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The transition from state-socialism to capitalism has not been the only process reshaping the urban landscapes in Central and Eastern Europe but some cities were affected by war destructions, like in the Caucus region or in the former Yugoslavia. The case study of Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, is helpful to understand how the urban transformation is performed in post-war contexts, an arena neglected in the current literature on post-socialist cities. This paper aims at exploring the interplay between postsocialist urban restructuring and the peace-building process. It presents results of a series of fieldworks conducted in Sarajevo in 2010 and 2013. It is argued that in spite of the liberal policies implemented by the international community and the belated physical renewal, the transition from socialism to capitalism has been continuously undermined by the local power reconfiguration carried out during the war. The paper analyses the restructuring policies of the post-war period and its impact on the urban spatial structure. The first two sections focus on the urban restructuring processes of post-socialist cities also in post-war contexts, in which the nature of the internationally-led reconstruction and peace-building is analysed as differential processes. Finally, both processes are considered in the case of Sarajevo in relation to the transformation of its urban structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This conceptual paper discusses key instruments for territorial cohesion in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) from a comparative historical analytical perspective amidst the neoliberalisation of EU Regional Policy, which has implications for the production and reinforcement of spatial inequalities in regional development. The neoliberalisation processes unfolding in the diff erent political-institutional contexts of CEE have implications for the movement, transformation and eff ectiveness of policies such as Regional Policy, complicating the holistic understanding of policy eff ects. Increasingly neoliberal regional policies across Europe, and in the diff erent path dependent political-institutional contexts of CEE in particular, raise questions about the eff ectiveness of Regional Policy to achieve territorial cohesion. Comparative historical analysis provides a method of inquiry into path dependent processes shaping institutions and aff ecting policy outcomes, and is therefore a useful approach for conceptualising regional political-institutional contexts and their implications for Regional Policy. Operational Programmes encompassed in national strategic documents from the Czech Republic, Estonia and Hungary over three programming periods are examined as the key instruments for the implementation of Regional Policy, the comparison of which reveals a diff erence in perspectives towards the common EU goals of competitiveness and growth as a means of achieving territorial cohesion. The research thus points to the need for deeper comparative understanding of the political-institutional contexts in the three countries in order to identify factors of eff ective policies and to tailor eff ective policy solutions to specific regional contexts, a task to be advanced in future studies of Regional Policy and political-institutional contexts of CEE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]