective state institutions?

As part of their program of "national revival," the Government of the Republic of Macedonia has embarked on a program of "antiquization" to lay claim to the legacy of Alexander the Great—in ways that resemble a longer process of antiquization in Greece, and which contribute to tensions between the two countries. This paper reviews the debate over antiquization within the Republic, focusing in particular on the robust critiques offered by a range of dissidents who risk being labeled as "dissidents" or "traitors." It then explores the similarities between the Republic's present and Greece's recent and more distant past, in which scholars and activists who questioned assumptions of cultural continuity and national purity have faced sanctions ranging from stalled career paths to lawsuits and death threats.