Ivan Obadić (PhD)

Summer Term 2020

Ivan Obadić is a researcher at the University of Zagreb, where he also teaches General History of Law and State and Development of European Integration and Institutions. During his fellowship in the Field of Excellence “Dimensions of Europeanization” this summer semester, he focuses on the evolution of Yugoslav foreign policy towards Western Europe within the broader context of the Cold War and development of European integration. Besides the basic foreign (trade) policy towards the European Economic Community (EEC), he specifically deals with the perceptions of Western European integration processes among the Yugoslav political elite, from the early 1950s to the singing of the Yugoslav–EEC Cooperation Agreement in 1970. The study intertwines different narratives to contextualize the relations between external factors and internal dynamics of Yugoslavia and their impact on the policy towards the EEC. Obadić’s aim is to explain the underlying long-term structural problems of the economy that determined the Yugoslav diplomatic and economic responses to the creation and evolution of the EEC until the breakup of the country.

"The overarching question is how and why the European Economic Community became such an important external factor crucial to the economic development and stability of Yugoslavia."

Obadić earned his PhD from the European University Institute in 2017. His main research interests lie at the crossroads of legal, economic, and diplomatic history with a focus on the history of European Integration, Cold War history, and the history of Southeastern Europe. He has participated in several interdisciplinary and international projects at (among others) the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, the University of Zagreb, and the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies (RSCAS) at the European University Institute.

Brown Bag: In Pursuit of Stability: Tito's Yugoslavia and the European Community 1948-1980