Filip Fila, Nikola Petrović and Josip Bilić at International Political Science Association's (IPSA) workshop

The Faculty of Political Science at the University of Zagreb hosted the eighth workshop of the International Political Science Association (IPSA) Research Committees on Political and Cultural Geography (RC15) and Geopolitics (RC41). This year’s workshop, titled “Beyond Borders: Emerging Concepts, Theories, and Methods in Political Geography and Geopolitics,” was co-organized by the Faculty, on the initiative and under the organizational leadership of Prof. Marta Zorko. It brought together around thirty experts in political geography and geopolitics, who discussed concepts, theories, and methods in these disciplines and presented their research.

Among the presenters were IDIZ researchers Filip Fila, Nikola Petrović, and Josip Bilić, with the paper “Belonging Where (and to Whom)? Executive Dualism and the Geopolitical Orientations of Croatian Presidents.” The study starts from the premise that, since independence, Croatia has been firmly oriented toward the West and Euro-Atlantic integration, but that this broad consensus masks significant variation among individual political actors. By analyzing the geopolitical orientations of the four Croatian presidents since the introduction of the parliamentary system, the authors show that the intertwining of presidential and governmental powers in foreign policy, with major international events acting as catalysts, can become a source of conflict over foreign policy itself.