Ethnic conflict and economic disparity: Serbians and Albanians in Kosovo

We use the Living Standards Measurement Study (LSMS) household survey from postconflict Kosovo to examine economic deprivation among Serbs and Albanians. Economic deprivation is measured by per capita household expenditure and by the incidence of poverty as captured by the headcount ratio. We examine the roles played by the stock of attributes and by the impact of these attributes on deprivation using Oaxaca-type decomposition methods. Empirical results for both decomposition analyses show differences in characteristics as well as returns to measured characteristics favor Serbs, even though Serbs have lower expenditures and higher poverty incidence than Albanians

Ethnic Conflict and Economic Disparity: Serbians & Albanians in Kosovo

We use the Living Standards Measurement Study (LSMS) household survey from post-conflict Kosovo to examine economic deprivation among Serbs and Albanians. Economic deprivation is measured by per capita household expenditure and by the incidence of poverty as captured by the headcount ratio. We examine the roles played by the stock of attributes and by the impact of these attributes on deprivation using Oaxaca-type decomposition methods. Empirical results for both decomposition analyses show differences in characteristics as well as returns to measured characteristics favor Serbs, even though Serbs have lower expenditures and higher poverty incidence than Albanians.poverty, ethnicity, decomposition

Nationalism, Myth and Reinterpretation of History: The Neglected Case of Interwar Yugoslavia

This article discusses and challenges some popular myths and perceptions about interwar Yugoslavia in post-socialist (and post-Yugoslav) Serbia. These include discourses that blame ‘others’ – ‘treacherous’ Croats and other non-Serbs, the ‘perfidious’ west, especially Britain – and that are also self-critical, of Serbs’ ‘naivety’ as exemplified in their choosing to create Yugoslavia at the end of the FirstWorldWar, and of, later, embracing communism. The article also offers a reassessment of the interwar period, often neglected by scholars of former Yugoslavia

'Quadratic Nexus' and the Process of Democratization and State-Building in Albania and Kosovo:A Comparison

<jats:p>This paper examines the interplay between internal and external actors in the process of democratization and state-building in Albania and Kosovo. It does so by using David J. Smith's “quadratic nexus” that links Brubaker's “triadic nexus” – nationalizing states, national minorities and external national homelands – to the institutions of an ascendant and expansive “Euro-Atlantic space”. The main argument of this paper is twofold. First, it argues the nexus remains a useful framework in the study of state-and nation-building provided that it moves beyond the “civic vs. ethnic” dichotomy. Today, many states with a mixture of civic and multi-ethnic elements involve this relational nexus. Second, while comparing Albania and Kosovo, this paper argues that all the four elements of the nexus have a different impact on the process of state- and nation-building and their relationship is more conflictual in Kosovo than in Albania.</jats:p

Nationalism and the rhetoric of exclusion

The late twentieth-century Serbian nationalist discourse is seen as a manifestation of the same rhetoric which was initially formulated in the period of national awakening associated with the two uprisings against the Turkish rule under Karađorđe Petrović (1804-13) and Miloš Obrenović (1815-17) and the institution of the autonomous Serbian principality after the Russo-Turkish War (1828). The methodological tool used in this paper to analyze the Serbian nationalist discourse in the late 20th century is a set of binary oppositions underlying the formation of Serbian national identity, which was skillfully manipulated by the former leader Slobodan Milošević