Greg Delawie Shares His Life’s Work with Community Former Ambassador to Kosovo Visits Davidson

BELLA ANDJELKOVIC ‘26(SHE/HER)

All seats in the VAC auditorium were filled. Some knelt in the back, while others stood in the doorways trying their best to hear senior diplomat Greg Delawie speak about his work.

Delawie graduated from Harvard University as an economics major. From mid-2015 to mid-2018 he served as the US Ambassador to Kosovo. In this role, he directed an embassy and used public campaigns to promote American objectives and prevent ethnic violence in countries still recovering from the Balkans War. He now works as an adjunct professor at George Mason University where he teaches a course in diplomacy.

Associate Professor of Political Science Dr. Besir Ceka facilitated the talk.

“We discuss our country’s promotion of democracy and the rule of law in many of our courses in political science, and it was particularly helpful to hear Delawie articulate the reasons for why it’s in America’s interest to foster them abroad,” Ceka said. “We rarely have speakers that focus specifically on the Balkans, so Delawie’s extensive experience of serving in this region was particularly welcome.”

Parker Nunn ‘26 is in Ceka’s international relations class.

“I wanted to learn more about Delawie’s work because it focuses on topics not normally covered in the news,” he said.

In his talk, Delawie discussed both the freedom and corruption of each country in the “Western Balkan Six.” This is a term he coined for the six countries—Serbia, Kosovo, Bosnia, Albania, Montenegro, and North

Macedonia—that want to join the European Union (E.U.).

He frequently named two organizations, Transparency International and Freedom House, that rank and compare each country based on their corruption and freedom levels.

Transparency International uses a “corruption perceptions index” (CPI) that scores countries from 1 to 100, 1 being the most corrupt and 100 being the least. Denmark is the least corrupt with a score of 90, and Somalia is the most at 12. Corruption can be considered anything from bribery and red tape to nepotism, which Delawie mentions is very common in Bosnia.

“The best way to get a job in Bosnia is through nepotism,” Delawie said.

Freedom House, on the other hand, ranks countries in three categories: not free, partly free, and free. They determine these scores by looking at political rights and civil liberties. The Western Balkan Six all fall in the partly free category.

“Countries with low levels of democracy typically have high levels of corruption, and vice versa” Delawie said.

During Delawie’s presentation, he displayed line graphs of each ranking, and pinpointed certain trends.

“Serbia has declined in its democracy scoring by 20% since 2017, so that’s not great… these changes are broadly consistent with political developments in these countries,” Delawie said. “In Serbia, the government has adopted an increasingly authoritarian stance over the last couple of years. Protests and the media have become dominated by the governing party.”

Delawie added that Serbia saw the largest decline in its corruption score, meaning it increased in its “perception of corruption”.

He also touched on the impact the perception of corruption has in Bosnia.

“Bosnia is among one of the five poorest countries in Europe,” Delawie said. “The national government is paying to teach students medicine to practice in the richest country: Germany. Why? Because of the corruption in Bosnia.”

Delawie then shifted his presentation to discuss potential solutions for improving the futures of western Balkan countries. He discussed a range of suggestions from building civil society and supporting independent prosecutors to protecting whistleblowers, and the importance of focusing on results.

“Grade outcomes, not outputs,” Delawie said. “Too many projects are judged by the amount of money put into solving the problem, rather than what the results of that money is.”

Delawie also emphasized the joint power of the U.S. and the E.U. to support and encourage change within the West Balkan Six.

“Rather than say what the U.S. should do, or what the E.U. should do, since both have power in making changes, I will just say ‘we’ and you can imagine whoever you want as being ‘we’,” Delawie said.

He continued to emphasize the necessity of driving change from within.

“If countries don’t want to improve, there is really nothing we can do as outsiders,” Delawie stated. “We cannot want it more than them.”