Ethnonationalist Conflict in Postcommunist States
Varieties of Governance in Bulgaria, Macedonia, and Kosovo
Publication Year: 2013
Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press
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List of Abbreviations
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Introduction: Applying Path-Dependence, Timing, and Sequencing in Conflict Analysis
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Over the past few decades some Eastern European postcommunist stateswith large ethnonational minorities managed to participate in nonviolenttransitions while in others ethnic conflicts turned into civil wars. Someconsolidated their democracies, and by 2007 were full members of the European Union (EU). Others started democratic transitions but did not...
Chapter 1. The Majority-Minority Relationship and the Formation of Informally Institutionalized Conflict Dynamics
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After defeating communism as an ideology, the liberal creed in the early1990s appeared to triumph globally. Capturing the Zeitgeist of the time,institutionalist accounts offered democratic solutions for mitigating ethnic conflicts by such strategies as respect for minority rights in line with international norms, power-sharing agreements, fair electoral rules and propor-...
Chapter 2. Self-Reinforcing Processes in the Majority-Minority Relationship
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Various strands of scholarship have identified the existence of ‘‘vicious andvirtuous circles’’ and also that they become self-reinforcing. Repetitivemoves in rational choice game theory and density of civic ties offer two of the clearest ways to think about such dynamics.1 These accounts, however,have not sufficiently considered the role contextual and temporal character-...
Chapter 3. International Intervention During the Formative Period
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Shortly after the end of the Cold War, scholars considered third-party intervention from the point of view of economic, political, and geostrategic interests of states and international organizations in a world emerging frombipolarity and moving into a multipolar world order where intrastate conflicts prevail. The internal strife in the Balkans, Caucasus, and Africa during...
Chapter 4. International Agents, Self-Reinforcement of Conflict Dynamics, and Processes of Change
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We now turn to how non-identity-based third parties contributed to theduration of conflicts and their change. By delineating specific causal mecha-nisms of conflict perpetuation, the following adds to established scholarshipon third-party interventions. An insightful yet inconclusive quantitative lit-erature on civil wars has analyzed primarily how third parties change the...
Chapter 5. Intervention of Identity-Based Agents: Kin-States and Diasporas
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Kin-states and diasporas are important external agents in ethnic conflictsbecause of their close identity-based ties with domestic agents. During thenation-state formation era in the late eighteenth to early twentieth centu-ries, kin-states sought to incorporate their ethnic brethren in neighboringstates. Irredentism continued to flourish during the First and Second World...
Chapter 6. Change in Conflict Dynamics
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The previous five chapters addressed the book’s central question: why didethnonational conflicts with similar characteristics at the beginning of thetransition process lead to different degrees of violence over time? The discussion so far has demonstrated that during a formative period of time(1987/89–1992) when the political and economic systems of Bulgaria, Mace-...
Chapter 7. Continuity in Conflict Dynamics
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The major changes in the informally institutionalized conflict dynamics during the 2000s have now been outlined. Under pressure from insurgents and delegitimized majority policies, altering statehood became more acceptable to the international agents toward the end of the 1990s. This new attitude was conducive to the ‘‘replacement’’ of old rules of engagement...
Conclusions: Lessons Learned About Informally Institutionalized Conflict Dynamics
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Two questions have guided this book in its quest to understand the sources,agents, structures, and mechanisms that drive and sustain ethnonational conflicts over time. Why do ethnonational conflicts reach different degrees of violence? Why do they persevere even after strong international intervention for conflict resolution and institution building? Applying the theoreti-...
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This book has a long history of travel. I conceived the first ideas in Italy.They matured during the ten years I lived in the United States, and benefited from comparisons between the Balkans and the Middle East during the nine months I spent in Lebanon. The book was completed while my professional life was stretched between the United States and the Nether-...
Page Count: 320
Illustrations: 15 illus.
Publication Year: 2013
Series Title: National and Ethnic Conflict in the 21st Century