'Mission Impossible Accomplished': Explaining the Political Conflict concerning the Prespa Agreement in the Republic of North Macedonia and Greece

“They had imagination, they took the risk, they were ready to sacrifice their own interests for the greater good. Zoran, Alexis – well done! Mission impossible accomplished” wrote on Twitter the President of the European Council, Donald Tusk, commenting the successful ratification of the Prespa agreement in national parliaments of the Republic of North Macedonia and Greece. The successful ratification of the Prespa agreement, changing the name of the country from Macedonia (or rather the Former Yugoslav Republic Macedonia) to the Republic of North Macedonia, may indeed be compared to accomplishing of an impossible mission. In particular, the bilateral conflict between the two states could not be resolved for decades; it has also prevented Macedonia’s accession to NATO and the European Union. The Prespa agreement became the first subject to the referendum in Macedonia; however, as the turnout has not reached the minimum of 50%, the Macedonian parliament stepped in to conclude the ratification process. In Greece, the Prespa agreement has been also subject to parliamentary ratification. As national parliamentary parties became so central in the Macedonian name dispute, the article explicitly focuses on their role in the process. The goal of the paper is to map and explain the political conflict concerning the ratification of the Prespa agreement. For that reason the paper poses the following research questions: which factors explain political actors’ (national parliamentary parties in Greece and in the Republic of North Macedonia) positions with respect to the agreement? Which mechanism helped to resolve the conflict: was it scarification of particularistic interests in the name of a “greater good” (as the President of the European Council assumed) or, rather, was the agreement ratified because parliamentary parties pursued their and their constituents’ particularistic interests? What was the role of the EP party families in that process? Both mechanisms can be linked to classical theoretical models of representation: the trustee and the representative model, stipulating that political actors either follow the “common good” or constituents’ interests. Consequently, the analysis presented in this article allows establishing which mechanism is particularly helpful in resolving bilateral conflicts concerning political identities. In other words, the article demonstrates whether identity-driven conflicts are more likely to be resolved if parliamentary parties sacrifice particularistic interests or, to the contrary, act upon them. The findings of the article can be extended to other states in the region which are affected by identity-driven conflicts. The empirical inference of the article is based on the analysis of parliamentary parties’ vote outcome on the Prespa agreement in Greece and in the Republic of North Macedonia as well as parliamentary discourses accompanying the process of ratification.