21 research outputs found
Kosovo in the 1980s – Yugoslav Perspectives and Interpretations
The introductory article in this issue argues for greater consideration of the impact of the Kosovo crisis on political developments in other Yugoslav republics and on the entire federal state structure of Yugoslavia after Tito’s death. It also calls for a closer examination of alternative paths that were considered by various actors to resolve the conflict but were not or could not be pursued. Such a discussion of developments in Kosovo in the 1980s in a broader Yugoslav perspective would, it is argued, also have the potential to contribute to a more complex understanding of the Kosovo crisis itself.Peer Reviewe
Domestic elites and external actors in post-conflict democratisation: mapping interactions and their impact
Following the end of the Cold War, post-conflict democratisation has rarely occurred without a significant international involvement. This contribution argues that an explanation of the outcomes of post-conflict democratisation requires more than an examination of external actors, their mission mandates or their capabilities and deficiencies. In addition, there is a need to study domestic elites, their preferences and motivations, as well as their perceptions of and their reactions to external interference. Moreover, the patterns of external–internal interactions may explain the trajectory of state-building and democracy promotion efforts. These issues deserve more attention from both scholars and practitioners in the fields of peace- and state-building, democracy promotion, regime transition and elite research. Analyses of external actors and domestic elites in post-conflict democratisation should therefore address three principal issues: (1) the identification of relevant domestic elites in externally induced or monitored state-building and democratisation processes, (2) the dynamics of external–domestic interactions and (3) the impact of these interactions on the outcomes of post-conflict democratisation
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Traditiona Value Patterns and the War in Ex-Yugoslavia (English)
The various national movements in the Southern Slavonic countries concerned themselves very thoroughly with their respective village cultures. In them, in a world of rapid modernization, they sought to find and detect their origins and to understand what characteristics their people and makes it special. This more often than not resulted in a romantic transfiguration and idealization of rural or village value patterns,as seen from an urban, intellectual perspective. These patterns,as it were, should be characteristic of the nation and serve as models. Furthermore, we seek to place some traditional value patterns into the context of the war in Croatia and Bosnia. The focus of these reflections will be on two regional areas which shall be discussed in greater detail later on
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Traditional Value Patterns and the Crisis in the Former Yugoslavia
It is of considerable significance that various nationalist movements with a populist orientation and especially that of the South Slavs, have turned to village cultures in attempting to understand what has made them, as a people, distinctive in a modernizing world. This has been partly romantic in the sense that rural values have been idealized from urban perspective. Partly, too, it is a substantial acknowledgment that the processes of industrialization and urbanization do not represent simply a one-way influence of urban values on the village. Hostility between town and village, which increased economically and socially as the state developed, did not in any way diminish the importance of the rural subculture in shaping the nation. The prewar ideals of the peasant parties have not been realized after the World War Two in the context of a socialist state, but they always have been an important factor in these societies. Especially since in the countries of former Yugoslavia national movements began to gain in power these values have been propagated in the campaigns of the national parties together with the national history and the the national threat of the own people . Following we want to present some features of this traditional values and why the persistence of these values can be seen in a number of ways and why this overwhelming tradition seems to be so strong in the current war