Florian Bieber

Nonalignment is often reduced to a few pictures of iconic leaders, such as Jawaharlal Nehru, Gamal Abdel Nasser, and Josip Broz Tito. Its fading significance in the waning days of the Cold War has longmeant a neglect of the ties, be they economic, political, social, or cultural, that underpinned the Non-Aligned Movement. Furthermore, a Western-centric view of globalization has often ignored the linkages that bound countries within the Global South with one another and the ties of non– Western European countries, like Yugoslavia, with former colonies. These global blind spots have also been reflected in the case of Yugoslavia, as nonalignment and Yugoslavia’s global role tended to be reduced to the encounters and agency of a small elite circle of politicians and diplomats, along with a tendency to approach the entire spectrum of global engagements through the lens of “Titoism.” This approach led to a simplified view of the complex Yugoslav institutional setup, the downplaying of the ...

ABSTRACT The history of Montenegrin nation-building goes against the expectations of many institutionalist theories of nationalism, which generally hold that national institutions increase collective sentiments of national identity. Although during the period of socialist Yugoslavia, Montenegro had an institutional endowment similar to that of other republics—including a constitution, parliament, government, flag, republican borders, and academy of arts and sciences—the proportion of self-identified Montenegrins actually declined from 91% at the start of the socialist period to 44.5% in the most recent census. This occurred despite the fact that Yugoslav elites built up Montenegro's national institutions over these decades; it also runs against the expectations of many institutionalist theories of nationalism that predict constant—or even heightened—national consciousness as a group's institutional endowment increases. Municipal-level census data in Montenegro are examined over time to show that neither national institutions nor elite efforts to mobilize upon them succeeded in generating a robust Montenegrin identity. The evidence here provides preliminary support for a theory of ‘situational nationalism’, according to which the fate of national projects depends on the wider identity environment. Despite elite efforts to build nations along certain lines, people choose their identities in the context of an ever-changing field of political and identity conflicts at the international and domestic levels in a fluctuating ‘marketplace of ideas’. It is concluded that identity conflicts in the wider neighborhood place significant constraints on the success of any given nation-building project.

The development of democracy in the successor states of Yugoslavia illustrates the whole range of differences among these states: from Slovenia which is considered most advanced and consolidated, over Croatia which is on its way to become a consolidated democratic state, to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia which are seen as still very fragile zones for democracy to take roots in. While scholars refer to these latter cases as to failed or unconsolidated democracies, this article argues against the common theoretical framework and calls for the use of different theoretical and methodological tools to measure the (un)success of these states. For this purpose this article discusses the main (internal) features and weaknesses of these democracies and points at a number of external factors and internal objective circumstances, which (unintentionally) hinder the process of democratization.

Divided societies around the world require specific institutional arrangements, including electoral rules, to accommodate diversity of interest in ways that can deal with social divisions in a non-violent manner. What might sound like a truism is still frequently challenged in discussions on institutional design for divided societies. While scepticism in academia and among policy makers often focuses on whether democracy is at all possible in divided societies, a large number of countries have been forced to meet this particular ...

The three power-sharing systems in Southeastern Europe in Kosovo, Macedonia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina are part of a wider regional pattern of minority inclusion. Power sharing in the three countries was established as a tool of post-conflict interethnic accommodation and enshrines group rights and political representation to varying degrees. The corporate consociational system in Bosnia stands in contrast to less rigid systems in Macedonia and Kosovo. The essay argues that, while consociationalism in Southeastern Europe complicated democratization and enshrines some flaws of the democratic system, it is not the sole or even the main obstacle to the consolidation of liberal democracies in Southeastern Europe.

Since the mid-1990s, a plethora of international organizations—from the UN and OSCE to the European Union and NATO—have been extensively involved in the reform of police forces across the post-conflict regions of former Yugoslavia. The various international actors have employed a diverse tool kit of police reform, from creating new police forces from scratch to reforming existing, ethnically divided forces. This paper will trace the different efforts in post-conflict settings by discussing policing by international actors, efforts at imposing police reform, post-conflict police assistance and change to policing through conditionality, drawing on the rich empirical record from Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Kosovo and Macedonia. Despite these extensive efforts, the results have been modest. Lacking clear international or European standards, police reform has been the subject to uneven and changing expectations and contradictory demands. This work was supported in part by Gl...

This article investigates opposition to the competitive authoritarian regimes in Montenegro (1997–2020), North Macedonia (2006–2017), and Serbia (2012–). In each of the three countries, opposition parties face or have faced the challenge of competing on an electoral playing field that is structurally skewed in favour of the incumbent. The articles explore the question in which circumstances opposition parties have been able to contest the dominant parties. In doing so, it focuses on three dimensions, namely the relationship between spatial party competition, different levels of opposition cohesion or fragmentation, as well as extra-institutional strategies of contestation. The country comparison illustrates that party systems with cross-cutting cleavages tend to produce divided patterns of contestation (Montenegro and Serbia), whereas reinforcing cleavages facilitate the coordination among different types of opposition actors (North Macedonia). Finally, large protests, rather than b...

Although the Internet alleviated some information shortages in Yugoslavia during the war in Kosovo, its small audience of users within the country meant that only a minuscule segment of the population was as well informed as many Western media consumers. … Still, the Internet gave the independent Yugoslav media tremendous support and helped reduce the isolation that had enveloped Yugoslavia.

The article outlines the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on nationalism around the world. Starting from the premise that nationalism is a global and ubiquitous idea in the contemporary world, it explores whether exclusionary tendencies have been reinforced by the pandemic. The pandemic and government responses will not necessarily trigger the increase in exclusionary nationalism that both far-right politicians and observers have noted. However, there are 4 aspects, examined in the article, that might be shaped by the pandemic. These include the recent trajectory of nationalism and its social relevance prior to the pandemic,the rise of authoritarianism as governments suspend or reduce democratic freedoms and civil liberties, the rise of biases against some groups associated with the pandemic, the rise of borders and deglobalization, and the politics of fear. Thus, while the rise of exclusionary nationalism might not be the inevitable consequence of the pandemic, it risks reinforcing ...

Post-conflict societies invariably experience great difficulty in making their new democratic power-sharing institutions work. In Northern Ireland, the system for power sharing prescribed in the 1998 Good Friday Agreement has repeatedly broken down. In Bosnia-Herzegovina, the system prescribed under the Dayton Accord of 1995 depends for its survival on the presence of a substantial international peacekeeping force. From Power Sharing to Democracy examines the theoretical underpinnings of power sharing as a means of ...

Summary Minority protection in former Yugoslavia has made significant progress in recent years. Not only the end of authoritarian nationalist regimes in the region, but also new minority laws have improved the legal protection of minority groups. The danger of violence has also receded with the exception of Kosovo and Macedonia. Despite these positive developments, nationalism remains salient and majority-minority relations continue to be tense. This article examines weaknesses in current international policies of minority ...

... banovina, 9 Barry, Robert, 94 Behmen, Alija, 101 Belgium, 60, 125, 126 Berlin Congress, 6 Bihac, 10, 13, 30, 38, 109 Bildt, Carl, 84 Bonn powers, 84 Boras, Franjo, 23 Bosanska stranka (BOSS), 97, 100, 102, 161nn107, 109 Bosansko Grahovo, 13, 30, 32 ... Dapo, Mirsad, 97, 135 ...

type="main"> To understand the politics of population census in postconflict countries and salience of the categories imposed through census. By doing so, it seeks to shed light on the mechanisms of identity construction in the post-Yugoslav context. The article analyzes the categories and the responses to post-Yugoslav censuses, focusing on national, religious, and linguistic identity markers. The analysis shows that a varying, yet significant, share of the population refuses to identify according to the identity markers proposed by the state and promoted by key political actors. The article proposes a novel way of studying censuses and argues that even in a postconflict context national identities are less fixed than often supposed and highlights the need to focus more on nonconformist identities in postconflict settings.

In retrospect, with nearly 20 years of uneasy peace and three and a half years of war behind us, the outcome of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s first election appears nearly inevitable – the resounding victory of ethnonationalist parties. However, hindsight makes sense of this election that paved the way to war some 17 months later. The victory of three political parties representing each of the three nations of Bosnia and Herzegovina and offering little programmatic detail beyond protecting national interests was not inevitable to voters at the time and neither did this outcome invariably mean war. This special section looks back at these first post-communist multiparty elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina in November/December 1990. These founding elections were crucial as they led to an overwhelming victory for the three ethnonationalist parties – the Party of Democratic Action (Stranka demokratske akcije, SDA), the Croat Democratic Community (Hrvatska demokratska stranka, HDZ) and the Serb Democratic Party (Srpska demokratska stranka, SDS) that were key political actors throughout the war and have remained so ever since. Today, these three are not the only parties claiming to represent the interests of the three constituent people of Bosnia and Herzegovina and in some cases they have been displaced by their competitors. However, the principle of voting along ethnonationalist lines has dominated the country’s politics in all its elections since 1990. There are two ways of looking at these elections. Taken in a larger historical context, including the Yugoslav multiparty elections during the interwar period and the Bosnian Landtag, the assembly within Austria–Hungary in 1910, a majority of voters have repeatedly chosen parties that appealed to one particular national group. In 1910, the four parties were the Serb National Organization, the Muslim National Organization, the Croat National Community and the Croat Catholic Community. During the interwar years, Muslims tended to vote for the Yugoslav Muslim Organisation, Serbs for the National Radical Party and Croats for the Croatian (Republican) Peasants Party (Arnautović 1996, 25–8). Thus, the elections in 1990 could be seen as simply a repetition of these earlier results where Bosnians and Herzegovinians chose ethnonationalist parties. The exceptions to this rule were the

Summary: This article surveys the state of diversity in Southeastern Europe by examining the nature of interethnic relations and diversity, minority rights protection and political participation of minorities. During the past decade, state repression and hostility towards minorities have largely made way to including minorities in government and introducing comprehensive minority rights protection laws. These improvements at the level of policy are often not matched in terms of general interethnic relations. Majority-minority relations remain burdened by the 1990s and Southeastern Europe is considerably more homogenous than it was in 1989. As a consequence, legal and policy changes are often the consequence of international and in particular EU pressure rather than domestic processes.