The story of two successful and contentious securitizations of the Macedonian name dispute in Greece

As there is still room for exploring the securitization process as a part of the Securitization Theory, this research paper shows that the securitization process can be contentious. There were at least two successful securitization processes in the MND. The current study interviewed 18 political members of the coalition government led by Syriza and 24 opposition members from Spring 2019 to 2020. The interviews focused on the events associated with the Macedonian Name Dispute (MND), which overshadowed the Greek discourse from 2018 to 2019 and supposedly solved one of the world’s oldest and most potent territorial name disputes. The first securitization process was promoted by the government, and the other by the dominant right-wing opposition party of New Democracy, which eventually became the new government after the national elections on 7 July 2019. In this contentious process, the side that exploited the media seemed to maintain its securitization longer.