A decade of YOU(th): Youth and the responsibilization of democratic renewal in the Western Balkans

This essay examines how young people in the Western Balkans are portrayed as agents of democratic renewal, European integration and post-conflict reconciliation. Focusing on Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, it argues that youth programmes create meaningful opportunities for participation, mobility and cross-community exchange, but can also transfer responsibility for structural political problems onto young people with limited institutional power. In Serbia, youth are expected to defend democratic values within a captured political system; in Bosnia and Herzegovina, they are asked to overcome institutionally entrenched ethnic divisions. The essay calls for youth engagement to complement, rather than replace, institutional reform and accountability.