Ethnonationality’s Evolution in Bosnia Herzegovina and Macedonia: Politics, Institutions and Intergenerational Dis-continuities [1st ed.] 9783030391881, 9783030391898

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-xvii
Introduction: Ethnonationality, Citizenship, and Feelings of Belonging (Arianna Piacentini)....Pages 1-26
Front Matter ....Pages 27-27
Ethnic Groups and Nations in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) (Arianna Piacentini)....Pages 29-54
After Yugoslavia: The New World (Arianna Piacentini)....Pages 55-88
Front Matter ....Pages 89-89
Between Group Status and Individual Benefits: The Case of Skopje (Arianna Piacentini)....Pages 91-119
Between Cosmopolitanism and Survival: The Case of Sarajevo (Arianna Piacentini)....Pages 121-149
The Story of Ethnonationality (Arianna Piacentini)....Pages 151-178
Conclusion: What Can We Learn? (Arianna Piacentini)....Pages 179-189
Back Matter ....Pages 191-197

Citation preview

Ethnonationality’s Evolution in Bosnia Herzegovina and Macedonia Politics, Institutions and Intergenerational Dis-continuities Arianna Piacentini

Ethnonationality’s Evolution in Bosnia Herzegovina and Macedonia

Arianna Piacentini

Ethnonationality’s Evolution in Bosnia Herzegovina and Macedonia Politics, Institutions and Intergenerational Dis-continuities

Arianna Piacentini Eurac Research Bolzano, Italy

ISBN 978-3-030-39188-1    ISBN 978-3-030-39189-8 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39189-8 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and ­transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

To Mom with all my gratitude

On Terminology

This book focuses on the republics of  Bosnia Herzegovina and North Macedonia. Throughout the book the two countries are addressed as ‘Bosnia’ and ‘Macedonia’. The use of this terminology does not imply or want to convey the author’s political or ideological stance. The use of the term Bosnia denotes the whole country of Bosnia Herzegovina, hence it refers to both its Entities and autonomous district, and it does not wish to omit the importance of Herzegovina. Similarly, the term Macedonia is used to denote the Republic of North Macedonia, not the northernmost Greek region. Although the ‘name dispute’ with Greece has been resolved, the use of the shorter republic’s name—Macedonia, has no political base and does not imply any position taken by the author in that debate.

vii

Acknowledgements

Along my path I have been lucky enough to encounter many amazing people who, in one way or another, changed the course of my life. Many helped me to grow as a researcher, many others as a woman and human being. With their support and critiques, and beyond their professions and institutional roles, they also contributed to make this book possible but, before that, they accompanied me throughout the three-year-long study behind it. Worthy of mention is also their serious contribution in helping me to keep focused, stay motivated and strong, especially when life seemed too hard. My PhD supervisors, Professor Paolo Segatti and Professor Dario Tuorto have been crucial presences deserving all my respect and gratitude. The discussions I had with them had a decisive impact on my work; the hours spent in Professor Segatti’s office over the last few years, discussing national identities, nationalism, and politics, seriously shaped my way of thinking and approaching certain issues. Professor Tuorto is perhaps the person who encouraged me most in publishing this book, and without his support, I would perhaps not be writing this now. I am also extremely thankful to Tanja Sekulić, with whom everything started a long time ago in 2012. Perhaps she is not aware of it, but she changed my life more than everyone else, and I will always be in debt to her. There are then a number of friends and colleagues, scattered all over Europe, deserving my respect and gratitude. Just to mention a few: ix

x Acknowledgements

Giovget and Vojkan, colleagues and friends who contributed to make my PhD an amazing experience; Giuseppe and Alessandra, with whom I spent the longest and toughest, but also funniest, winter in Bosnia; my morone friend Filip, who helped me to deal with the Macedonian bureaucracy without getting crazy, and with whom I shared some of my best laughs ever; and then Ivo, my brate and master a jedi among the siths, always and no matter what. Many thanks go also to all the people who read this work chapter by chapter, page after page, and whose comments and feedbacks shaped its final version. A special thanks goes to Mrs CJC, who has been so kind as to review and proof edit this entire work at the very last moment, and during Christmas holidays. Last but not least, infinite gratitude goes to all those who actually made this book possible: all those families I had the luck to meet in Skopje and Sarajevo, who opened their doors to me, who let me in and sat me in their living rooms. I thank them for the time they dedicated to me, for the sweets and dishes they cooked and, more importantly, for having taught me what hospitality and the feeling of being welcome are—and especially when you really are a stranger. All this would not ever have been possible without their help and trust.

Contents

1 Introduction: Ethnonationality, Citizenship, and Feelings of Belonging  1 What Are We Going to Talk About, Then?    3 Ends and Means   4 Ethnic Groups and Nations: Time, Dimensions, and Relations   6 Explaining the Whys  14 Why Yugoslavia and Post-Yugoslavia?   14 Why Macedonia and Bosnia Herzegovina?   16 Why Two Generations Within the Same Family Unit?   18 Structure of the Book   21 References  23 Part I Nations, Ideologies, and Institutions  27 2 Ethnic Groups and Nations in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) 29 Socialism and Yugoslavia  30 Nations’ Status in the SFRY   31 The ‘We-Feeling’: Bratstvo i Jedinstvo and Jugoslovenstvo  32 xi

xii Contents

Identities and Identifications Within the SFRY   33 Nationalism and Yugoslavia  36 Economy, Institutions, and Ethnonational Politics   36 The Federal Units of Bosnia Herzegovina and Macedonia   38 The End of Yugoslavia   41 Political Elites’ Behaviour Matters   41 Institutional Design Matters Too   43 …and Constitutions Alike   44 The End of the World   46 References  51 3 After Yugoslavia: The New World 55 New World, Old Stuff   56 Institutional Framework: Ethnonationality in Consociations   59 Political Elite: The Distribution of Power   61 Alliances’ Networks: Where Ideology Does Not Arrive, the Money Arrives  73 Ethnonationality and Ethnopolitics   78 References  83 Part II Ethnonationality and Generations  89 4 Between Group Status and Individual Benefits: The Case of Skopje 91 The Yugoslav Generation of Parents   92 Collective Memories of Transition   93 The Fluctuating Path of Inter-Ethnic Relations   95 Political Attitudes and Opinions  100 The Post-Yugoslav Generation of Young Adults  105 Growing Apart  105 Perceptions of Ethnic Politics  108 The Family Environment: Ethnonationality Has Always Mattered 113 References 118

 Contents 

xiii

5 Between Cosmopolitanism and Survival: The Case of Sarajevo121 From Melting-Pot to What?  122 The Yugoslav Generation of Parents  123 Yugoslavia Mon Amour  123 The Interrupted Path of Inter-Ethnic Relations  125 Political Attitudes and Opinions  128 The (Post-)Yugoslav Generation of Young Adults  132 Living the ‘Yugoslav Way’?  134 Politics and Ethnonationalism  136 The Family Environment: Ethnonationality Has Never Mattered 141 The Yugoslav Heritage  143 References 148 6 The Story of Ethnonationality151 Context, Strategies, and Mechanisms  152 Same Game, Same Rules  152 …But Different Legitimizing Grounds  155 Generations With-in Their Plural Societies  159 The (Differences Between) Yugoslav Generations  159 The Post-Yugoslav Generations  165 Ethnonationality Across Generations  171 Similarity and Partial Interruption in Macedonia  171 Continuity in Bosnia Herzegovina  174 References 177 7 Conclusion: What Can We Learn?179 Reflecting About  180 Reflecting Across  182 Reflecting Beyond  184 References 188 Index191

Abbreviations

AVNOJ

Antifašističko Vijeće Narodnog Oslobođenja Jugoslavije—AntiFascist Council for the National Liberation of Yugoslavia BiH Bosnia and Herzegovina DF Demokratska Fronta—Democratic Front DPA Dayton Peace Agreement DPA∗ Partia Demokratike Shqiptare—Democratic Party of Albanians DUI Bashkimi Demokratik për Integrim—Democratic Union for Integration EU European Union FADURK Federal Fund for the Accelerated Development of the Underdeveloped Republics and Kosovo FBiH Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina FYROM Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia HDZ BiH Hrvatska demokratska zajednica Bosne i Hercegovine— Croatian Democratic Union for Bosnia Herzegovina HDZ 1990 Hrvatska Demokratska Zajednica—Croatian Democratic Union 1990 JMBG Jedinstveni matični broj građana—Master Citizen Number LCM League of Communists of Macedonia LCY League of Communists of Yugoslavia NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization NLA National Liberation Army NS Naša Stranka—Our Party xv

xvi Abbreviations

OFA PDP RS SBB SDA SDP SDS SDSM SFRY SNSD

UÇK UN VMRO–DPMNE

Ohrid Framework Agreement Partia per Prosperitet Demokratik—Party for Democratic Prosperity Republika Srpska Savez za bolju budućnost BiH—Union for a Better Future BiH Stranka Demokratske Akcije—Party of Democratic Action Socijaldemokratska Partija BiH—Social Democratic Party of BiH Srpska Demokratska Stranka—Serb Democratic Party Socijaldemokratski sojuz na Makedonija—Social Democratic Union of Macedonia Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia Savez nezavisnih socijaldemokrata—Alliance of Independent Social Democrats, formerly Stranka nezavisnih socijaldemokrata—Party of Independent Social Democrats Ushtria Çlirimtare e Kosovës—Kosovo Liberation Army United Nations Vnatrešna Makedonska Revolucionerna Organizacija— Demoktraska Partija za Makedonsko Narodno Edinstvo— Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization—Democratic Party for Macedonian National Unity

List of Tables

Table 2.1 Percentage of adult populations identifying themselves as Yugoslavs in Yugoslavia and each Federal Republic and Province, in the years 1961, 1971, 1981 Table 3.1 Long-term unemployment rates (persons aged 15–74) by sex, 2007–2017 (% of labour force)

34 76

xvii

1 Introduction: Ethnonationality, Citizenship, and Feelings of Belonging

It was in 2012 that I first became interested in ethnonationality and collective identities, and it did not take me too long to pack my stuff, leave Italy, and move to Bosnia Herzegovina. Back in 2013 I was conducting a study on the generation born during the siege of Sarajevo, and I was surprised at how many young adults managed to build or retain inter-ethnic friendships, not becoming poisoned by ethnonationalism after all they had gone through. I also was very impressed at how many people in their fifties and sixties were still remembering Yugoslavia and ‘the Marshal’ almost with tears in their eyes. I could not then explain to myself why Bosnia was such a divided country. Why were ethnonational parties so strong? Why was being a Serb, a Bošnjak, or a Croat, at the end of the day, so important? And why did being a Bosnian Herzegovinian mean nothing? Was it the politicians’ fault—as everybody was thinking? Or was it the result of the Dayton Agreement? The more I listened and entered the youngsters’ lives, trying to understand their ideas, concerns, and perceptions, the more I wondered about their role, what they were doing and what they were not? And where were their ideas, behaviours, and perceptions coming from? The next logical step was thus to look at their families. I began to wonder about their parents, that Yugoslav © The Author(s) 2020 A. Piacentini, Ethnonationality’s Evolution in Bosnia Herzegovina and Macedonia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39189-8_1

1

2 

A. Piacentini

generation which contributed to both building and destroying Yugoslavia. How and which experiences shaped them and their understanding of belonging? And what has been transmitted from one generation to the next? Aware that Bosnia, and Sarajevo in particular, was probably a ‘too peculiar’ reality, I decided to explore another multiethnic former Yugoslav republic, and I thus moved to Macedonia, Skopje. There I found a slightly similar reality that was nonetheless more clearly divided along ethnic lines. Yet in both regions I saw ethnonational divisions reflected in ethnonational parties schools, media, neighbourhoods, friendships. Ethnonationality was everywhere. So how did Yugoslavia manage to maintain unity for decades? How did it succeed in counterbalancing ethnonational with supra-ethnic feelings of belonging? I even got to the point of wondering if Yugoslavia really existed. Many other people are puzzled by these same questions, and their brilliant works have largely succeeded in giving these issues an answer (see Calic 2019; Lampe 2000; Pearson 2015). This book cannot hope to do the same; yet moved by very similar guiding questions, it focuses on ethnonationality—the issue par excellence in the Yugoslav and post-Yugoslav space. However, it is not (only) about ethnonational identities. Rather, it explores the complexities and shaping forces behind them. Ethnonationality is, in fact, not only a matter of self-identification (Brubaker and Cooper 2000) or something subjectively felt (Wimmer 2008b), and it is not only connected to or inferred by the state’s citizenship policies and institutional assets. During Tito’s Yugoslavia, nacionalnost—which means ethnonational belonging—acquired different meanings and functions according to the circumstances. Ethnonational forms of identification were always allowed but were coupled with a sense of shared belonging to the whole SFRY (Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia), and the Yugoslav citizenship was the tool used to foster cooperation among and between peoples and republics. In the 1990s, however, ethnonationality acquired a new importance, while Yugoslav citizenship lost its unification power. Yet ethnonationality had begun to ‘matter more’ back in the 1970s, as a consequence of economic malaise and then institutional and constitutional changes. Nowadays, particularly in those multiethnic realities which failed to become ethnic nation-states during the transition—although they tried

1  Introduction: Ethnonationality, Citizenship, and Feelings… 

3

to—ethnonationality is, for many reasons, much more important than citizenship. After its blatant entering into the public (and political) sphere, ethnonationality’s collective dimension has acquired an exaggerated importance, becoming the favourite toy of politicians and state builders— or state destroyers, depending on the circumstances. It has been, and is, mobilized, instrumentalized, politicized, institutionalized. According to political and ideological circumstances it has been nurtured and emphasized, neglected, discouraged, or coupled with other forms of identification and belonging. It has been used to include and exclude, to enjoy rights and benefits, to serve collective purposes and achieve individual goals, to rule and destroy, to kill and to survive. Ethnonationality nowadays seems to be about status, power, resources. But it also conditions friendships and love relationships. It oftentimes determines where to live and the school to which you send your kids. Ethnonationality is about who you vote for and who claims to represent you. It is about the state, institutions, mechanisms, procedures, quotas, seats. But it is also about ideologies, peace, and war.

What Are We Going to Talk About, Then? Ethnonationality has therefore become much more than an identity component. And it does much more than remind individuals of their origins. This book aims to explore the ‘evolution’ of ethnonationality, and how it has changed over time, across regimes and—as the reader has perhaps guessed—generations. It does so for the two post-Yugoslav, multiethnic, and post-conflict, republics of Bosnia Herzegovina and Macedonia— here studied as two cases of a number of multinational/ethnic countries whose ethnic collective identities have been at various times built, neglected, emphasized, or instrumentalized and politicized. In order to deal with the complexity surrounding and featuring the concept and its declinations, the exploration of this evolutionary process is performed from a temporal perspective encompassing both the macro and micro dimensions, and surveys both the Yugoslav and post-Yugoslav structural systems and respective generations. The second part of the book attempts

4 

A. Piacentini

to portray this evolutionary process not simply from the people’s perspective, but from the eyes and through the words of two different generations: a ‘Yugoslav generation’ that grew up and socialized in the ‘golden era’ of Yugoslavia, and a ‘post-Yugoslav’ generation which grew up and socialized in the ‘new world’. The generational perspective represents the most innovative feature of the book; a fresh and new point of view that considers, alongside other major socializing agents, the paramount role the family environment has in shaping attitudes and behaviours. In order to satisfy my initial curiosity, I thus decided to look at two generations living together in the same family unit. In this way, while investigating how macro changes influenced, and have been influenced by, different generations’ ideas and patterns of behaviour connected to ethnonationality; how and why individuals belonging to different generations signify and use their ethnonational backgrounds; and how their ideas and behaviours concurred to shape ethnonationality’s semantic and pragmatic character; I would also discover what has been transmitted, or not, from one generation to the next. This work seeks to be the first attempt to shed light on possible inter-generational dis-similarities and dis-continuities in the modalities of framing and using ethnonationality, unveiling the rationale and motivations behind individuals’ and collectivities’ maintenance or subversion of the current status quo—built upon ethnonationality itself.

Ends and Means The book starts with the idea that without a temporal perspective any account on the topic would be incomplete. It does not consider the fall of Yugoslavia as a ‘year zero’ but, rather, as the outcome of pre-existing mechanisms and conditions. Ethnonationality’s importance, in fact, did not emerge all of a sudden in the ‘infamous 1990s’: on the contrary, since Socialist Yugoslavia’s birth in the 1940s equality among the nations was reflected in both the Federation’s institutional asset (Pearson 2015) and its socio-political organization, representing a key pillar of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia itself.

1  Introduction: Ethnonationality, Citizenship, and Feelings… 

5

The book is also grounded on the awareness that any socio-political dynamic is the outcome of interactions and negotiations involving both the state and the masses; hence, while exploring the evolution of the meanings and functions of ethnonationality, both its politico-­institutional and social-subjective dimensions are considered, performing a multidimensional and inter-generational analysis. Structural elements such as the institutions’ shapes and the ideological umbrella under which interactions take place do matter, and are crucial in shaping and even constraining actors’ behaviours. It is in these spaces, changing over time as a consequence of complex dynamics, that actors and factors relate together, influencing each other. Additionally, as Koneska argued in her comparative work (2014: 8), in these spaces of socialization and mutual influence the actors ‘are exposed to sets of norms about appropriate behavior in different situations’. In fact, although on the one hand structural factors influence, shape, and at times even constrain actors’ behaviour, on the other hand the actors interact, socialize, and compete moved by their own ideas and interests, concurring to tailor the reality they live in. Their behaviours could go in a direction which sustains and hence reproduces structural aspects or, on the contrary, could go in the direction of non-­ alignment, hence attempting to resist, or change, the structure itself. The adoption of a relational approach is further justified by a certain lack in the available literature: on the one side there is already an abundance of works on ethnonationalism, politicization of ethnic identities, redefinition of groups’ boundaries, and more generally on the changes that occurred in the region with the fall of Yugoslavia. Yet the available studies are macro-centred (Gordy 2014) and there is a lack of publications also taking into account the roles people exerted and still exert, and the kind of interactions and intersections existing between the state and the masses. We also know about the role that states and institutions, political and religious leaders, and mass ideologies have had in transforming the (former) Yugoslav societies and give a new importance to ethnonationality. Nonetheless, we know very little about the ‘micro world’, about how people understand/understood, cope/d and contribute/d to these changes, adapting (or not) their behaviours to the surrounding environment. And finally, we know even less about the role played by the most important socializing agent, the family, in transmitting (or not)

6 

A. Piacentini

certain ideas, values, and patterns of behaviour, particularly in the context of changing regimes. This book attempts to fill the gaps by combining the available macro-centred studies with an empirical analysis focused on people belonging to a generation of ‘Yugoslav’ parents born in the 1950s and socialized within the Socialist and Brotherhood’s framework, and a generation of ‘post-Yugoslav’ young adults born in the late 1980s and socialized in the context of ethnic politics.

 thnic Groups and Nations: Time, Dimensions, E and Relations The first step before analysing the evolution of ethnonationality from a temporal and generational perspective is to set up an appropriate theoretical framework enabling us to understand the institutional, ideological, and political landscapes of BiH and Macedonia, and their Yugoslav past. A first due observation concerns the fact that, although often used interchangeably, ethnic and national collectivities are not the same entity. The difference lies in the political underpinning of the latter, which may use ethnicity for political purposes either within an existing state or in a state of its own (see: Anderson 1983; Brass 1991; Breuilly 1993; Gellner 1983; Smith 1991; Malešević 2004, 2006, 2013). Nations, thus, are not only political categories but are also tied to and supported by the state. When dealing with ethnic groups and nations, Andreas Wimmer (2004, 2008a, b, 2013) built upon the work of Fredrik Barth (1969) and focused on three key elements: the institutional framework in which interactions among the groups, and between them and the larger state, take place; the distribution of power between the groups; and the networks of political alliances influencing the elites’ and the masses’ interests and behaviours. Wimmer’s idea was that ethnic-­based nations come into being as a consequence of a ‘successful compromise between different social groups: an exchange of the guarantee of political loyalty for the promise of participation and security’ (Wimmer 2004: 32). This compromise, defining alliances and interests’ protections, is necessarily based on some degree of social closure and, as we shall see more in detail in the next chapters, it

1  Introduction: Ethnonationality, Citizenship, and Feelings… 

7

stands at the core of ethnonationality’s evolutionary process and redefinition of its meanings and functions over time and across generations. The next sections build upon the arguments of Wimmer (2004, 2008a, b, 2013) and look at how role and saliency of ethnonationality may be influenced by certain dynamics between macro and micro factors and actors. By so doing, the reader will be provided with the tools needed to properly frame and understand the temporal and generational analyses afterwards performed. (i) Institutional Framework: The Multinational State and the Consociational Model From a structural point of view, the major issue multinational states have to deal with concerns groups’ collective identities and feelings of attachment and belonging. Multinational states are states in which two or more nations, with their distinct national identities, coexist within the borders of the same polity. Multinational states are different from the multicultural ones given that in the latter groups all belong to the same nation in spite of their different cultural traditions. ‘Multicultural states become multinational when the different cultural groups aspire for independent statehood’ (Keil 2013: 27). Bosnia Herzegovina and Macedonia are multinational states in which different groups have coexisted and lived together for a long time. In Bosnia Herzegovina there are three major groups: Bošnjaks, Bosnian Serbs, and Bosnian Croats, who are respectively Muslims, Christian Orthodox, and Christian Catholic. Additionally, there are seventeen other minority groups living in the state’s territory. In Macedonia, along with other minority groups, the numerical majority is constituted by the ethnic Macedonians and followed by the ethnic Albanians, respectively Christian Orthodox and Muslims. In Macedonia, however, the distinguishing feature between the two main groups is not religion but the language spoken which, contrary to the Bosnian case, is not mutually understandable. In the context of ethnonational plurality, the multinational state may adopt different strategies to deal with these collectivities, avoiding disruptive tendencies and the state’s collapse. Among these, some more extreme policies may go in the direction of assimilation, repression, and even

8 

A. Piacentini

physical elimination of minority groups, while others may discourage political mobilization on ethnic bases. Another type of solution is the building of a ‘state-nation’ (Stepan et al. 2011). State-nations are multinational states recognizing groups’ cultural specificities and identities while nonetheless promoting attachment and identification with the larger state and its institutions. This means the introduction of policies able to positively influence inter-group relations and their relationship to the larger state and, finally, state survival. Briefly, political leaders in multinational states may want to craft a state where the collectivities, besides identifying themselves with their own ethnonational groups of belonging, strongly identify with, and are loyal towards, the multinational state, engendering a ‘loyalty that proponents of homogenous nation states perceive that only nation state can engender’ (ibid.: 4). Contrary to the ‘one nation, one state’ equation, the state-nation approach ‘respects and promotes multiple but complementary identities’ (ivi). Legitimacy, credibility, and popular support of the multinational states, hence, comes from the state’s commitment in respecting and recognizing groups’ differences, allowing them expression, and at the same time establishing mechanisms of accommodation. Concerning our case studies, we can say that to some extent the Yugoslavia that Tito wished to create resembled the ‘state-nation’ encouraged by Stepan et al. (2011). The questions of how to manage plurality, trigger groups’ loyalties, and a sense of community able to go beyond ethnonational differences was, in fact, perfectly clear to Tito from the 1940s—which is the reason why he established the new, Socialist, Yugoslavia on supra-national principles (such as the antifascist struggle and the unity of all the South Slavs) giving the federal state an ideological, rather than a national, identity. Institutional and ideological mechanisms aimed to protect ethnonational identities while, at the same time, developing a feeling of belonging to Yugoslavia as a whole, were crucial for the survival of the multinational federation. Nevertheless, the constitutional and institutional changes ruled out in 1974 drastically changed the way in which ethnonationality was managed and understood, paving the way for nationalism to arise and shaping new relational modalities between the state and the masses. As Malešević (2006: 183) argued, ‘Yugoslavia did not collapse because it was an artificial conglomerate of

1  Introduction: Ethnonationality, Citizenship, and Feelings… 

9

many ethnonational groups. It collapsed because it unwittingly created the institutional conditions for the stern politicisation of cultural differences.’ The post-1974 SFRY was, in fact, very similar to Lijphart’s consociations and it produced those same negative outcomes, such as institutionalized and reified ethnonational identities, the rise of nationalist feelings, ethnic political pluralism (since 1990), difficult inter-group dialogue, and compromise. At the present day, indeed, the academic debate on how to institutionally manage ethnic plurality is dominated by two different approaches: the consociational one developed by Arendt Lijphart (1977) and the centripetalist one, advocated above all by Benjamin Reilly (2004, 2006, 2011) and Donald Horowitz (1985). The former largely relies on cooperation between (ethnic) leaders of the different segments composing the larger society, while the latter promotes the establishment of institutions and mechanisms encouraging inter-group moderation. Bosnia and Macedonia, after their respective conflicts in 1992–1995 and 2001, have been rebuilt according to Lijphart’s consociational model of democracy. The model is grounded on the assumption that ‘it is often more perverse to deny the existence and salience of ethnic identities […] than it is to build upon them’ (O’Leary 2005: 19), and it focuses on strengthening the autonomy of each group, while also favouring a party system that explicitly represents the different collectivities, ensuring their equal representation. However, as consociationalism’s opponents often argue (see: Brass 1991; Horowitz 1985; Noel 2005; Reilly 2004), Lijphart’s model ‘freezes and institutionally privileges (undesirable) collective identities at the expense of more “emancipated” or more “progressive” identities’ (O’Leary 2005: 5). Consociations are indeed accused of reifying groups’ identities and institutionalizing ethnicity—in turn producing an ethnic political pluralism that strengthens ethnic, rather than civic identities, and makes political dialogue and compromise more difficult; eventually it increases rather than decreases the sources of inter-­ group conflict. The main weakness of this particular institutional model is, therefore, that the multinational state is by the groups seen as ‘composed of nations, rather than citizens’ (Hayden 2000: 51). As we shall see, in the case of BiH and Macedonia, the institutional framework upon which the post-Yugoslav and post-conflict states have been built,

10 

A. Piacentini

alongside with ethnonationalism, ethnicity’s politicization, and other macro factors, have also impacted the individuals’ and the generations’ modalities of signifying and using their ethnonational belonging in the post-Yugoslav scenario. On the other side, the centripetalist approach is based on the assumption that the best way to manage plurality is not to replicate existing differences and divisions but, rather, to depoliticize ethnicity—for example, by encouraging parties to present themselves as multiethnic and attract votes across ethnic lines. By giving politicians reasons to seek support from groups beyond their own, it is possible ‘to create an environment in which cooperative interaction and mutually beneficial “win-win” exchanges are possible, so that norms of cooperation and negotiation can become habituated amongst political actors’ (Reilly 2004: 7). Centripetalism, therefore, emphasizes the key role of institutions encouraging collaboration and accommodation across ethnic lines and that can thus ‘break down the salience of ethnicity rather than fostering its representation institutionally’ (Reilly 2011: 263). Among others,1 an important area of divergence between the consociational and centripetalist approaches concerns territorial solutions: while consociationalism recommends federalism, decentralization, and territorial autonomies (which has been the case for the Dayton Agreement’s Bosnia Herzegovina and its internal partitions), centripetalism advocates that a unitary state would be more appropriate to manage plurality and avoid disruptive tendencies (which was the rationale behind the Macedonian Ohrid Framework Agreement). We can therefore now understand why, in this journey aimed at retracing the steps of ethnonationality’s evolution, it is also important to focus on institutional design and political engineering. The institutional framework in which the groups live, and in which interactions between them and the state take place, does consistently matter. However, it is not only a matter of the institutions’ shape. (ii) The Distribution of Power Between the Groups: the Ethnopolitical Drift Alongside the state’s institutional framework, the distribution of power between groups composing the multinational state is another issue to take into account when investigating ethnonationality’s possible changes.

1  Introduction: Ethnonationality, Citizenship, and Feelings… 

11

In particular, it is worth focusing our attention on the composition of the multiparty system and political elites’ behaviours and interests. Political parties are the mediating institution between the citizenry and the state, and they have the ability to not only influence and shape ethnonationality’s meanings and functions, but more generally of tailoring democratic, or ethnocratic, societies where ethnonationality’s institutional protection is either a tool to stifle ethnonationalism or its exact opposite. Concerning our case studies, we can see that in the SFRY’s institutional asset, ethnonationality’s recognition and protection was put at the centre of a state ideology based on groups’ equality to guarantee healthy functioning of the multinational state and its stability. In the post-­ Yugoslav era, and especially in the post-war scenarios, constitutional recognition and institutional protection of ethnonationality has instead been put at the centre of ethnically fragmented and antagonist state ideologies based on the need to safeguard and defend each groups’ identity and interests against those of the others. As a consequence, political representatives seeking to gain and maintain political power by promising to protect and safeguard their own ethnic selectorates’ interests, have found institutional advantages in building their support upon ethnicity, exploiting the grey spaces of the consociative institutional structure, rather than depoliticizing ethnicity and fostering ‘multiple but complementary identities’ (Stepan et al. 2001). Once political power is held by ethnically exclusive elites entrenched and misusing democratic institutions and mechanisms, the multinational state runs the dangerous risk of becoming ethnocratic and featured by ethnopolitics (Howard 2012). In some cases political elites are explicitly adverse to ethnicity’s depoliticization because, being the political power shared according to ethnic criteria, an alteration of that equilibrium would imply their loss of power and the consequent renegotiation of political alliances and representation mechanisms alike. Political leaders in ethnically diverse societies thus have an interest in pursuing ethnic-identity politics as well as in turning the multinational state into an ethnocracy. An ethnocratic system is, according to the definition provided by Howard (2012: 155–156): […] a political system in which political and social organizations are founded on ethnic belonging rather than individual choice. Ethnocracy, in this sense,

12 

A. Piacentini

features: 1) political parties that are based foremost on ethnic interests; 2) ethnic quotas to determine the allocation of key posts; and 3) state institutions, especially in education and the security sector, that are segmented by ethnic group. Ethnocracies are generally parliamentary systems with proportional or semiproportional representation according to ethnic classifications. Contrasting political platforms—e.g., socialist-liberal, secular-religious, left-­right, and the like—are of secondary importance to ethnic-group membership. The ethnic bases of political parties are often mandated by law. In ethnocratic regimes, the heads of government are determined first by ethnic affiliation and only then by other means of appointment. Ethnocratic regimes often segment education and the security services by ethnic group as well. […] Slots in the military and police may also be designated primarily along ethnic lines rather than with a view to experience, merit, or other criteria.

Howard’s definition closely resembles the post-Yugoslav realities of Bosnia Herzegovina and Macedonia where political power, ever since the 1990 elections, has been held by ethnonational political parties exclusively representing their own ethnic masses, and where multiethnic and civic political alternatives struggle to find popular consensus. (iii) The Networks of Political Alliances The consequent normalization of trust alliances between ethnic parties holding power, and ethnic masses seeking protection, had and still does have a profound impact on both the state’s proper functioning and the society as a whole, eventually shaping both groups’ and generations’ modalities of signifying and using ethnonational origins. In the post-Yugoslav scenario, institutionalized ethnonationality via ethnic power-sharing, and its politicization via ethnic political parties, have allowed for the creation of particularistic relations and alliances between the (ethnic) political representatives and the (ethnic) masses. Being consociations grounded on ethnic principles of representation and redistribution of resources, the ethnic political representatives use a wide array of strategies to gain and maintain their power positions. Yet political leaders and their parties, before coming to political power, need to acquire popular legitimacy and make the multiethnic and civic alternatives worthless to be voted and supported. Keeping in mind the rise of ethnonationalism in the

1  Introduction: Ethnonationality, Citizenship, and Feelings… 

13

late 1980s, and the rise to power of individuals such as Tuđman and Milošević, contemporary ethnonational leaders use similar but more sophisticated strategies to provide their own people with good enough reasons to vote for them during elections, ultimately swearing loyalty to the nation rather than the multinational state. Among the most deployed strategies are the use of media, the school system, and religious institutions as powerful ways to spread certain ideas in and about the larger society and the groups composing it. Yet ‘ethnically exclusive’ political alliances are also widely influenced by the economic conditions of the multinational state, as well as by the mechanisms of redistribution of resources among the groups. The link existing between economic malaise and ethnonationalism has already been highlighted by the many scholars who tried to provide clarity on the Yugoslav breakup (see Andjelić 2003; Brass 1991; Bieber et al. 2014; Hayden 2000; Pavković 2003). If we look at our case studies, we see how difficult economic conditions stand at the core of a political strategy that, on the one side, relies on ethnic mechanisms of representation and redistribution of resources and, on the other one, exploits generalized poverty so to establish favouritism relations with ethnicized voters. In this way, ethnic political parties can reach a wider spectrum of the electorate, and also those not ‘ideologically’ convinced (Piacentini 2019). Roughly speaking, this means the manipulation of democratic principles and economic insecurities to develop informal networks of ethno-clientelistic alliances, offering ‘ethnic masses’ the illusion of some sort of economic stability on the condition of absolute loyalty to the party—and, in turn, to the ethnonational group. Ethnonational groups, besides being ideological targets, also become groups of interest, while political parties become distributors of resources. This phenomenon, defined by Mujkić (2016) ‘ethno-­capitalism’, is widespread in both the case studies analysed in this work; yet, as we shall see in the empirical chapters, reasons and motivations behind individuals’ engagement into ethno-clientelistic networks do differ according to both the generation and the country surveyed.

14 

A. Piacentini

Explaining the Whys As the reader had the occasion to notice, to untie macro and micro while looking at the change’s ethnonationality went through in the multiethnic former Yugoslav societies is almost impossible. Hence, this book first explains and explores the macro level, and only then it focuses its empirical attention on the micro level, finally looking at the relations of interdependence between the two. These attentions justify the two-generations exploration, where a generation of ‘Yugoslav’ parents together with a generation of ‘post-Yugoslav’ children are the protagonists of the story. The book aims at a better understanding of the micro-generational impact of macro-changes entailing ethnonationality, as well as the roles people have played and still play in shaping the reality they live in.

Why Yugoslavia and Post-Yugoslavia? Socialist Yugoslavia was a multinational state homeland for many nations, and its two major founding principles were the common Slavic origins of the nations composing it, and their common struggle against the Fascist forces back in the 1940s. The Yugoslav system, comprehensive of many different groups with their own cultural, linguistic, and religious specificities, was deeply committed in assuring equality (Pearson 2015), avoiding the supremacy of one group over the others, and particularly in suppressing nationalism. The state ideology played a fundamental role in keeping the groups tied together and Bratstvo i Jedinstvo (Brotherhood and Unity) represented the ideological pillar of the system itself. Rather than a ‘brainwashing strategy’, the massive spread of values grounded on good relations and respect for the differences genuinely helped the communities to live together, sharing not only the same space but also their personal lives. Tito’s politics did not aim to suppress ethnic identities; rather, it aimed to instigate a sense of solidarity among the groups, a ‘we feeling’ so as to weaken ethnic sentiments. Yet the decentralizing measures enacted in 1974 led towards the last chapter of the history of Socialist Yugoslavia, with the federation assuming a ‘quasi-consociational’ shape that contributed to

1  Introduction: Ethnonationality, Citizenship, and Feelings… 

15

pave the way for nationalism to arise. With all the federal units except BiH becoming de facto ethnic nation-states, it did not take too long for the republican elites to frame economic and political tensions in ethnic terms, thus tailoring a new way to look at the federal republics and their peoples themselves. As Malešević (2006) and Brubaker (1996) argued, the structure of the Yugoslav federal state in its last fifteen years of life, its complicated relation with ethnicity, nationality, and nationalism, and the solutions adopted to manage those issues, played a major part in the collapse itself, shaping socio-political dynamics and developments. The 1990s violently marked the dissolution of the SFRY and the transition towards new regimes. The nation-state paradigm invested multinational Yugoslavia, and nationhood became a matter of life (Drakulić 1993). The institutional collapse was accompanied by an ideological fall where socialism was substituted by ethnonationalism. In that chaos political parties, media, educational systems, and religious institutions had a key role in rebuilding national identities, producing the overlap between ethnicity, religion, and nationality. Their role, persisting until today in both Bosnia Herzegovina and Macedonia, will be analysed in more detail in Chap. 3. More than two decades after the Yugoslav collapse and their respective independences, Bosnia and Macedonia figure among the ‘deeply divided societies’, meaning those societies in which ‘ethnicity is a politically salient cleavage around which interests are organized for political purposes’ (Reilly 2004: 4). The structural changes that took place from the late 1980s have had a visible political and social impact and, at the present day, in both the two former republics ethnicity-based social cleavages overlap with the political ones, mutually reinforcing each other while hampering social cohesion and political compromise. In both countries ethnonationality is institutionalized via ethnic power-sharing mechanisms and politicized by ethnic representatives who have a greater incentive to build support upon ethnicity rather than working for its depoliticization. Additionally, the presence of ethnic mechanisms of institutional representation has allowed for the establishment of ethnic mechanism of redistribution of resources, creating ethnic clientelistic relations between the state and the masses. Any reference to ‘Brotherhood and Unity’, in a Yugoslav sense, has vanished. Divisions between the groups are mirrored in segregated education, monoethnic neighbours,

16 

A. Piacentini

cities, territories, media, and political parties. In both BiH and Macedonia, a shared sense of belonging to the same state, as well as a sense of being equal citizens regardless of ethno-cultural differences, is still struggling to prevail over exclusive ethnonational attachments. Therefore, to reconstruct ethnonationality’s meanings and functions since its Yugoslav past, looking at the changes it went through from an institutional, political, and ideological perspective, is crucial in understanding the generational impact those changes might have had on the population, and how differently socialized generations have contributed to make those changes possible. By so doing, the investigation also accounts for possible generational and inter-generational dis-continuities and dis-similarities. It is the (apparent) macro-discontinuity between ethnonationality’s current politicization and divisive function, and the non-­divisive space Yugoslavia sought to create, that justifies and makes scientifically relevant an investigation encompassing two political eras, systems, and respective generations.

Why Macedonia and Bosnia Herzegovina? Two main considerations drove the selection of the case studies. The first one is purely pragmatic, based on an extensive previous knowledge of the author on the contexts investigated. The second consideration is, instead, methodological and connected to the elements both states share— although also their differences play a role in making the comparison reasonable and interesting. To begin with, in both countries the groups composing the larger state are socially divided according to the ethnic group of belonging. In both Bosnia and Macedonia more than one group coexist in the same state, and in both cases the groups differ in their ethnic, religious, and linguistic origins. Secondly, the consociational model of democracy has been implemented in both cases as a post-conflict measure, meant to calm down inter-group tensions and promote good and democratic practices. However, ethnonationality’s institutionalization has in both states resulted in an overly emphasized importance of the same, which is in turn

1  Introduction: Ethnonationality, Citizenship, and Feelings… 

17

reflected in a political scenario composed almost exclusively by ethnonational political parties seeking to represent and protect their own ethnonational groups. Thus, Bosnia and Macedonia are both ethnically divided societies featured by ethnic politics—that is the overlap between ethnic-based social and political cleavages. Thirdly, both countries are plagued by economic malaise, high levels of unemployment, corruption, and clientelism2 often functioning according to ethnic criteria. As we shall see later in the book, it is not uncommon for people to establish particularistic relations with ‘powerful individual’ members of the major ruling political parties, which either control sectors of the public administration/public companies via their political parties, or own their own private companies. Last but not least, Bosnia and Macedonia also share a historical past of domination by powerful empires, as well as a more recent history as federal units in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Both states gained independence and became sovereign states for the first time only after the SFRY collapse of the 1990s. Besides these commonalities, there are also a few differences worth mentioning and, as we shall see, these played a role in shaping ethnonationality’s meanings and function across time periods and generations as well. The first difference concerns the size of the groups: in Macedonia, despite a sizeable presence of ethnic Albanians (and other minority groups), ethnic Macedonians have always been in the net majority, to the point that during the time of Yugoslavia Macedonia was seen as ‘the federal unit of Macedonians’ (Koneska 2014: 61). Bosnia, on the contrary, has always been a ‘Jugoslavija u malom’ (Yugoslavia in miniature), and none of its three major ethnic groups has ever been in majority. The second difference, instead, pertains to the intensity of the conflict: Bosnia went through a disastrous war that lasted from 1992 to the end of 1995; Macedonia left the SFRY almost without any fight and went through a short internal conflict (about nine months) in 2001. In both cases, however, violence contributed to amplifying ethnicity’s importance and distance between the groups, producing negative consequences especially in the context of the almost total absence of common supra-ethnic forms of identification.

18 

A. Piacentini

Why Two Generations Within the Same Family Unit? After having explained why it is necessary to start the analysis of ethnonationality’s evolution from the Yugoslav era, and why Bosnia and Macedonia happened to be the most suitable case studies, this section explains the rationale behind the choice of these two generational cohorts. By considering that anyone in the society is exposed to the same flux of influences, although perhaps to different extents, we can expect socializing agents like political parties, school systems, media, and religious institutions, to have (had) a powerful role in shaping the way people understand, perceive, and use their ethnonational backgrounds. To focus also on the family makes the picture more complete, opening up a deeper understanding of why people are the way they are. The book’s scope, in fact, is not to see how but which ideas, rules, and patterns of behaviour related to ethnonationality have been transmitted, hence continued or not, between two generations socialized in different macro-environments. Furthermore, there is no aim to generalize from individuals to ethnonational groups: on the contrary, the arguments are presented so to avoid individuals’ ascription into political categories and ‘methodological nationalism’, namely ‘taking national discourses, agendas, loyalties, and histories for granted, without problematizing them or making them an object of analysis in its own right’ (Wimmer and Schiller 2002: 304). Performing a multidimensional and temporal exploration allows us to understand how the state and the masses interact together, and how their conjoined roles make the system function. In a broader perspective, the multidimensional and inter-generational analysis outlined throughout the book explores the bi-directional relation according to which past and present macro-environments and connected family-personal experiences might have penetrated and shaped the family micro-environment influencing ideas and behaviours of two generations; how these two generations’ ideas and behaviours, in turn, contributed to shape the surroundings; and how eventually they coexist—influencing, meeting, or clashing with each other—inside the family. From a theoretical perspective, the inclusion of the older parents’ generation is paramount because, generally in the available literature, their characteristics are taken for granted and ‘little attention is paid to how

1  Introduction: Ethnonationality, Citizenship, and Feelings… 

19

the parents came to be the way they are’ (Beck and Jennings 1975: 83–84). On the other hand, the inclusion of a generation of young adults, old enough to have concerns such as workplace, family, future, and politics, allows us to see how a generation with a ‘Yugoslav background’ but raised in a divided environment, understand, frame, and use its ethnonational background. Having an overview of the whole family environment allows us to understand ‘why people are the way they are’. It is also worth mentioning that looking at ethnonationality through the prism of the family, and through the eyes of the two generations composing it, gives us some interesting insights partly filling the gaps existing in the available literature. According to the scholarly production on political socialization, the family is the most important actor in the socialization process (Barni 2011; Bengston 1975; Coffè and Voorpostel 2011; Grusec and Hastings 2007; Miller and Glass 1989), and ‘similarity of beliefs and values between parents and children has long been recognized as an important source of stability in society. Indeed, the transmission of socio-­ political ideologies from one generation to the next permits continuity within families and integration between cohorts of individuals in the population’ (Miller and Glass 1989: 991). The family is, thus, ‘the agent which promotes early attachment to country and government’ (Jennings and Niemi 1968: 169) by channelling the offspring into groups and institutions that will ‘reinforce the commitment’ (Himmelfarb in Martin et al. 2003: 171) to the norms. Nevertheless, according to Cunningham (2001), children need to reach a certain maturity before adopting the values to which they have been exposed in childhood, and there may be a lag between socialization and the emergence of those values. Additionally, periods of political conflict may increase the likelihood of generational changes (Kraut and Lewis 1975), and to find out the nature, reasons, and logic behind those changes is this book’s goal. The arguments put forward by the book are empirically sustained and grounded on semi-structured interviews conducted by the author in Skopje and Sarajevo in 2016 and 2017 with about one hundred individuals belonging to the two generations here surveyed, as well as members of political parties and civil society organizations. For the sake of methodological curiosity, in both cities interviews were conducted with about thirteen families respectively, and always trying to respect the triad

20 

A. Piacentini

mother-father-children. In the context of Sarajevo, however, a couple of families were only composed of mothers and children, since the fathers had died during the conflict. Nevertheless, this ‘lack’ has not been considered a methodological weakness: on the contrary, it represents an essential feature of both the generations investigated, an element that could potentially influence the family’s members’ perceptions of ethnonational belonging, even leading towards more radical(ized) positions. The older generation considered in the book is composed of ‘parents’ born between 1952 and 1965, who have lived both the ‘golden era’ of Yugoslavia (1960s and 1970s) and its disintegration. The younger generation, instead, seeks to represent the young adults born between 1985 and 1990. From a methodological perspective, the choice of these two generations mirrors the years in which their secondary socialization was completed (see Ricucci and Torrioni 2004). Aware that one cannot help but wonder how accurate the generational analysis proposed is, and how legitimate it is to consider those individuals as representatives of the two generations, I must stress and emphasize that the bi-generational perspective here adopted to explain and explore the changes the Yugoslav republics went through, and particularly those involving the notion of ethnonationality, is a rather unknown territory. The words and perceptions of these two generations’ members therefore try to make sense of how a Yugoslav generation of parents and a post-Yugoslav generation of children are reframing and using their ethnonational belonging in the light of systemic changes and personal experiences, and how these might eventually account for generational dis-similarities and dis-continuities. To conclude, I do recognize one cannot help but wonder what the possibilities and limits of such an approach are. Once again I must say that at the present day no other inter-generational study in the context of former Yugoslavia has ever been performed, and besides the huge amount of literature existing about Bosnia and Macedonia, the question of how ethnonationality has evolved from a structural, temporal, and bi-­generational perspective has not been tackled. The book offers a new and fresh perspective from which we look and understand the role and reasons multinational states, political elites, masses, and individuals may

1  Introduction: Ethnonationality, Citizenship, and Feelings… 

21

have in preventing/avoiding/causing conflicts, building democracy, or maintaining ethnopolitics. While the book does not, and cannot, provide a generalizable inter-generational perspective, mainly but not exclusively because of the lack of previous longitudinal and statistical data, the dynamics it sheds light on oblige us to reflect beyond the case studies. Bosnia and Macedonia in fact figures as only two examples of a wider number of multinational states in which ethnonationality’s meanings and functions have changed as a consequence of regimes’ changes, political choices, and interests, as well as conflicts and economic disparities. The arguments put forward in the following chapters will tell us something new and interesting about what is legitimising, sustaining, and laying continuity to ethnic identity politics and nationalism; to opportunistic political behaviours and state-capture situations; to the paradoxical and simultaneous attractiveness and rejection of ethnonational categories. But it will also help us better understand the constant interaction and mutual influence between the individual and the collective, economy and institutions, society and politics, psychology and pragmatism, in and beyond former Yugoslav countries, in and beyond consociational settings.

Structure of the Book The book is composed of five main chapters, organized into two parts, and followed by a concluding reflection on the case studies and the concept of ethnonationality in general. After this introductory chapter, in Part I—Nations, Ideologies, and Institutions, Chaps. 2 and 3 provide a historical-institutional overview of case studies from their Yugoslav past to their respective conflicts and current realities. Keeping the focus of the attention on the multinational state, and the tie between state-sponsored ideologies and institutional mechanisms, Chap. 2 Ethnic Groups and Nations in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) analyses how ethnonational plurality was managed in the SFRY. Starting from its birth in 1943, the chapter looks at how the federal Yugoslav system succeeded

22 

A. Piacentini

in gaining popular legitimacy and managing ethnic diversity while trying to stifle nationalism. The exploration gives a special attention to the decentralization process initiated in the 1970s, after which the SFRY assumed a ‘quasi-consociational’ character, and stresses how different state architectures can differently impact both the political and social spheres—even favouring the rise of disruptive tendencies aiming at changing meanings and functions of ethnonationality. Finally, by drawing upon parallels with the ‘post-1974 SFRY’, the cases of post-conflict Bosnia Herzegovina and Macedonia will also be examined, making clear the ethnopolitical risk run by multinational states, as well as the connection between ethnic power-sharing mechanisms and ethnic politics. Chapter 3 After Yugoslavia. The New World goes in-depth into the current Bosnian and Macedonian realities, analysing how consociational arrangements are actually seen and used as a sort of ‘democratic legitimization’ by ethnopolitical entrepreneurs pursuing (ethnic) identity politics. Particularly, and in order to prepare the ground for the inter-generational analysis, the chapter looks at those factors and consequent rulers–ruled dynamics potentially affecting citizens’ social and political behaviours and, most importantly, the meanings attributed to, and the functions assumed by, ethnonational origins. In Part II—Ethnonationality and Generations, Chaps. 4, 5, and 6 analyse the empirical material collected in Skopje and Sarajevo with members of two generations living in the same family. Chapter 4 Between Groups’ Status and Individual Benefits: The Case of Skopje, and Chap. 5 Between Cosmopolitanism and Survival: The Case of Sarajevo separately deals with the Macedonian and Bosnian realities. The discussion is presented starting from the older generation and the Yugoslav past, then proceeds by surveying the younger generation and detecting possible inter-­generational dis-continuities and dis-similarities. The two empirical chapters investigate people’s perspectives, opinions, and modalities of interactions with both the state and other groups living in a plural society, trying to unveil that mutually dependent relationship existing between the state and the masses. Chapters 4 and 5 provide both a generational and inter-­ generational picture of how and why ethnonationality’s meanings and functions have possibly changed (or not) across generations and time periods, also giving the reader a complete family overview for each

1  Introduction: Ethnonationality, Citizenship, and Feelings… 

23

country surveyed. Chapter 6 The Story of Ethnonationality provides a final comprehensive overview summarizing the major points touched on and which emerged throughout the book. It summarizes the attitudes arising within the older and younger generations, clarifying the roots and reasons of the inter-generational dis-similarities and dis-continuities that arose in the two case studies; finally providing a family-level comparison. The analysis shows how the apparently very similar socio-political situation of Macedonia and Bosnia Herzegovina are instead the outcome of different political, inter-group, and state–masses dynamics; as well as how (and why) the meanings and usages attributed to ethnonational belonging differ within the two generations from Bosnia and Macedonia. Lastly, Chap. 7 Conclusion: What Can We learn? represents a final thought about the arguments tackled and put forth in the book. While drawing upon the cases of Bosnia and Macedonia, these last pages look at the more recent socio-political and economic developments featuring the European continent, proposing a reflection beyond the case studies and across the democratic continuum.

Notes 1. S.  Noel (ed.) 2005, From Power Sharing to Democracy. Post-conflict Institutions in Ethnically Divided Societies, Montreal & Kingston: MacGill-­ Queen’s University Press. 2. Freedom House, 2018, Nations in Transit Bosnia and Herzegovina 2018 Report https://freedomhouse.org/report-types/nations-transit; The FYROMacedonia 2018 https://freedomhouse.org/report/nations-transit/2018/macedonia.

References Anderson, B. 1983. Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (revised ed., 2006). London: Verso Books. Andjelić, N. 2003. Bosnia-Herzegovina. The End of a Legacy. London: Frank Cass Publishers.

24 

A. Piacentini

Barni, D. 2011. La trasmissione di valori in famiglia: rinnovare il patrimonio valoriale con la fiducia. Studi/Contributions 2: 5–8. Barth, F. 1969. Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture Difference. Lang Grove, IL: Waveland. Beck, P.A., and M.K. Jennings. 1975. Parents as “Middlepersons” in Political Socialization. Journal of Politics 37 (1): 83–107. Bengston, V.L. 1975. Generation and Family Effects in Value Socialization. American Sociological Review 40 (3): 358–371. Bieber, F., A. Glijaš, and R. Archer, eds. 2014. Debating the End of Yugoslavia. Farnham: Ashgate. Brass, P.R. 1991. Ethnicity and Nationalism. New Delhi: Sage Publications. Breuilly, J. 1993. Nationalism and the State. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Brubaker, R. 1996. Nationalism Reframed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brubaker, R., and F. Cooper. 2000. Beyond “identity”. Theory and Society 29: 1–47. Calic, M. 2019. A History of Yugoslavia. West Lafayette: Purdue University Press. Coffè, H., and M. Voorpostel. 2011. Intergenerational Transmission of Political Participation. The Importance of Parental Level of Education. Paper Prepared for Delivery at the ECPR General Conference 2011. August 25–27, Reykjavik, Iceland. Drakulić, S. 1993. The Balkan Express: Fragments from the Other Side of War. New York, London: WW. Norton & Company. Freedom House. 2018a. Nations in Transit. Bosnia and Herzegovina 2018 Report. https://freedomhouse.org/report-types/nations-transit. ———. 2018b. Nations in Transit. Macedonia 2018 Report. https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-press/2017/macedonia. Gellner, Ernest. 1983. Nation and Nationalism. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Gordy, E. 2014. On the Current and Future Research Agenda for Southeast Europe. In Debating the End of Yugoslavia, ed. F.  Bieber, A.  Galijaš, and R. Archer. Farnham: Ashgate. Grusec, J.E., and P.D.  Hastings, eds. 2007. The Handbook of Socialization. Theory and Research. New York, London: The Guildford Press. Hayden, R.M. 2000. Blueprints for a House Divided. The Constitutional Logic of the Yugoslav Conflicts. The University of Michigan Press. Horowitz, D.L. 1985. Ethnic Groups in Conflict. Berkeley: University of California Press. Howard, L.M. 2012. The Ethnocracy Trap. Journal of Democracy 23 (4): 155.

1  Introduction: Ethnonationality, Citizenship, and Feelings… 

25

Jennings, M.K., and R.G.  Niemi. 1968. The Transmission of Political Values from Parents to Child. The American Political Science Review 62 (1): 169–184. Keil, S. 2013. Multinational Federalism in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Farnham: Ashgate. Koneska, C. 2014. After Ethnic Conflict Policy-Making in Post-Conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina and Macedonia. London: Ashgate. Kraut, R.E., and H.S. Lewis. 1975. Alternate Models of Family Influence on Student Political Ideology. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 31 (5): 791–800. Lampe, J. 2000. Yugoslavia as History, Twice There Was a Country. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lijphart, A. 1977. Democracy in Plural Societies: A Comparative Exploration. New Haven: Yale University Press. Malešević, S. 2004. The Sociology of Ethnicity. London: Sage Publications. ———. 2006. Identity as Ideology. Understanding Ethnicity and Nationalism. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ———. 2013. Nation-States and Nationalisms. Cambridge: Polity Press. Martin, T.F., J.M. White, and D. Perlman. 2003. Religious Socialization: A Test of the Channelling Hypothesis of Parental Influence on Adolescent Faith Maturity. Journal of Adolescent Research 18 (2): 169–187. Miller, R.B., and J. Glass. 1989. Parent-Children Attitudes Similarity Across the Life Course. Journal of Marriage and Family 51 (4): 991–997. Mujkić, A. 2016. In Search of a Democratic Counter-Power in Bosnia Herzegovina. Southeast European and Black Sea Studies 15: 1–16. Noel, S., ed. 2005. From Power Sharing to Democracy. Post-Conflict Institutions in Ethnically Divided Societies. Montreal & Kingston: MacGill-Queen’s University Press. O’Leary, B. 2005. Debating Consociational Politics: Normative and Explanatory Arguments’ in Post-War Bosnia, Macedonia and Kosovo. In From Power Sharing to Democracy. Post-Conflict Institutions in Ethnically Divided Societies, ed. S. Noel, 3–43. Montreal & Kingston: MacGill-Queen’s University Press. Pavković, A. 2003. The Fragmentation of Yugoslavia. Nationalism and War in the Balkans. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Pearson, S. 2015. The “National Key” in Bosnia and Macedonia: A Historical Perspective. Nationalities Papers 43 (2): 213–232. Piacentini, A. 2019. “Trying to Fit In”: Multiethnic Parties, Ethno-Clientelism and Power-Sharing in Bosnia Herzegovina and Macedonia. Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 25 (3): 273–290.

26 

A. Piacentini

Reilly, B. 2004. Democracy in Divided Societies. Electoral Engineering for Conflict Management. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2006. Political Engineering and Party Politics in Conflict-Prone Societies. Democratization 13 (5): 811–827. ———. 2011. Institutional Design for Diverse Democracies: Consociationalism, Centripetalism and Communalism Compared. European Political Science 11: 259–270. Ricucci, R., and P.M. Torrioni 2004. Le regole della vita familiar: differenze di classe, di background culurale e di genre. Quaderni di ricerca del Dipartimento di Scienze Sociali dell’Università di Torino. Turin: Edizioni Libreria Stampatori. Smith, A.D. 1991. National Identity. London: Penguin Books. Stepan, A., L. Juan, and Y. Yogendra. 2011. Crafting State-Nations. India and Other Multinational Democracies. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Wimmer, A. 2004. Nationalist Exclusion and Ethnic Conflict. Shadows of Modernity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2008a. Elementary Strategies of Ethnic Boundary Making. Ethnic and Racial Studies 30 (6): 1025–1055. ———. 2008b. The Making and Unmaking of Ethnic Boundaries: A Multilevel Process Theory. American Journal of Sociology 113 (4): 970–1022. ———. 2013. Waves of War. Nationalism, State Formation, and Ethnic Exclusion in the Modern World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wimmer, A., and N.G.  Schiller. 2002. Methodological Nationalism and Beyond: Nation-State Building, Migration and the Social Sciences. Global Networks 2 (4): 301–334.

Part I Nations, Ideologies, and Institutions

2 Ethnic Groups and Nations in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY)

In 1943, based on an AVNOJ1 decision, the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY)2 was established under the leadership of Josip Broz Tito. The Yugoslavia Tito had in mind was to be different from the pre-­ war Yugoslavia under Karađorđević—‘hiding’ the hegemonic dream of Great Serbia. Tito’s Yugoslavia was based on the Marxist understanding of nation and state (Jović 2003), and it had to be less centralized in order to guarantee equality and justice for all the peoples living in it. These goals could be achieved only through Socialism. This chapter explores ethnonational issues in the multiethnic and multinational Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY), providing the reader with a historical overview seeking to unravel the always existing links and mutual dependencies between state institutional assets, ideologies, economic conditions, and ethnonationality; as well as between groups’ and individuals’ needs and wishes.

© The Author(s) 2020 A. Piacentini, Ethnonationality’s Evolution in Bosnia Herzegovina and Macedonia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39189-8_2

29

30 

A. Piacentini

Socialism and Yugoslavia The SFRY was an ambitious project which aimed to unite not only different ethnic groups, but also groups that occupied different socio-political positions within recent history and that fought against each other in the inter-war period, bringing forward different ideologies and national plans. In the eyes of the Yugoslav authorities, what could represent a problem was not ethnic plurality, but the potential rise of nationalist feelings that, if not properly stifled, would have led to ethnocentric claims and perhaps conflict. As a consequence, the SFRY had to be founded on shared, solid principles able to legitimize a multinational federation, and constitute a common ground for the peaceful coexistence of different national groups. These leading legitimizing principles were the anti-fascist struggle and liberation of the country from foreign occupiers; the Socialist ideal based on the Marxist-Leninist ideology; and a politics of equality, brotherhood, and unity among all the Yugoslav peoples despite their differences (see Lampe 1994; Sekulić 2002). Nevertheless, among the party ranks there were some conflicting ideas, which may be linked to ideological interpretations of Marxism and Socialism: on the one hand, the ‘statists’—as Tito, believed Yugoslavia should have remained ‘a state’; on the other hand, the ‘non-statists’—as Kardelj, argued that if not decentralized, the new Yugoslavia would not have been different from the previous one and the Soviet Union as well (Jović 2003). The statist understanding initially prevailed, and the new Yugoslavia closely resembled the Soviet Union (Radan 1998); yet, after the Tito–Stalin split (1948), the initial moment of totalitarian rule and centralism gradually left space to decentralization, the workers’ self-management,3 and the foundation of the Non-Aligned Movement.4 The detachment from the Soviet system helped to better define Yugoslavia’s identity, demonstrating ‘abroad and at home that its political system was more in tune with the origins of the Marxist doctrine and hence more just, free and equal […]’ (Malešević 2006: 169).

2  Ethnic Groups and Nations in the Socialist Federal Republic… 

31

Nations’ Status in the SFRY5 The SFRY was established as a federative multinational state in which nationality was territorialized. Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia and Bosnia Herzegovina, plus the autonomous regions of Kosovo and Vojvodina within the Serbian borders, were its constitutive units; each one—except Bosnia Herzegovina—with a national majority above 50 per cent. This internal ethnic composition6 made the SFRY ‘one of the most diversified structures among European countries’ (Janjić 1997: 12) and, in order to assure each ethnic group enjoyed a special status within the federation, each republic’s majority group was recognized as a constituent nation, thus satisfying the identity and psychological needs of groups that until very recently were bearers of antagonist ideals. Slovenes, Croats, Serbs, Montenegrins, Macedonians, and from 1971 also Muslims, were recognized as narod—constituent nations, not only in their respective republics but all over Yugoslavia’s territory. Groups with a homeland outside Yugoslavia, like Albanians, Turks, or Hungarians, were recognized as narodnost (nationalities), while etničke grupe (ethnic groups) were groups like the Roma or other minorities (Bringa 1993). Conscious that equality could not be only constitutional, the protection of the groups’ collective rights represented a peculiar aspect of Yugoslav policies. To mention some: all groups were guaranteed the right to speak and write in their own mother languages; Cyrillic and Latin alphabets were both used and learnt at school; and each republic had its own official language—though the official State’s idiom was Serbo-­ Croatian.7 Concerning religion, the 1946 constitution guaranteed equal status to the three main religions—Roman Catholic, Christian Orthodox, and Islam, also providing ‘separation between state and church, freedom of worship, religious equality, and the seclusion of religion to the private sphere’ (Velikonja 2003: 185). Particularly in the initial phase, however, religious activity was limited to spiritual affairs and religious education was banned in schools (Radić 2003). The Yugoslav authorities had, not without reasons, some suspicions concerning the Catholic Church, sympathizing for the ustaša (Ramet 2006: 196) and the Orthodox Church, a symbol of the previous Serbian hegemony. The position of

32 

A. Piacentini

Islam got slightly better in the 1960s8 with the establishment of the Non-Aligned Movement and then the recognition of Muslims as a nation in 1971. Given the groups’ differences, previous identity issues, and the dividing experience of the civil war happened meanwhile the Second World War, the principle of equality and the emphasis over the groups’ common Slavic roots represented the best solution against divisions and instability (Andjelić 2003). On the other side, although seemingly contradictory, recognition and protection of the groups’ ethnonational identities— constitutionally, institutionally, and socially—was indispensable to attract and gain their support and legitimacy (Randan 1998).

The ‘We-Feeling’: Bratstvo i Jedinstvo and Jugoslovenstvo The policy of Bratstvo i Jedinstvo (Brotherhood and Unity) was the emblem of the system. It was the necessary condition for the functioning of the multinational federation, the basis of equality and peaceful coexistence of its peoples, and the essential component for the development of Socialism. Although some scholars argued it functioned as a ‘civil religion’, meaning ‘an alloy of myths, quasi-religious symbols, cults, rituals, beliefs, and practices that secure the nation’s legitimacy and convince the people that the system is “good”’ (Perica 2002: 95), it actually was much more than an ideological mantra. It consisted in constitutional guarantees, practices, and policies aimed to safeguard groups’ and individuals’ equality. Additionally, as we shall see in the empirical chapters, the feeling of ‘being brothers’ all over the federation’s territory was real and strictly connected to the individuals’ pride of living in a big, geopolitically important, safe and, overall, free state (particularly from the 1960s). Brotherhood and Unity was thus mirrored in the notion of ‘equality’, to be guaranteed for both the social and the national groups (Pearson 2015) as, for instance, economic disparities or lack of prosperity of some ethnonational group could potentially represent a source of tension at a social level, but also at the republic and federal ones alike.

2  Ethnic Groups and Nations in the Socialist Federal Republic… 

33

Next to ‘Brotherhood and Unity’ stood also the notion of Jugoslovenstvo— Yugoslavism, another tool employed to counterbalance nationalism and separatism (Keil 2013; Pearson 2015) given the ethnic nature of the Yugoslav republics. Yugoslavism was a sort of cross-national concept used to describe attachment to Yugoslavia and patriotism; it referred to, and desired the birth of, a Yugoslav consciousness nonetheless untied from the creation of a Yugoslav national identity. The suppression of national identities would have led to nationalism, and Tito was perfectly aware of that; on the contrary, their equality within the SFRY was essential for the SFRY survival itself. And until the late 1960s, every attempt to institutionalize nations (or ethnicity) was seen as a danger.

Identities and Identifications Within the SFRY Citizenship in the SFRY was from the very beginning bifurcated into the federal and republican identities, nonetheless it was ‘the most important practical factor in the everyday life of Yugoslavs’ (Štiks 2006: 488). The LCY9 never tried to impose or promote a supra-national Yugoslav identity (Sekulić et al. 1994; Hodson et al. 1994), and there was no intention to create a new Yugoslav nation (Pearson 2015) which could, potentially, cause ‘nationalism and chauvinism’ (Jović 2003: 179). It was only in 1961, for the upcoming census, that the category ‘Yugoslavs—nationally undetermined’ was introduced; yet, not being a nation, identification as ‘Yugoslavs’ was generally related to the mixed-marriage phenomenon or, before their recognition as a nation, it was used by Muslims who did not feel comfortable identifying themselves as Serbs or Croats. With the introduction of the national category ‘Muslim’ in the 1971 census identification as ‘Yugoslavs’ declined, especially in BiH (Sekulić et al. 1994). Following the same logic, the Yugoslav authorities never attempted to promote or develop a civic understanding of the nations within the single Republics (Adamson and Jović 2004): meaning, they never encouraged the development of a ‘Bosnian Herzegovinian’ nation including ethnic Serbs, Croats, and Muslims or, similarly, a ‘Macedonian’ nation comprehensive of ethnic Macedonians, ethnic Albanians, and other groups. Ethnonational self-identification was thus allowed and, essentially, ‘the regime did not see danger in individual ethnonational expression but in

34 

A. Piacentini

organized groups’ (Andjelić 2003: 35). However, as we shall see, this lack of supra-ethnic civic identifications within the republics would continue to shape political and social dynamics (and conflicts) in both post-­ Yugoslav Bosnia and Macedonia. The 1980s saw a considerable increase of the number of people identifying themselves as Yugoslav, particularly ‘as the result of increased inter-ethnic contacts and education’ (Hayden 2000: 27). However, if on the one side the Yugoslav authorities intentionally avoided building supra-ethnic identities (both in terms of Yugoslav and in terms of Bosnian Herzegovinians or Macedonians encompassing the groups living in those republics), on the other side they saw the necessity to build or, more appropriately, to recognize the existence of some others (Table 2.1).

Nation Building: The Yugoslav Way The first interesting case is about the ‘Macedonians’. The origins of the ‘Macedonian question’ (Poulton 2000)  can be traced back to the pre-­ Yugoslav era, and the issue—meaning what is Macedonia and who are the Macedonians­ —concerned the area’s Slavic speaking inhabitants’ Table 2.1  Percentage of adult populations identifying themselves as Yugoslavs in Yugoslavia and each Federal Republic and Province, in the years 1961, 1971, 1981 Percentage identifying as Yugoslav Geographic area

1961

1971

1981

Predominant nationality in 1981

All of Yugoslavia Republics and provinces  Croatia  Serbia  Bosnia/Herzegovina  Kosovo  Macedonia  Montenegro  Slovenia  Vojvodina

1.7

1.3

5.4

36.3% Serbian

0.4 0.2 8.4 0.5 0.1 0.3 0.2 0.2

1.9 1.4 1.2 0.1 0.2 2.1 0.4 2.4

8.2 4.8Testo 7.9 0.1 0.7 5.3 1.4 8.2

75.1% Croatian 85.4% Serbian 39.5% Muslim 77.4% Albanian 67.0% Macedonian 68.3% Montenegro 90.5% Slovenian 54.3% Serbian

Source: Statistički Bilten SFRJ (No. 1295), 1982, Beograd, Yugoslavia: Government Printing Office. Statistički Godišnjak SFRJ, 1981, Beograd, Yugoslavia: Government Printing Office, in Sekulić et al. (1994: 85)

2  Ethnic Groups and Nations in the Socialist Federal Republic… 

35

ethno­national identity, if they were Bulgarians, Serbs or Greeks. Before becoming part of the SFRY in 1944, the geographical area of Macedonia fell under different domains and empires, which tried to influence the inhabitants’ ways of identification via ‘Serbianization’, ‘Bulgarization’, and ‘Hellenization’, generally denying the existence of a separate Macedonian nation. After the Balkan wars (1912–1913), the geographical area of Macedonia was split into three parts—Aegean, Pirin, and Vardar Macedonia, respectively, under the control of Greece, Bulgaria, and Serbia. In 1918, under the rule of king Karađorđević, Vardar Macedonia (Vardarska Banovina—District of Vardar) was included in the kingdom of Serbs, Croat, and Slovenes and, from 1929, the Kingdom became a royal dictatorship under the name of Yugoslavia. A process of ‘Serbianization’ led some to welcome the Bulgarian occupying forces in 1941, but the same process of national homogenization occurred. During the Second World War, then, the Communist led by Josip Broz Tito  gained control over Vardar Macedonia, and  set up the People’s Republic of Macedonia— appeasing neighbouring claims over the Macedonian territory and people, and contributing to define what has since then become the Macedonian nation (see Piacentini 2019a). Because of its turbulent past, particularly in matters of national identity, the Yugoslav authorities had to establish ‘that Macedonians were not just Bulgarians’ (Ramet 2006: 165), eradicating pro-Bulgarian feelings and ‘anchoring […] the new Macedonian national ideology in the people’ (Reuter 1999: 30). Substantial efforts were indeed made in building the Macedonian nation, and one of the most important steps was, for example, the standardization of the language and the writing of national history (Vangeli 2011). The Yugoslav authorities also helped the birth of the Autocephalous Macedonian Orthodox Church in 1967, which however was not recognized by Serbia. The existence of a Macedonian language was, instead, never recognized by Bulgaria which considers it a Bulgarian dialect. In Trobests’ (2003: 6) view, ‘the Macedonian case had been an exception in Yugoslavia, as Macedonia was the only federal republic where the Yugoslav aspects of nation-building were less intense than the Macedon’. The second case to be considered is that of Muslims. Contrary to the Macedonians, their recognition as a separate national group came from an already existing feeling of being different, especially from the Serbs and

36 

A. Piacentini

Croats. Until the late 1960s, Yugoslavia’s citizens with an Islamic heritage could identify themselves, during the population’s counting, as Croats or Serbs, ‘nationally undetermined’ or, later, as ‘Yugoslav—nationally undetermined’. In 1964 the Muslim question was reopened (Ramet 2006), yet there remained some uncertainties because of the central importance occupied by Islam in forming their identity. In 1968, Tito acknowledged the need to recognize the group’s ethnic specificity and, in 1971, Muslims officially became a nation.10 Additionally, since the Muslim population was mainly, but not exclusively, concentrated in BiH, the 1974 constitution recognized Bosnia as a socialist democratic state composed of three (no longer two) titular nations—Serbs, Croats, and Muslims. These two examples of nation-building point attention to two important issues: the role of the state to foster and promote, via their constitutional and institutional recognition, certain collectivities and related identities; and secondly, the always existing importance and centrality of ethnonational issues in the SFRY. As seen in the Introduction, the logic behind Tito’s decisions was that, if ethnonational collectivities were recognized, equally treated, and represented within the larger state, nationalism would not have had any reason to (re)emerge.

Nationalism and Yugoslavia In the 1960s economic disparities among the republics were about to (re) open national issues fostering nationalism and antagonism. Socio-­ economic and national matters went hand-in-hand and the Yugoslav authorities had to be very careful in dealing with those disparities while suppressing nationalist feelings and claims. Although the political elites were vacillating between decentralization and recentralization, Tito eventually accepted Kardelj’s ‘non-statist’ view, considering the SFRY’s dissolution highly improbable.

Economy, Institutions, and Ethnonational Politics The economic reforms enacted in the mid-1960s represented a partial success enabling the economic boom of the 1970s; nevertheless, the

2  Ethnic Groups and Nations in the Socialist Federal Republic… 

37

republics did not develop in the same ways, and those in the north continued to develop faster, deepening the gap between north and south. Slovenia and Croatia then started opposing the policy of redistribution of resources,11 demanding more decentralization in the fields of economy and finance. Economic issues soon became political, widening not only the already existing gap internal to the party between liberals and conservatives, but also that between the federal republics. These animosities produced two consequences: on the one side, they increased nationalism; on the other, conservatives (still in control of the party) saw liberals’ attitudes as weakening socialism and the Yugoslav unity. The Croat liberals were, in fact, allied with the nationalists, and this alliance ‘marked the return of ethnic politics of the interwar years. The major difference was that in the SFRY ethnic politics was played within the framework of a one-party system; but it was the federal system itself, which the communist had developed in order to “tame the beast”, which provided the setting within which ethno-politics could develop’ (Ramet 2006: 261–262). The 1963 constitution thus increased the republics’ rights and resulted quite successful in addressing economic issues, yet it failed to properly address nationalism and, more than anything else, it failed to democratize the state and the society. It became clear that the strategies adopted until that moment were not enough, and the system had to re-adjust itself. With the constitutional amendments voted in 1971 and, more consistently, with the constitution voted in 1974, Yugoslavia became highly decentralized, resembling a sort of confederation (Koneska 2014) or, as other scholars pointed out, the Soviet ‘ethnofederalism’ (Hayden 2000: 30). The 1974 constitution was the answer to growing nationalism, and both republics and provinces became ‘federal units’—key units of government. Kosovo and Vojvodina, from having a limited array of powers, were granted equal representation at the federal level, while the republics became de facto sovereign nation-states (except for highly mixed Bosnia Herzegovina). The new constitution introduced ethnic power-sharing mechanisms and consensual decision-making strategies at the federal level, and granted every federal unit (including Kosovo and Vojvodina) veto powers for any decision taken at federal level. It also introduced a collective presidency12 system so as to prevent anyone from becoming a new Tito and, above all,

38 

A. Piacentini

to give equal representation to all the republics. It also was established that once Tito passed away the position of president of the republic would be removed. Although it was not the goal the LCY had in mind, those structural changes elevated the national dimension into a fundamental pillar of the entire system. The federal units remained de facto submissive to the central power (Sekulić 2002), and the effective functioning of decentralization mechanisms limited to the federal level’s institutions, ‘more a façade than a real sharing of power between nations and their representatives’ (Koneska 2014: 43). The result of the reforms ‘was not genuine decentralization or democratization, but rather micro-­ centralization at the level of the republics’ (Malešević 2006: 174). Anti-statist ideas, institutionalized ethnonationality, economic disparities, and the progressive weakening of the central state (and eventually also of the party), not only weakened ‘any expression of belonging to Yugoslavia’ (Jović 2003: 177), but provided the republican elites with the constitutional and institutional tools to protect their own ‘nation-states’, hence space—to people like Milošević—to spread rhetoric of recentralization advocating the return to the ‘pre-Kardelj Yugoslavia’. In the 1970s, with the federation becoming a multinational state ‘in ethnodemographic [and] institutional terms’ (Brubaker 1996: 23), ‘the last phase of the history of socialist Yugoslavia’ began (Jović 2003: 174).

 he Federal Units of Bosnia Herzegovina T and Macedonia Bosnia Herzegovina was ‘neither Serb, nor Croat nor Muslim but Serb and Croat and Muslim’ (Hoare 2007: 288 cited in Keil 2013: 68). The federal unit was a ‘Jugoslavija u malom’ (Yugoslavia in miniature), a good example of groups’ coexistence all over the federation. But given the Yugoslav authorities’ concern over the possible rise of ethnonationalism, national equality and non-discrimination fostering good relations among groups had to be institutionally and socially nurtured and guaranteed. From this perspective, BiH was the most controlled of all the Yugoslav republics, but the concrete application of the national key—in any field of social and political life, was based more on informal rather than official

2  Ethnic Groups and Nations in the Socialist Federal Republic… 

39

practices (Pearson 2015), and ethnic quotas were not officially prescribed— though carefully observed. With the institutional and constitutional changes ruled out in the 1970s, the party improved national representativeness and the Bosnian leadership structure changed to better reflect the ethnic composition of the population. The leaders at the top of the hierarchy belonged to different groups, though they were not ethnonational leaders (Andjelić 2003). For instance, the Presidency of BiH was composed of seven members, two for each of the three constituent nations plus one representing ‘Others’—hence mirroring the composition of the republic (Kapidžić 2014). Nevertheless, as Andjelić (2003: 38) explained: Although the nationality policy was very carefully observed and exercised, it was never publicly stated that the next leader of the Central Committee should be of a certain ethnic origin. Potential domination of any ethnic group was prevented by unwritten rules that were always respected. The leadership’s main concern had always been ethnic equality and Tito’s policy of ‘brotherhood and unity’. There is no recorded confrontation between the top leaders on any ethnic issue. The monolithism of the leaders was translated into the unity of the population.

Given the centuries-old presence of different groups and religions, and the absence of an absolute (above 50 per cent) ethnic majority, BiH developed a peculiar culture based on respect, tolerance, and cooperation among groups—symbolized by the Turkish word komšiluk, which means ‘good neighbouring relations’. Relations among ordinary citizens have, in fact, always been peaceful and remained as such until the 1990s—when violence began to emerge in rural areas and provincial towns, ultimately pervading the whole republic. Quite different was the Macedonian reality where, contrary to BiH, an ethnonational majority existed and the federal republic, although composed of different groups, only had one constituent nation—the ethnic Macedonians. According to the Yugoslav system, ethnic Albanians, the second largest group in Macedonia, were classified as a ‘nationality’ as they had a homeland outside the Federation. Since the 1946 constitution, national minorities living in the republic have formally enjoyed the same rights and liberties (and with the same duties) as the majority, and the dual term ‘nationalities–national

40 

A. Piacentini

minorities’ ‘had a crucial significance: it eliminated the potential possibility of treating nationalities as second-class citizens’ (Caca 1999: 150). The ethnic Albanian population in Macedonia did however endure some discrimination, and was ‘completely absent until 1965 from the powerful executive committee of the Communist Party of Macedonia’ (Iseni 2013: 177). A clear improvement in the direction of equality occurred with the 1974 Constitution, which declared Macedonia as ‘the national state of the ethnic Macedonian nation and the state of the Albanian and Turkish nationalities in it’.13 Therefore, although the small  republic was commonly seen as ‘the republic of (ethnic) Macedonians’ (Koneska 2014: 61), the nationalities had also been constitutionally equalized with the ethnic majority and could, for example, use their mother languages  (see Rusi and Spasovska  2013), alphabets, and national symbols, and also had the right of receiving education in their mother tongue. Moreover, with the introduction of power-sharing mechanisms and the implementation of the principle of equal representation, the nationalities became (more) represented at the municipality, republic, and federal levels. Nevertheless, besides greater inclusion and representation within institutions, at the level of the republics the system was majoritarian and very few power-sharing arrangements were adopted. It is important to bear in mind that, although on paper the groups were equalized, post-1974 Macedonia was a de facto ethnic Macedonian nation-state, and this would constitute a pivotal point around which the following decades’ events gravitated, worsening inter-group relations while nurturing nationalism on both the ethnic Macedonian and ethnic Albanian sides  (Babuna 2000). Eventually, in fact,  with the constitutions voted in 1989 and 1991, the ethnic  Macedonian political elite demonstrated very little knowledge and even less interest in sharing power with other groups or accommodating ethnonational issues. This was also true for Bosnia Herzegovina where, however, the absence of an ethnonational majority and the role played by external actors (namely Croatia and Serbia, outside homelands and kin-states of two of the three major Bosnian groups) drastically transformed ethnonationality’s meanings and functions, destroying that supra-national ‘we feeling’ Tito had tried to create, and the ‘little Yugoslavia’ together with it.

2  Ethnic Groups and Nations in the Socialist Federal Republic… 

41

The End of Yugoslavia In January 1990, during the last LCY congress it became clear that the party had ceased to exist. In the same year, the federal units held their first democratic and multiparty elections, which took place at republic, rather than federal, level. New leaders of new political parties, oriented towards one or another republic, and thus addressing their own (ethnic) people, initiated ‘a cultural struggle’ translating the ongoing political conflict into an identity one. As Kapidžić (2014: 559) explained, ‘serving both as an information source and filter, ethnicity influences voters to believe that an ethnic party representing their own ethnic group will best protect their interests’. For the first time after the Second World War, religion, language, and alphabets became political tools, and the past was mobilized for power purposes. Religious institutions, until that moment politically irrelevant, consistently re-emerged in the public arena coalescing with national leaders, widely influencing political dynamics and inter-­ethnic relations, and finally contributing to make religion a matter of ‘public identity’ (see Perica 2002; Ramet 2014; Velikonja 2003).

Political Elites’ Behaviour Matters In 1989, while Milošević was abolishing Kosovo’s autonomy, the Socialist Republic of Macedonia was amending the 1974 constitution declaring Macedonia ‘the national state of the Macedonian people’, omitting the phrase ‘and of the Albanian and Turkish people’.14 The Macedonian ethnic majority downgraded the nationalities to the status of minority so to preserve and consolidate its own national identity. Ethnic Albanians’ discomfort grew and they demanded equal status alongside the ethnic Macedonians, and their loyalty towards the new state was contingent to that (Holliday 2005). In spite of a long tradition of coexistence, fear and dissatisfaction grew, increasing both Macedonian and Albanian nationalisms, thus characterizing the position assumed by the newly established political parties. All over the SFRY, the introduction of political pluralism in 1990 was translated into ethnic political pluralism and, although successor parties of the LCY had also been constituted, it was the ethnonational ones that gained the masses’ trust.

42 

A. Piacentini

In Macedonia there were three major parties: on the ethnic Macedonian side, VMRO-DPMNE15 was nationalist and conservative; while SDSM,16 guided by Kiro Gligorov, was the successor party of the League of Communists. On the ethnic Albanian side the first party established was PDP.17 During the 1990 elections, VMRO-DPMNE did not win enough seats to form a government on its own; however, it refused to make a coalition government with both the ethnic Albanians and the former Communists. The President of the Republic of Macedonia, Kiro Gligorov, highly concerned for the future of the Federation, tried, together with Alija Izetbegović, neo-elected President of Bosnia Herzegovina, to preserve their states within a new confederal framework by proposing the so-called ‘Platform for the future of the Yugoslav community’—which, however, did not see any future. In 1990 Bosnia Herzegovina ruled out the ban over ethno-national parties—though ethnic parties had already appeared although not officially constituted (Andjelić 2003). Next to the communists, the Reformists of Ante Marković (the Federal Prime Minister advocating economic and political reforms aimed at avoiding ethnic politics), and the ethnonational parties appeared on the scene in spring–summer 1990, immediately before the first multiparty elections. SDA,18 founded by Alija Izetbegović, was in favour of a united and more centralized Bosnia. HDZ19 represented the Bosnian Croat population, and was closely tied with Tuđman’s party in Croatia. SDS,20 founded by Radovan Karadžić and tied with Belgrade, aimed to represent the Bosnian Serb population. The three nationalist parties largely won the first Bosnian multiparty elections. However, for most of the Bosnian population, highly disoriented due to the most recent political developments, the electoral support for those ethnonational parties came semi-­spontaneously, out of alternatives (Andjelić 2003). As Breuilly (1993: 344) argued, nationalism was the logical political response to the ‘unravelling of the […] state power, rather than a “natural” identity which was chosen by large numbers of people as soon as political controls were relaxed’. Although with their political preferences people did concur to shape the destiny of the country, it is true to say that ethnonationalism acquired its strength also because of economic and ideological issues, alongside with the already mentioned institutional ones. With the introduction of decentralization, the local-republican elites were (involuntarily) supplied

2  Ethnic Groups and Nations in the Socialist Federal Republic… 

43

with institutional channels necessary to build power and support at the local level, ultimately and progressively delegitimizing the central state. Once the central state and the LCY lost their legitimacy, the local republican elites had the means to act individually, and mobilize groups’ cultural features to legitimize, gain, and maintain power and control. The new elite introduced the false dilemma of a choice between democracy and authoritarianism, where democracy and self-determination coincided with the creation of ethnic nation-states (Sekulić 2002). The dilemma was presented through the prism of ethnicity, and so had to be solved. Inter-ethnic relations worsened leading to fear and distrust, but the prospect of war was still far off. A study conducted by Sekulić et al. (2006), showed that intolerance among groups did not precede the breakup of war, and until the 1990s inter-ethnic relations across the federation were peaceful with no evidence of urban violence. Moreover, sporadic nationalist episodes should not be confused with inter-group hostilities or hatred.

Institutional Design Matters Too After the Bosnian elections, the three parties’ representatives, familiar only with the Yugoslav model of power-sharing, formed a coalition government dividing the main executive positions among them,21 and the collective presidency system was replicated in the Bosnian republic. Despite some institutional similarities with the federal level, the implementation of power-sharing and multiple presidency was a choice out of alternatives: no single party won enough seats to rule alone and, because of Bosnia’s mixed population, no single group was in the majority. Hence the legitimizing principles behind the application of the national key went from being ‘all nations protection via equality and brotherhood’ to ‘our nation protection via homogenization and exclusion of different others’. Although ‘Bosnia seemed much more likely to witness ethnic accommodation than Croatia or Macedonia’ (Koneska 2014: 46), similarly to what happened at the federal level, the centre crumbled and fragmented along ethnic lines. Deep disagreements over the Bosnian statehood drove the ethnic leaders (domestic and non) into a fight for territory, and the dismemberment of ‘the little Yugoslavia’ was seen as the best option by

44 

A. Piacentini

most of the parties involved. By 1991 Milošević’s and Tuđman’s territorial plans over Bosnia were clear, and borders’ issues—both territorial and ethnic, became overly important, producing dramatic consequences first in some of Croatia’s regions and then also all over Bosnia. Violent tensions first occurred between Slovenia and Serbia; then, since Milošević and Tuđman could not agree over the Croatian Serb population, war erupted in Croatia. The Bosnian Serbs then held a referendum in favour of remaining in a Yugoslav federation with Serbia and Montenegro, which however was dclared unconstitutional. Regardless of the Court’s decision, the Bosnian Serbs led by Karadžić established their own separate institutions within BiH, paving the way for the birth on 9 January 1992 of a self-proclaimed Serbian para-state called Republika Srpska (RS) within BiH. Yet on 18 November 1991 the Bosnian Croats auto-proclaimed the Croatian Republic of Herzeg-Bosna under the leadership of Mate Boban—which, contrary to the RS, did not survive the end of the war.

…and Constitutions Alike In September 1991, Macedonia held a referendum for independence— almost unanimously boycotted by the Albanian community. The new domestic Constitution, once again, declared the Republic of Macedonia to be a (ethnic Macedonian) nation-state, reiterating Albanian discomfort and their call for revision. Although Macedonian nationalism was a relatively new phenomenon, the former socialist political elite behaved according to the new mainstream ideology, seeing independence ‘as the next stage in the historical development of the Macedonian nation toward full statehood’ (Adamson and Jović 2004: 301). By bearing in mind that throughout its history Macedonia has mostly been considered a geographical area, and the (Slavic) Macedonians constantly contested as a nation (Roudometof 2002), it is not wrong to say the ethnic Macedonian’s identity frustration saw a partial decrease with the implementation of ‘constitutional nationalism’; namely ‘a constitutional and legal structure that privileges the members of one ethnically defined nation over other residents in a particular state’ (Hayden 1992: 655; see Piacentini 2019b). The ethnic Albanians, indeed, were experiencing a deep feeling of

2  Ethnic Groups and Nations in the Socialist Federal Republic… 

45

subordination—hence, they began ‘to think in terms of autonomy’ (Ramet 2002: 189). After having boycotted the referendum for independence on January 1992, 74 per cent of the 92 per cent of the ethnic Albanians eligible to vote, voted in favour of the ‘territorial and cultural autonomy of Albanians in Macedonia’ (Iseni 2013: 183), asking for the independence of the Western parts of the country. Frustrated by the government’s answer, which maintained that autonomy would not serve Albanians’ interests but would ‘[cut] them off from the mainstream Macedonian public life’ (Ramet 2002: 190), a group of Albanian nationalists declared the creation of a ‘Republic of Illyrida’. In the context of growing ethnonationalism the hoped-for new republic represented a possible solution to the ongoing disputes and frustrations. The project, however, did not last long and the situation deteriorated immediately. In November 1992 protests broke out in Skopje. A new Law on Citizenship stated that ‘individuals that have not lived legally and continuously in the Republic for 15 years do not have the right to acquire citizenship’ (Koppa 2000: 44), implicitly going against the Albanians who had fled from Kosovo to Macedonia since the 1970s. After Serbian authorities closed down the University of Priština, ethnic Albanians in Macedonia tried to create their own university in the city of Mala Rečica, near Tetovo, but the situation culminated in violence. Then, in 1997, an attempt to reopen the Pedagogy Faculty for Albanians in the capital city of Skopje was violently rejected by ethnic Macedonian students, chanting ‘Albanians to the gas chambers’ or ‘Macedonia for Macedonians’ (Neofotistos 2012). Finally, a law on the restriction of the use of national symbols among the non-Macedonian communities was also voted, breaking with the Yugoslav tradition in protecting and safeguarding any group’s rights. From an international perspective, the Macedonian independence reopened the ‘Macedonian question’ (Pettifer 1999), that during the Yugoslav decades seemed to have ended. Greece22 opposed the recognition of the newly born state, opening the so-called ‘name dispute’ (see Piacentini 2019a), while Bulgaria recognized the republic’s independence but not the existence of a Macedonian nation.23 Domestically, ethnic Albanians’ claims and nationalism remained a menace ‘not only to the territorial integrity of the republic but even to the very existence of

46 

A. Piacentini

the Macedonian nation’ (Poulton 2000: 127), eventually deepening the ethnic Macedonians’ frustrations and fears.

The End of the World24 On 6 April 1992, after a referendum for independence (boycotted by the vast majority of the Bosnian Serb population) Bosnia officially left the Yugoslav federation. Notwithstanding the United Nations (UN) immediately recognized the new state, war broke out: Sarajevo, capital city of ‘the most Yugoslav of all the republics’ (Lampe 2000: 337), symbol of peaceful coexistence between peoples, religions, and cultures, had to be  destroyed, and it indeed  went through the longest siege of modern history. What was happening in Bosnia Herzegovina, however, was the result of political and institutional weaknesses, worsened by an economic crisis that first triggered the Yugoslav dissolution and then the wars. The conflict in BiH was not due to ancient ethnic hatred (Hayden 2000; Malešević 2006; Sekulić 2002); it was a political war mainly driven from the outside, and in which national and territorial aspirations legitimized ethnic cleansing and other atrocities  (see Hayden 1996). Ethno-nationalist entrepreneurs (Brubaker 2004; Mujkić 2015) forged new collectivities so as to satisfy their political and (perhaps above all) economic interests, and ethnic belonging became a matter of survival. More than a conscious and spontaneous endorsement of nationalism and sudden rediscovery of religion, the centrality acquired by the ethnonational background in Bosnia Herzegovina was a political phenomenon, the result of a modern nationalist idea centered upon the notion of sovereign nations wishing to establish their own nation-states. Meanwhile the Bosnian war, Macedonia was experiencing its very first independence. The first decade was, however, marked by uncertainty and instability. Lack of rule of law and frequent violations of human rights (Vankovska 2013), together with fragile economic conditions worsened by unlawful privatization and unemployment, eventually made Macedonia’s transition harder. The country’s biggest problem was however its constitutional, ‘hybrid’ (Vankovska 2012), design which represented an apple of discord between the two major groups. The ethnic

2  Ethnic Groups and Nations in the Socialist Federal Republic… 

47

Albanians were deeply dissatisfied with the new constitutional document, also drafted by a commission of experts in which no Albanian was present. The long-term consequences of being considered as belonging to a lower status, first in Yugoslavia and then in independent Macedonia, shaped the form assumed by the ethnic Albanian political mobilization. The increased sense of frustration for not being recognized as an equal group alongside the ethnic Macedonians, alongside with the events happening in Kosovo since the 1980s, represent crucial factors to properly interpret the deterioration of inter-ethnic communication as well as ethnonationality’s meanings and functions in the post-Yugoslav context. The late 1990s war in Kosovo directly impacted Macedonia, as the Kosovo Liberation Army (UÇK25) ‘made its presence very clear in the small republic’ (Koppa 2001: 39). In March 2001, tensions escalated first in the areas around the border with Kosovo, then in the city of Tetovo and Kumanovo area, while other cities with large Albanian populations (as Gostivar, Struga, or Debar) remained outside the armed clashes. The fights were widely supported by the majority of the ethnic Albanian population in Macedonia and the rebels, organized in the NLA,26 looked like national heroes, ‘freedom fighters’. At that time the Macedonian government was formed by a Macedonian– Albanian coalition, yet dialogue between the two parties was difficult and nationalism was growing. Trying to solve the fight, a ‘national unity’ government27 was formed, but the short-lived attempt revealed its dysfunctionality and the incapability of both sides’ political parties to coalesce even in a war-like situation. After a few months of conflict, under the supervision of the EU and President Boris Trajkovski, the four major political parties signed the Ohrid Framework Agreement (OFA)28 ending the violence. The NLA did not participate in the negotiations but some of its demands were met with the signing of the peace treaty, probably also spreading the wrong message that violence may be a viable solution to obtain political visibility and results (Marolov 2013). The peace agreement tried to promote a civic understanding of Macedonia, giving the opportunity for building a new state identity focused on citizenship rather than on ethnicity. Nevertheless, the OFA and the following constitutional changes ended by stressing the bi-national, rather than multinational, character of the state, unofficially elevating the ethnic Albanians to a quasi-constituent status (Bieber 2005).

48 

A. Piacentini

In Bosnia Herzegovina the war lasted until the end of 1995. Thanks to the internationals’ intervention, the belligerent parts signed the Dayton Peace Agreement (DPA)29 ending the violence. The new state was grounded on three Constituent Peoples, and the ethnic cleansing perpetrated throughout all the years of war allowed for the country’s internal partition into two Entities, both almost completely ethnically homogenous. As happened with Dayton’s Bosnia Herzegovina, in Macedonia too the transition’s main outcome was the development of ethnic parallel systems, where ethnic political parties take care of their ethnic masses, and where the newly framed concept of ethnonationality, by surpassing in importance the notion of citizenship, still compromises birth and development of shared supra-ethnic identities and conceptions of the multinational state.

Notes 1. Antifašističko Vijeće Narodnog Oslobođenja Jugoslavije—Anti-Fascist Council for the National Liberation of Yugoslavia. 2. See J.  Lampe, 2000. Yugoslavia as history: Twice there was a country. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; A.  Pavković, 2000. The Fragmentation of Yugoslavia. Nationalism and War in the Balkans. London: Palgrave Macmillan. 3. The workers’ self-management was based on the Socialist property system: workers were in control of the means and resources of the enterprises and there was no control from the side of the state. Elected workers’ councils were in charge to organize work, salaries, vacations, and distribute benefits among the workers. For a clear and critical analysis see: Chap. 2, The official ideology of self-management, pp.  48–75  in Zukin, 1975. Beyond Marx and Tito. Theory and practice in Yugoslav Socialism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 4. In the early 1960s, together with India’s and Egypt’s presidents, Tito set up the Non-Aligned Movement as an alternative bloc in the middle of the Cold War. The movement enormously increased Tito and Yugoslavia’s international standing, and helped the country to maintain good and balanced relations with both the West and the Soviet Union. See also  Zukin, S. 2008. Beyond Marx and Tito. Theory and practice in Yugoslav Socialism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

2  Ethnic Groups and Nations in the Socialist Federal Republic… 

49

5. See P.  Shoup, 1968. Communism and  the  Yugoslav National Question. New York: Columbia University Press. 6. The SFRY was composed as follows: Serbs 36.3 per cent, followed by Croats 19.8 per cent, Muslims 8.9 per cent, Slovenes 7.8 per cent, Macedonians 2.6 per cent, and Montenegrins 2.6 per cent. Among the minorities, the largest group was the ethnic Albanians 7.7 per cent (see Sekulić 2002: 46–47). 7. Curiously the official denomination of the language varied according to the republic: in Croatia it was denominated Croat-Serbian, in Serbia and Montenegro it was Serbo-Croatian, while in BiH it was Serbo-Croatian, Croat-Serbian. 8. Although the 1960s represented a period of general liberalization, religion always remained rather discouraged among the party ranks and those employed in the state institutions Nevertheless ‘state atheism’ did not mean religion’s disappearance, and  party members and civil servants who were religious, practiced their faith far from the Party’s eyes. 9. League of Communist Yugoslavia. 10. In 1971 the Yugoslav authorities introduced the category Muslims (with a capital M) to identify the nations’ members; however, the category ‘Muslims’ (with a small m) identified the believers’ religious community. The name chosen for the new nation thus introduced some discomfort among non-religious people with Muslim origins. 11. The 1960s recession initiated a debate between the Northern republics— more economically developed—and the Southern ones—considerably behind the standard. Montenegro, Bosnia Herzegovina, Macedonia, and Kosovo were among the less developed republics, and in order to fill the economic divide in 1965 the ‘Federal Fund for the Accelerated Development of the Underdeveloped Republics and Kosovo’ (FADURK) was established. Nevertheless, economic reforms and the creation of the Fund was not enough to fill the economic gap and a huge economic crisis hit the SFRY in the beginning of the 1980s, increasing nationalist tensions. 12. The collective presidency included nine members—one representative for each republic and autonomous province, and an individual president chaired the presidency on an annual rotation basis. 13. Constitution of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia, Preamble, 1974. 14. Constitution of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia, Preamble, 1974. 15. Vnatrešna Makedonska Revolucionerna Organizacija—Demoktraska Partija za Makedonsko Narodno Edinstvo—Internal Macedonian

50 

A. Piacentini

Revolutionary Organization—Democratic Party for Macedonian National Unity. 16. Socijaldemokratski sojuz na Makedonija—Social Democratic Union of Macedonia. 17. Partia per Prosperitet Demokratik—Party for Democratic Prosperity. 18. Stranka Demokratske Akcije—Party of Democratic Action. 19. Hrvatska Demokratska Zajednica—Croatian Democratic Union. 20. Srpska Demoktratska Stranka—Serb Democratic Party. 21. Alija Izetbegović (SDA) became President of the Republic, Momčilo Krajišnik (SDS) was appointed President of the Assembly, and Jure Pelivan (HDZ) became Prime Minister. 22. The Greek claim over Macedonia was that Macedonia is part of Greece, and no one can be Macedonian without being Greek; those who claim to be Macedonians, therefore, are Slavophone Greeks. In order to mediate in the ‘name dispute’, in 1993 the UN introduced the ‘provisional name’ ‘Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia’ (FYROM) while the country’s constitutional name remained ‘Republic of Macedonia’. In 2008 Greece blocked Macedonia’s membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and European Union (EU). In 2018, the Macedonian and Greek Prime Ministers, Zoran Zaev and Alexi Tsipras, signed the Prespa Agreement agreeing over a new name: the Republic of North Macedonia to solve the issue. 23. Bulgaria has been the neighbour with the most direct influence on Macedonia and during the nineteenth century many Macedonians fled to Sofia. The Macedonian language, also, remains still largely considered a Bulgarian dialect. 24. Bieber F., A. Glijaš, R. Archer (eds.). 2014. Debating the end of Yugoslavia. Surrey: Ashgate. 25. Ushtria Çlirimtare e Kosovës—Kosovo Liberation Army. 26. NLA (National Liberation Army) was an ethnic Albanian organization, linked to the UÇK, active in Macedonia during the 2001 conflict. 27. The ruling coalition, when the conflict occurred, was formed by VMRODPMNE and the Albanian DPA; the opposition, instead, by SDSM and PDP. The four parties all together united in the ‘coalition of national unity’. 28. Ohrid Framework Agreement, 2001. http://www.ucd.ie/ibis/filestore/ Ohrid%20Framework%20Agreement.pdf. 29. http://www.ohr.int/?post_type=post&p=63984&lang=en. Accessed 23 October 2019.

2  Ethnic Groups and Nations in the Socialist Federal Republic… 

51

References Adamson, K., and D. Jović. 2004. The Macedonian-Albanian Political Frontier: The Re-Articulation of Post-Yugoslav Political Identities. Nations and Nationalism 10 (3): 293–311. Andjelić, N. 2003. Bosnia-Herzegovina. The End of a Legacy. London: Frank Cass Publishers. Asim Mujkić, 2015. In search of a democratic counter-power in Bosnia– Herzegovina. Southeast European and Black Sea Studies 15 (4): 623–638. Babuna, A. 2000. The Albanians of Kosovo and Macedonia: Ethnic Identity Superseding Religion. Nationalities Paper 28 (1): 67–92. Bieber, F. 2005. Partial Implementation, Partial Success: The Case of Macedonia. In Power Sharing. New Challenges for Divided Societies, ed. I. O’Flynn and D. Russell, 107–122. London: Pluto Press. Bieber, F., A. Glijaš, and R. Archer, eds. 2014. Debating the End of Yugoslavia. Farnham: Ashgate. Breuilly, J. 1993. Nationalism and the State. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Bringa, T. 1993. Nationality Categories, National Identification and Identity Formation in “Multinational” Bosnia. Anthropology of East Europe Review 11 (1 and 2): 80–89. Brubaker, R. 1996. Nationalism Reframed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2004. In the name of the nation: reflections on nationalism and patriotism1. Citizenship Studies 8 (2): 115–127. Caca, G. 1999. Status and Rights of Nationalities in the Republic of Macedonia. In The New Macedonian Question, ed. J. Pettifer. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Constitution of the Socialist Federal Republic of Macedonia. 1974. http://www. slvesnik.com.mk/Issues/0AF2E0456C964935B7705FB5BF6F31F9.pdf. Accessed 23 October 2019. Dayton Peace Agreement (DPA). http://www.ohr.int/?post_ type=post&p=63984&lang=en. Accessed 23 October 2019. Hayden, R.M. 1992. Constitutional Nationalism in the Formerly Yugoslav Republics. Slavic Review 51 (4): 654–673. ———. 1996. Imagined Communities and Real Victims Self-Determination and Ethnic Cleansing in Yugoslavia. American Ethnologist 23 (4): 783–801. ———. 2000. Blueprints for a House Divided. The Constitutional Logic of the Yugoslav Conflicts. Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press.

52 

A. Piacentini

Hodson, R., D. Sekulić, and G. Massey. 1994. National Tolerance in the Former Yugoslavia. American Journal of Sociology 99 (6): 1534–1558. Holliday, G. 2005. From Ethnic Privileging to Power-Sharing: Ethnic Dominance and Democracy in Macedonia. In The Fate of Ethnic Democracy in Post-Communist Europe, ed. S. Smooha and P. Jarve, 139–166. Budapest: Local Government and Public Service Reform Initiative Open Society Institute. Iseni, B. 2013. One State, Divided Society: The Albanian in Macedonia. In Civic and Uncivic Values in Macedonia. Values Transformation, Education and Media, ed. S.P. Ramet, O. Listhaug, and A. Simkus, 175–193. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Janjić, D. 1997. Ethnic Conflict Management: The Case of Former Yugoslavia. Ravenna: Longo Editore. Jović, D. 2003. Yugoslavism and Yugoslav Communism: From Tito to Kardelj. In Yugoslavism. Histories of a Failed Idea 1918–1992, ed. D. Djokić. London: C. Hurst & Co. Publisher. Kapidžić, D. 2014. Ethnic Practice in Electoral Politics Bosnia and Herzegovina’s 1990 Presidency Elections. Southeast European and Black Sea Studies 14 (4): 556–584. Keil, S. 2013. Multinational Federalism in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Farnham: Ashgate. Koneska, C. 2014. After Ethnic Conflict Policy-Making in Post-Conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina and Macedonia. London: Ashgate. Koppa, M. 2001. Ethnic Albanians in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia: Between Nationality and Citizenship. Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 7 (4): 37–65. Lampe, J.R. 1994. The Failure of the Yugoslav National Idea. Studies in East European Thought 46: 69–89. ———. 2000. Yugoslavia as History. Twice There Was a Country. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Malešević, S. 2006. Identity as Ideology. Understanding Ethnicity and Nationalism. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Marolov, Dejan. 2013. Understanding the Ohrid Framework Agreement. In Civic and Uncivic Values in Macedonia. Values Transformation, ed. Sabrina P. Ramet, Ola Listhaug, and Albert Simkus, 134–154. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Neofotistos, V.P. 2012. The Risk of War: Everyday Sociality in the Republic of Macedonia. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

2  Ethnic Groups and Nations in the Socialist Federal Republic… 

53

Ohrid Framework Agreement. 2001. http://www.ucd.ie/ibis/filestore/ Ohrid%20Framework%20Agreement.pdf. Accessed 23 October 2019. Pavković, A. 2000. The Fragmentation of Yugoslavia. Nationalism and War in the Balkans. New York: Palgrave. Pearson, S. 2015. The “National Key” in Bosnia and Macedonia: A Historical Perspective. Nationalities Papers 43 (2): 213–232. Perica, V. 2002. Balkan Idols. Religion and Nationalism in Yugoslav States. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pettifer, J. 1999. The New Macedonian Question. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Piacentini, A. 2019a. Make Macedonia Great Again—The New Face of Skopje and the Macedonians Identity Dilemma. In Reinventing Eastern Europe— Imaginarıes, Identities and Transformations, ed. E.  Doğan, 77–93. London: Transnational Press London. ———. 2019b. State’s Ownership and “State-Sharing”. The Role of Collective Identities and the Socio-Political Cleavage Between Ethnic Macedonians and Ethnic Albanians in the Republic of Macedonia. Nationalities Paper 47 (3): 461–476. Poulton, H. 2000. Who Are the Macedonians? London: C. Hurst & Co. Radan, P. 1998. Constitutional Law and the Multinational State: The Failure of Yugoslav Federalism. UNSW Law Review 21 (1): 185–203. Radić, R. 2003. Religion in a Multinational State: The Case of Yugoslavia. In Yugoslavism. Histories of a Failed Idea 1918–1992, ed. D. Djokić, 196–207. London: C. Hurst & Co. Publisher. Ramet, S.P. 2002. Balkan Babel. The Disintegration of Yugoslavia from the Death of Tito to the Fall of Milošević. Boulder: Westview Press. ———. 2006. The Three Yugoslavias. State-Building and Legitimation, 1918–2005. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ———., ed. 2014. Religion and Politics in Post-Socialist Central and Southeastern Europe. Challenges Since 1989. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Reuter, J. 1999. Policy and Economy in Macedonia. In The New Macedonian Question, ed. J. Pettifer, 28–46. London: Palgrave. Roudometof, V. 2002. Collective Memory, National Identity, and Ethnic Conflict. Greece, Bulgaria and the Macedonian Question. Westport: Praeger Publishers. Rusi, I., and K.  Spasovska. 2013. Uncertain Future: The Albanian-Language Media in Macedonia. In Civic and Uncivic Values in Macedonia. Values Transformation, Education and Media, ed. S.P.  Ramet, O.  Listhaug, and A. Simkus, 235–257. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Sekulić, T. 2002. Violenza Etnica. Rome: Carocci.

54 

A. Piacentini

Sekulić, D., G. Massey, and R. Hodson. 1994. Who Were the Yugoslavs? Failed Sources of a Common Identity in the former Yugoslavia. American Sociological Review 50: 83–97. ———. 2006. Ethnic Intolerance and Ethnic Conflict in the Dissolution of Yugoslavia. Ethnic and Racial Studies 29 (5): 797–782. Shoup, P. 1968. Communism and the Yugoslav National Question. New  York: Columbia University Press. Štiks, I. 2006. Nationality and Citizenship in the Former Yugoslavia: From Disintegration to European Integration. Southeast European and Black Sea Studies 6 (4): 483–500. Trobest, S. 2003. Historical Politics and Historical “Masterpieces” in Macedonia Before and After 1991. New Balkan Politics 6. Vangeli, A. 2011. Nation-Building Ancient Macedonia Style: The Origins and the Effects of the So-Called Antiquization in Macedonia. Nationalities Papers 39 (1): 13–32. Vankovska, B. 2012. The Procrustean Bed of the State Building in the Republic of Macedonia (1991–2011). In The Macedonian Question: 20 Years of Political Struggle into European Integration Structures, ed. Z.  Daskalovski and M. Risteska, 8–26. Rangendingen: Libertas. Vankovska, B. 2013. Constitutional Engineering and Institution-Building in the Republic of Macedonia (1991–2011). In Civic and Uncivic Values in Macedonia. Values Transformation, Education and Media, ed. S.P.  Ramet, O. Listhaug, and A. Simkus, 87–108. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Velikonja, M. 2003. Religious Separation and Political Intolerance in Bosnia Herzegovina. College Station: Texas A&M University Press. Zukin, S. 2008. Beyond Marx and Tito. Theory and Practice in Yugoslav Socialism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

3 After Yugoslavia: The New World

The breakup of Yugoslavia saw the birth of six independent republics but also of new collectivities—or, better yet, already existing collectivities now vested with new clothes (see Mungiu-Pippidi and Krastev 2004). The collective dimension,  declined in exclusive terms and grounded on ethno­ nationality, surpassed in importance any form of individuality and notion of citizenship as well. Individuals found themselves first of all as ethnic groups’ members, and only then, and not even always, citizens of their republics. Ethnonationality, however, did matter already back in the Yugoslav decades and since the birth of the SFRY in the 1940s. By looking at the peculiar ‘creations’ of the ethnic Macedonian and Muslim nations, for example, we have seen how the state can foster and promote, via their institutional recognition, certain collectivities and related identities. By looking at the state ideology promoted by Tito, its translation into constitutional guarantees, institutional mechanisms, and society’s organization, we shed light on how crucial it was to properly manage not only ethnic plurality but also people’s multiple identities, and how the management of this multilayered plurality was necessary at both republican and federal levels. Yet by looking at the economic, soon to become political, issues featuring the 1960s, and the institutional measures © The Author(s) 2020 A. Piacentini, Ethnonationality’s Evolution in Bosnia Herzegovina and Macedonia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39189-8_3

55

56 

A. Piacentini

adopted to cope with them, we have also seen how economic and institutional matters were actually intertwined with the ethnonational ones. But more importantly, how easily ethnonational issues could re-emerge to the surface, overshadowing supra-ethnic sentiments and identities, finally becoming a tool or a weapon, a shield or a sword. Ethnonationality was thus a sleeping creature. Tito deployed his best options, employing both constitutional guarantees and institutional mechanisms to allow for its expression while counterbalancing it with supra-ethnic feelings. He tried to create cross-ethnic bonds among individuals and workers by putting them in charge of industries through the Workers SelfManagement system; by creating a social welfare system able to guarantee anyone with the same opportunities in matters of education, jobs, health; by equalizing alphabets, languages, and religious traditions. Yet the creature was only sleeping. Once it woke up, in the 1970s, Tito and the Yugoslav authorities tried to tame it. But soon after Tito died, the new leaders who came to power began to ride it. Stressing once again the relational nature of any social and political dynamics, this chapter looks at the interplay between particular structural elements, socializing agents, political, and social actors characterizing the post-Yugoslav environments of Bosnia and Macedonia. While bearing in mind the vast majority of the population supported and contributed to make possible all these changes, and that it would be wrong to consider them as the sole outcome of bad governance or institutional design’s deficiencies, these pages focus on the current ethnopolitics, its legitimizing grounds and mechanisms. People’s roles and generational responses are, instead, the topic of the next chapters.

New World, Old Stuff As showcased by the SFRY and its federal units until the 1980s, even if institutionalized and territorialized, the recognition and protection of ethnonational identities and cultural specificities were put at the centre of a state ideology based on the groups’ equality and unity so to guarantee the functioning of the state and its stability. In the post-Yugoslav era, and especially in the post-war scenarios, recognition and protection of ethnonational identities and cultural specificities have instead been put at

3  After Yugoslavia: The New World 

57

the centre of ethnically fragmented state ideologies based on the need to safeguard each group against the others, so to guarantee, if not the proper functioning of the state, at least its administrative integrity—which does not imply the groups’ unity. Together with Yugoslavia vanished any sense of brotherhood beyond ethnic lines; and the supra-ethnic Yugoslav citizenship, from being a tool of unity and cooperation among groups and nations, disappeared leaving space to the politicized notion of ethnonationality—which had now become the precondition for enjoying political, economic, and social rights, as well as a tool of inclusion and exclusion. Following the breakup, the Yugoslav federal units tried to establish themselves as ethnic nation-states. In the more ethnically mixed realities, violence occurred to ‘clean up’ the territories from unwelcome presences: this happened in Croatia and more systematically in Bosnia Herzegovina, as well as in Kosovo in the late 1990s. Ethnonational belonging became the defining principle of the republics’ state-building processes. In the more homogeneous republics, ethnonationality overlapped with the notion of citizenship, while in the more heterogeneous republics it surpassed it in importance. In countries such as BiH and Macedonia ethnonational belonging, rather than citizenship, became the criteria to access and enjoy social, political, and economic resources, excluding all those not belonging or not identifying with the major societal segments. The republics’ transition was characterized by the emergence of mechanisms of re-ethnicization of citizenship (Džankić 2015; Spaskovska 2010–11), ethnic engineering (Štiks 2006, 2010, 2015), politicization, and exploitation of feelings of ethnonational belonging; hence loyalties, identifications, and groups’ solidarity were reshaped accordingly. In turn, since the kind of nation imagined by nationalists may not always correspond to the bounded territoriality of the state, also nationalism assumed different forms (Brubaker 1996): there was the ‘nationalizing’ nationalism endorsed by ‘core nations’ claiming to be the legitimate owners of the state—as showcased by Macedonia in 1991 and its ‘constitutional nationalism’ (Hayden 1992); there was the nationalism of ‘external national homelands’ willing to protect their ethnic-kin in other states—like the one endorsed by Serbia and Croatia; and there was also the nationalism of national minorities, identifying and perceiving themselves as national, rather than ethnic groups—for example the one showcased by the ethnic Albanian population in Macedonia. Particularly in newborn ethnically

58 

A. Piacentini

plural states such as BiH and Macedonia different nationalisms and ethnocentrisms clashed with each other, however coexisting under the same roof and within a new ideological and institutional framework. Ethnonationality has been institutionalized as a consequence of the power-sharing mechanisms’ implementation, as ‘consociational settlements are negotiated at the very point at which group identities are the most politically salient and polarized [hence they are] likely to freeze existing divisions’ (McCulloch 2014: 501–502). Consequently, ethnonationality also became a political tool used and misused by political actors that continue, even nowadays, to employ the masses’ origins and belongings to win elections. The political elites who came to power in the post-­ Yugoslav scenario have found it advantageous to build their support upon ethnicity, exploiting the grey spaces of the consociative institutional structure and changed ideological framework, to gain and maintain power by means of the ethnic divide—rather than depoliticize ethnicity and build ‘multiple but complementary identities’ (Stepan et al. 2011). Yet political cleavages overlapping the social ones and drawn upon ethnic lines need to be nurtured, and parties need to acquire popular legitimacy before popular support. Mechanisms of ‘centrifugal ideologization’ (Malešević 2010, 2013) aimed to provide people with good enough reasons to support their ethnonational representatives can take different forms, and among these stand the use of the media, school systems, and religious institutions as powerful ways to spread certain ideas in and about the larger society. Finally, ethnonationality also became a proxy to obtain benefits, as the state’s economic conditions and the mechanisms of resources’ allocation between the groups have a dividing potential that might incentivize the establishment of particularistic relationships and alliances between rulers and the ruled. Drawing upon the theories of Wimmer, as anticipated in the Introduction, the next sections shed light on those mechanisms and relational dynamics which have possibly concurred to influence and tailor ethnonationality’s meanings and functions in the post-Yugoslav space, unravelling both the impact structural changes had on the population and the grounds upon which the population’s support has been based.

3  After Yugoslavia: The New World 

59

Institutional Framework: Ethnonationality in Consociations The consociational model theorized by Lijphart (1977) structures both the states of BiH and Macedonia and, in each case, it has been established as a post-conflict measure. The Macedonian Ohrid Framework Agreement (OFA) contained provisions and guidelines for the introduction of power-sharing and stressed the need for some constitutional changes aimed to ameliorate inter-ethnic relations and bring about democracy. Among its key provisions stood the societal segments’ representation in all the state’s bodies and institutions,1 so to counterbalance the disproportional presence, or even marginalization and exclusions, of the smaller groups. The OFA gave to the Ombudsperson the competencies for monitoring the implementation of the principle of equal representation and it also established a Secretariat for Implementation of the Framework Agreement and a Committee for Inter-Community Relations (Velickovska 2013). Yet, the OFA addressed primarily the ethnic Albanian community,2 and did not provide enough mechanisms of smaller groups’ rights’ protection and representation, contributing to the de facto binationalization of the country (Bieber 2005). In BiH, instead, the Dayton Peace Agreement and the new domestic constitution (DPA, Annex IV) grounded the state on  three ethnic Constituent Peoples—Serbs, Croats, Bošnjaks, plus ‘Others’. ‘Others’ are all those who do not declare/do not belong to any of the three constitutionally recognized ethnic nations, and so are not represented in the state’s Presidency and the House of Peoples.3 ‘Others’ have constitutionally and consequently politically and institutionally a considerably lower status and importance compared to the three ethnic nations’ members, since there is no representation without ethnonational identification. The status assumed by ethnonational belonging in Dayton’s Bosnia is further stressed by the country’s territorial partitions: trying to avoid its total dismemberment, Bosnia was preserved as a united state but internally divided into two Entities, the Republika Srpska (RS) established in 1992 by Radovan Karadžić, and the Federation of Bosnia Herzegovina (FBiH) established in 1994 with the Washington Agreement4 (which is also  divided into ten

60 

A. Piacentini

cantons—administrative units whose population is almost completely ethnic homogenous). In 1999, the district of Brčko became autonomous, hence not belonging to either of the two Entities. The division of the state into Entities and cantons has created a massive, expensive and dysfunctional bureaucracy while, on the other side, it has also  contributed  to give a divided image of the state itself, which resembles a shell for ‘wannabe ethnic nation-states’. As Bunce (2004: 180) argued in her analysis on ethnofederalism, ‘by drawing tight linkages among the nation, the territory, and political power, ethnofederalism can lock in differences and freeze identities’. Additionally, the Peace Agreement guaranteed an Entity citizenship alongside the state one, not only making the Bosnian citizenship policies similar to those once featuring the SFRY, but also making Bosnia ‘the only post-Yugoslav state whose national citizenship is twotiered’ (Džankić 2015: 73). Double citizenship is also permitted, and many Bosnian citizens either retained or acquired the citizenship of their ethnic kin-states, Serbia and Croatia. These policies contributed to further diminishing any sense of belonging to the state of Bosnia as a whole, discouraging the birth of a shared supra-ethnic identity while fostering ethnonational attachments and identities. To an extent, therefore, current BiH resembles the SFRY after its ‘non-statist drift’, and particularly that of the 1980s—featured by a loose federation where the central government has a limited array of functions and the Entities are the real holders of power. Yet it is worth saying that although the implementation of powersharing, dual citizenship policies, and the application of the ‘national key’ were neither a Dayton invention nor something new to Bosnia, the aim and context of their most recent implementation are diametrically different compared to those of the Yugoslav past—and so are the outcomes. After the 2001 conflict also Macedonia saw the official introduction of power-sharing principles and, also in this case, these happened to be insufficient in driving the multiethnic state into a stable political system not dominated by ethnonational collective identities. Therefore, if in the Yugoslav era it was the possession of the Yugoslav citizenship and permanent residence in one of the republics that allowed for political participation and voting (Štiks 2015: 62), in the post-Yugoslav scenario it has become ethnonational belonging and, in Bosnia, also the Entity citizenship (established, as in the SFRY, on the basis of municipal membership). It follows that in both Bosnia and Macedonia there is no demos reflected

3  After Yugoslavia: The New World 

61

in the notion of citizenship, but only fragmented ethnos inferred by ethno-cultural origins, hence ethnonationality. Nonetheless, as the history of Yugoslavia teaches us, although the institutional framework represents the overarching structure in which interactions take place, this alone is not enough to determine the outcome, setting new ethnonationality’s meanings and functions.

Political Elite: The Distribution of Power As briefly seen in the previous chapter, since the introduction of political pluralism in 1990, most of the political parties composing the political landscapes of BiH and Macedonia were structured along ethnic lines to represent the major societal segments. Since then the Bosnian and Macedonian political arenas have not gone through substantial changes and, although multiethnic and non-national parties do exist, these have a minor appeal and power in the hierarchy (Piacentini 2019b, c). Political parties are ‘the most important mediating institutions between the citizenry and the State’ (Lipset 1994: 14) and, through popular consensus, they structure the government and the state’s institutions so that their performance is a condition for both legitimacy and proper functioning of the state. Yet in contexts of ethnic power-sharing power is indeed shared by the major groups’ political representatives, which often do not share and detain only political power, but also the economic one. Before looking more closely at how the Bosnian and Macedonian ethno-national parties succeed in gaining and maintaining their ruling positions, sharing power and the state’s institutions alike, let’s have a quick look at both countries’ political spectrums composition.

The Macedonian and Bosnian Ethnic Multiparty Systems After the independence gained in 1991, and with the introduction of the multiparty system, Macedonia saw a politicization of ethnicity, which became the main defining characteristic of all the political parties on offer. On the ethnic Macedonian side, SDSM and VMRO-DPMNE have dominated the political scene since the 1990s: SDSM was the

62 

A. Piacentini

successor of the League of Communists of Macedonia (LCM) and led the country from 1992 to 1998 (in coalition together with the ethnic Albanian DPA5), after the conflict from 2002 to 2006 (in coalition together with the ethnic Albanian DUI6), and it is currently in power again together with DUI (2017–). VMRO-DPMNE, instead, initially under its first leader Ljupčo Georgievski, was strongly anti-communist, nationalist, right-wing, anti-Albanian, and opposed to forming a coalition government with ethnic Albanian parties; however, its attitude changed in 1998, when it entered a coalition with the Albanian DPA. VMRO was in power when the 2001 conflict erupted and after that it lost the elections against SDSM—which, although initially not willing to join a coalition with DUI, eventually allied with DUI’s leader Ali Ahmeti—former commander of the NLA. After some internal changes, Nikola Gruevski became the new VMRO’s leader, and won elections in 2006, 2008, 2011, and 2014, becoming Macedonia’s Prime Minister from 2006 to 2015. In 2015, due to a deep political crisis that culminated with a wiretapping scandal,7 Gruevski was forced to resign. In the last elections held in December 2016, SDSM, the ethnic Macedonian party in opposition for the last decade, tried to defeat its antagonist by opening especially to the ethnic Albanian community,  and showing an attitude well-disposed for compromise. For example, one of the most delicate issues at the centre of the political debate between the two communities has for long been about the status of the Albanian language in Macedonia, only recently (in 2018) equalized with Macedonian language, and made official all over the state’s territory by a law8 promoted by the SDSM–DUI coalition government. Before that, issues concerning the Albanian language were a matter of tense debates, with VMRO highly concerned to protect and safeguard the ethnic Macedonian nation and (ethnic nation-) state as well. However, in spite of SDSM’s bi-ethnic opening, the party remains largely seen as an ‘ethnic Macedonian’ opposition party. On the ethnic Albanian side, with the creation of DUI in 2002, followers and supporters of other ethnic Albanian parties declined consistently: DUI is the most influential and supported party among the Albanians and it has always been in power—first in a coalition with SDSM (2002–2006), then with VMRO-DPMNE (2006–2016), and currently again with SDSM (2017–). Next to DUI, the weak DPA

3  After Yugoslavia: The New World 

63

remains ‘the closest to the definition of a nationalist Albanian catch-all party’ (Šedo 2010: 177). Ever since 1991 ethnic political representatives have ruled Macedonia in a coalition government, but it has been with the OFA and the constitutional changes that inter-ethnic cooperation has become to an extent easier—and so is the cooperation between the political elites. Not very different is the Bosnian context. In terms of ethnic polarization, the Bosnian political spectrum is indeed very similar to the Macedonian one, and ‘parties aligned themselves against those which are similar and with those which are not’ (Stojarová 2010: 14). Since the first post-war elections held in 1996, and despite brief interruptions, nationalist political parties have remained the most supported and preferred. Next to the three ‘traditional’ national parties (SDA, SDS, HDZ),9 in the years following the war new parties emerged, but they mainly followed the footsteps of their predecessors and ‘each of the three groups tended to split into two leading parties, just as they have in Macedonia’. SDA was and remains the leading party among the Bošnjaks and ‘its image is meant to be that of a Bošnjak catch-all party’ (Šedo 2010: 92). HDZ BiH remains the largest and most supported (Croat) party among the Bosnian Croats—together with HDZ-1990, founded in 2006. On the Bosnian Serb side SDS, the party founded by Radovan Karadžić in 1990, was until a decade ago the strongest one. It has in fact been obscured by SNSD,10 ruling over the RS since the 2006 elections. Initially, SNSD was a moderate party, among those ‘who accepted the DPA and cooperation with the international community’ (Šedo 2010: 93); later, instead, both the party and its leader Milorad Dodik11 became strongly nationalist. A similar fate characterized SDP,12 the official successor of the Communist Party. Until recently, SDP was the most relevant post-communist and multiethnic party in BiH and it played an important role in counteracting nationalism.13 However, as a former SDP’s MP14 stated during our interview, due to recent changes in the political line followed by the party, SDP has progressively conformed to the ethnonationalist environment narrowing its target to the sole Bošnjak, rather than Bosnian, population. Next to these major ethnonational parties, and contrary to the Macedonian political scenario, stand a couple of non-nationalist and multiethnic alternatives worthy of mention: Demokratska Fronta (DF)15 founded in 2013 by Željko Komšić, and

64 

A. Piacentini

the Sarajevo-based Naša Stranka (NS)16 created a decade ago. Despite their crucial existence and role in bridging voters and citizens across ethnic lines, as well as in promoting a civic understanding of belonging, their power in the political hierarchy remains limited and mostly confined to the local level (Piacentini 2019b, c). With this in mind, we can now proceed by seeing how, despite the groups they seek to represent are different in their ethno-cultural features, the political attitudes and strategies used by the major parties in BiH and Macedonia are actually very similar to each other. From a more general perspecitve we can mention, among others, the following shared characteristics: • Absence of a clear-cut distinction between right- and left-wing parties, with parties’ placement in the political spectrum becoming more blurred; • Parties’ ideological orientation less important than their ‘business’ orientation; • Central reliance on ethnocentrism and nationalism; • Absence or substantial weakness of rule of law; • Political dialogue articulated in antagonist terms, also featured by the employment of two main dichotomies: (1) ‘us and them’, directed towards the out-group; and (2) ‘loyal and traitors’, directed towards the in-group; • Political parties’ reliance on the leaders’ visibility, popularity, and charisma; in addition, political leadership displays authoritarian tendencies; • Difficult political compromise and cooperation in the democracy’s direction; • Political aggregation along ethnic lines and against the multiethnic parties, whose image is discredited by the ethnonational ruling elite; • Blurred separation between the ruling parties and the state; • Widespread use of informal networks of political alliances identifiable in terms of ethno-clientelism (Piacentini 2019b) and patronage.

3  After Yugoslavia: The New World 

65

The post-Socialist ethnic elites of Bosnia and Macedonia seem thus to exploit (among others) the democratic institutions and principles set up by the consociational model so to share both power and the state alike (see Piacentini 2019a). The power these elites detain in their hands is indeed not only political but, as we shall better see afterwards, also economic. Leaving aside the nonetheless crucial considerations about the overall level of democracy featuring societies like BiH and Macedonia, the most recent literature has addressed the issue by using the concept of state capture17 while labelling these societies as ‘stabilitocracies’.18 As the term suggests, stabilitocracies favour stability over quality, equilibrium over changes towards democratic achievements and rule of law. Although it is not only a matter of political elite behaviour and/or institutional design, these reflections do open up a further note over the ethnopolitical rule featuring our case studies: in the presence of certain unfavourable circumstances, institutionalized ethnicity becomes a proxy for the sharing of the multiethnic state by dividing both the political and economic power among the ethnic political leaders—which, although oftentimes seem unable to compromise over reforms oriented towards their countries’ amelioration, they have however proven to be very good at sharing public institutions and resources alike. Thanks to the implementation of successful strategies, soon explored, a situation of stability and overall ethnic-collective equality has been reached at the expense of democracy, rule of law, and citizens’ equality alike. In the light of this book’s aims, it is worth stressing once again that current issues and dynamics are both causes and consequences of processes involving several factors and actors. Until the 1990s, neither BiH nor Macedonia had ever experienced democracy and multiparty systems, nor had they ever been independent states. Their transition from one regime to another one happened in a difficult and ethnically polarized environment, worsened by wars and economic criticisms, so that the composition of their respective political scenarios could not but reflect the surroundings. Together with the political and ideological transitions,  also the economic one  seriously impacted the countries’ destinies,  thus concurring too  to influence the  ethnonationality’s meanings and functions  in the post-Yugoslav era. Indeed, if current  phenomena like state sharing and state capturing have become possible, and if ethnonationality has become  the structuring principle of political and

66 

A. Piacentini

institutional representation, power alliances and competition,  and the criteria for to enjoy rights and benefits, it means also  the masses have found it advantageous to keep alive and nurture such a system. Yet before looking at people’s agency, scrutinizing individuals’ interests, reasons, and patterns of behaviour, we shall have a look at how political (and popular) power and legitimacy are gained by the ethnic elite.

The Acquisition of Power Many scholars have wondered why ethnonational parties in multiethnic contexts remain the most popularly supported ones, even when non-­ nationalist options are on offer.19 Without disregarding the importance of the issue, here the goal is to try to reconstruct ethnonationality’s evolution over time and political regimes. What interests us at this book’s stage is how and using which strategies the ethnic entrepreneurs’ rise to power in the post-Yugoslav environment have contributed to shape it on a larger, society-wide scale, and how those changes have possibly impacted individuals and generations. Although part of the information afterwards provided might sound familiar to the reader, this is however one of the first—if not the first—attempt to systematize, also from a temporal perspective, the role and responsibility of structures and political actors in respect to the semantic and pragmatic variations the concept of ethnonationality has gone through.

Political Propaganda and the Media20 Slobodan Milošević, the 1990s’ Serbian nationalist leader, is considered the first to officially introduce nationalism into the Yugoslav politics, extensively exploiting the media to spread a primordial understating of the nation while fomenting antagonism among the Yugoslav peoples. Until the 1990s, the Yugoslav policy of ‘Brotherhood and Unity’ applied to all the social and political spheres, the media included. The media’s owner, at least formally, was the society and, although the LCY was controlling the media’s work—particularly for what concerned ‘ideological issues’ (Rusi and Spasovska 2013), media and journalism were considered

3  After Yugoslavia: The New World 

67

highly professional. Today, although in a different way, media are still largely under the control of politics: in both BiH and Macedonia the main public TVs, radio stations, and newspapers are tied to the ruling/ major parties while, oftentimes, the private ones are owned either by political figures or by individuals close to them. The relation existing between politics and the media is a very close one, impacting not only the quality of the information provided but also the society’s value system. In Macedonia media are divided along ethno-linguistic lines, given the different languages spoken by the two major communities21—ethnic Macedonians and ethnic Albanians. Although this was also the case in the SFRY, an ethnically polarized or, better, a parallel media system has developed, broadcasting in the two languages while also providing the same news in opposed ways, especially when it comes to inter-ethnic relations. Often media give the impression of a double reality fomenting the ‘us and them’ rhetoric, deepening the divide. The ethnonational parties’ use of the media system is also mirrored in political pressures, censorship, and journalists’ self-censorship. More clearly until 2016, but to an extent even nowadays, the Macedonian media appears divided between pro-­ ruling and pro-opposition parties, while ‘journalists are separated into two groups—“patriots” and “traitors” of the country’ (Šopar 2013: 231). Additionally, after the 2015 ‘wiretapping scandal’ the ‘corrupt ties between officials and media owners’22 emerged to the surface—as the following interview’s excerpt confirms: We did not have a perfect journalism even before, because most of the media were controlled by oligarchs. Before this authoritarian system [ruling coalition VMRO–DUI], most of the media were protecting the interests of their own oligarchs, but there was a diversity of oligarchs, so it was more democratic. Now instead the media are controlled just by one centre, so we went from oligarchy to a centralized system. We were competing, trying to practice real journalism, but then the system changed and many of my colleagues … we were not really forced but we had to conform to the new system… being obedient journalists, especially when your job depends on them and you cannot get a job as free journalist […] But the problem is that propaganda is very strong because most of the popular TV stations are […] government controlled, not simply pro-­ government. […] What they do is to construct this atmosphere of government

68 

A. Piacentini

being always right and the opposition being always wrong, the opposition being traitor to the government.23

According to the latest Freedom of Press report,24 Macedonia is a ‘non free’ country, while Bosnia Herzegovina is ranked among the ‘partly free’25 countries. Nevertheless, the media situation in BiH is slightly more complicated. The 1970s ‘decentralization without democratization’ entailed also the media, but it was only in the late 1980s that independent media emerged (Hasibović 2013). In the 1990s, the Bosnian Serbs and Bosnian Croats media quickly fell under the nationalist influence of Belgrade and Zagreb respectively, while Sarajevo’s Oslobođenje (the main newspaper) and RTV Sarajevo remained multiethnic and with a ‘civic’ orientation. The following excerpt explains media’s turn from a temporal perspective, highlighting how the media situation functioned within Yugoslavia, what it became during the war, and what it has become nowadays. Until the beginning of the 1980s, I was a political journalist in Sarajevo’s Oslobođenje, I was writing about politics and the party, there was no room for creativity. But I was dreaming to go to Belgrade because journalism there was a symbol of excellence. […] But then Serbian media fell under Milošević’s control and many journalists started to serve the party: they were inventing stories—as if the real life’s tragedies were not enough. Media in Serbia and Croatia played a shameful role, they disseminated hate […]. Then, from military-­ journalism, they transited to transitional-journalism in the hands of the privates…who do not care about information but only about money and politics. Nowadays journalists are slaves, underpaid, fearing to lose their jobs, they do what they are told to do.26

Despite the undeniable and massive role media had in the 1992–1995 war, the DPA did not mention any provision in that field, and media’s administration fell under the Entities’ competence, hampering cohesion and harmonization of both legislation and information. In the aftermath of the war the international community tried to create ‘a public service broadcasting system that should replace an ethnically segregated, politically controlled, state broadcasting sector’ (Hasibović 2013: 280) but the

3  After Yugoslavia: The New World 

69

internationals’ progressive disengagement in the sector left the Bosnian media under nationalist influences. Therefore media in Bosnia still have a decisive role not only in bringing and confirming power to the ethnic entrepreneurs—especially but not solely in times of electoral campaign— but the kind of ‘ethnically biased’ information they provide largely concur to shape ethnonationality’s meanings and functions on a broader, society-wide scale.

The School System Back in the time of Yugoslavia, the educational system was a crucial tool to teach and put into practice the ‘Brotherhood and Unity’ principle: it provided education in the minorities’ languages while at the same time included pupils in the same classrooms regardless of their ethnic origins. The system was highly committed in stressing how differences were enriching the country and its peoples, not diminishing their value. With the spread of nationalism in the late 1980s, education became a successful, dangerous, and diseducative tool used for ethnonational indoctrination, rebuilding of national identities, and deepening the divide between the groups. In Macedonia, issues related to the right of being schooled in one’s own mother tongue have always been a matter of debate between the two major communities and, until very recently, inter-ethnic tension have often focused on this issue.27 In the mid-1980s, the Yugoslav Macedonian authorities initiated a ‘campaign of differentiation’, enacting a law (1985) concerning secondary school education and resulting in ‘the closure of classes with an insufficient intake of Albanian pupils [hence compelling them] to attend mixed classes with the instruction in Macedonian’ (Poulton 2000: 129). Milošević then shut down the University of Priština, the only one in the SFRY providing higher education in Albanian language and, on a similar vein, the Faculty of Pedagogy at the Ss. Cyril and Methodius University of Skopje, the only one providing classes in Albanian and Turkish languages, was closed in 1987. Ethnic Albanians’ attempt to open a University in Mala Rečica, near Tetovo, ended in violence and in the arrest of many ‘dissidents’. Nowadays, progress in

70 

A. Piacentini

education and collective rights has been made thanks to the OFA provisions; yet primary and secondary education in Macedonia is segregated, with pupils either going to different schools or in the same school but in different shifts or floors of the same building. Language seems, therefore, to be not only the main ethnic marker between the two largest communities, but also a prime obstacle in bridging them. Yet a deeper analysis reveals that, more than language per se, it is its ethnopolitical connotation that hampers social cohesion. As Najčevska (2000: 95) explained: Learning the language of ‘the other’ is perceived as an act of weakness, of surrendering to the ‘stronger’ group and yielding to the imposition of its will and culture. The phenomenon of being forced to learn the other group’s language can even be seen as a sort of weapon used to show who is ‘the boss’ in a certain area. […] Language is not perceived as a means of communication but rather in terms of differentiation and separation.

Concerning the divided school system, also in this case we can spot the ethnopolitics’ interest in using it for purposes very different than the protection of the ethnic groups’ rights. The most dangerous aspect of such an education system is, in fact, about the school curricula and the subject of history in particular. History is taught in different and not interconnected ‘ethnicized’ versions, and the history textbooks spread ethnocentric points of view by rethinking and renarrating the past, eventually giving historical legitimacy to modern ideas and ideologies. As Stefoska (2013: 260–261) noted, ‘the goal of history as a school subject […] focuses on the construction of the national identity (of Macedonians and Albanians) and teaching the next generation about the history of the nation and the nation-state. Therefore, a large portion of the textbooks’ content serves the purpose of legitimizing these two modern phenomena.’ The Bosnian educational situation28 is not much different. The DPA, by creating a loose federation and a widely decentralized state-system, allowed for the official establishment (and maintenance) of an ethnically divided educational system, deeply compromising the achievement of educative goals. The country does not have a state-level Ministry of Education but thirteen of them: two at Entity level, ten at cantonal level, and one at district level in Brčko. Divided education first emerged during

3  After Yugoslavia: The New World 

71

the war when, starting with the school year 1992–1993, history textbooks and teaching activities were divided into three variants according to the army in control of a given region. Books for Bosnian Croats and Bosnian Serbs were imported from Croatia and Serbia respectively, while the Bosnian ones were a modified version of those previously used (Pašalić-Kreso 2008). Starting from 1998, attempts in ‘fixing’ school books occurred, although initially the agreement to remove objectionable material ended in a ‘blackening the text […] accompanying it with a stamp that read: “the following passages contains material of which the truth has not been established, or that may be offensive or misleading; the material is currently under review”’ (Torsti 2013: 215). Nowadays, students’ segregation remains ‘endemic’ (Perry 2013). Children go to different schools, and sometimes this means they have to reach other villages/cities where they can study ‘with their own group’; curricula are divided by ethnicity, especially for the ‘sensitive subjects’ of history, geography, language, and religion—eventually giving the new generations a deeply divided image of the state and its people. Only a few schools in the major urban centres, like Sarajevo, Tuzla, or Zenica are still multiethnic. The project ‘Two schools under one roof ’,29 implemented by OSCE in the FBiH and meant to be temporary, is still in place. As Sarajevo professor Adila Pašalić-Kreso wrote (2002), ‘what could not be done in war continues to be attempted in peace by nationalist differentiation of education’. The only true exception to ethnonationalist indoctrination seems to be the district of Brčko, not belonging to either of the two Entities. Partly resembling the old Yugoslav educational system, the one adopted in Brčko shows that integrated education is possible. Children go to school together, in the same classes, learn both Cyrillic and Latin, and use different textbooks in order to have a ‘more objective’ picture of the Bosnian reality. Once again, the ethnopolitics’ influence in using individuals’ ethnonationality for power purposes is clear, and ‘Brčko demonstrates that the only obstacle to reform (education or otherwise) is the political will to make it happen’ (Perry 2013: 241). Despite several attempts in bridging the communities, political parties’ resistance strongly persists, and the educational system remains a tool to forge ethnonational identities in opposition to each other.

72 

A. Piacentini

For the purposes of our analysis, it is worth saying that the ethnopolitics’ ability to transform ethnonationality into a power tool is counteracted by a number of NGOs and civil society organizations active in both BiH and Macedonia. Nonetheless, as the activists admitted, their activities are by their respective governments neither facilitated nor supported. Schools, thus, are the first place where kids learn how incommensurably different they are; where no one helps them in developing a sense of ‘unity in diversity’. The role of school education in forging antagonist ethnonational identities and group members, rather than equal citizens, is thus undeniable; and so is ethnopolitics’ influence—which uses the excuse of the democratic right of any child to be schooled in its own language, culture, and so on, to maintain alive a divided society which gains popular legitimacy by pretending to safeguard the groups’ interests by politicizing ethnonationality.

(Political) Religious Institutions30 Religious institutions are meant to play a spiritual role in people’s lives; yet sometimes they also assume a political role contributing to homogenize ethnically heterogeneous masses. In all the former Yugoslav republics, starting from the late 1980s, religion and its institutions acquired a new social, but especially political, relevance, contributing to strengthen the saliency of ethnonationality and crystallizing groups’ identities. In Macedonia31 religion played and still plays a secondary role, and it is especially so in the Albanian nation’s case, whose collective identity is shaped upon the linguistic factor (Babuna 2000). The same cannot be said for the ethnic Macedonians, whose tie between religion, ethnonationality, and politics is more pronounced—as the establishment of the Autocephalous Macedonian Orthodox Church in 1967 reveals. Yet this relationship became clearer after the collapse of Yugoslavia, and especially in the case of  the Macedonian nationalist-conservative party VMRO-­ DPMNE which,  under its first leader Georgievski32 emphasized ‘this “marriage” relation between the church and the state—although every new government wants to have the church’s sustain’.33

3  After Yugoslavia: The New World 

73

The Bosnian case is instead substantially different, as the tie between ethnicity, religion, and politics happened to be particularly close. By 1990 three different but equally powerful ethnic and religious nationalisms invested BiH, and a new order was set in motion by ethnonational parties and ethnicized churches (Perica 2002). By spreading a new ideology grounded in people’s ethno-religious origins, and using sophisticated means of fear and suspect diffusion (Sekulić 2002), their conjoined actions reshaped not only the political reality but also the social environment, influencing new modes of inter/intra-group interactions and ways of identification. The 1990s ethnic collectivization led to high levels of violence, both ethnic and religious based (Carmichael 2006; Skrbiš 2005), making the so-called ‘religious revival’ particularly pronounced. Eventually, in the post-Yugoslav republics of BiH and to a lesser extent also of  Macedonia, religion stopped being a private affair becoming a matter of public identity. The reader should now have a better picture of how the notion of ethnonationality has been and is manipulated, used, institutionalized, and instrumentalized by a series of actors, and in virtue of institutional, ideological, and political changes—which, undeniably, impacted the Bosnian and Macedonian societies and individuals’ lives as well. This interplay has resulted in new, particularistic dynamics which have shaped ethnonationality’s meanings and functions—at the present moment, drastically different to those evoked and promoted by the Yugoslav system. To complete the picture, there is however another factor we must account for: that of the state’s economic conditions, and the particularistic modalities of resource redistribution.

 lliances’ Networks: Where Ideology Does Not Arrive, A the Money Arrives Political alliances between parties and masses in the multiethnic states of Bosnia and Macedonia do largely follow ethnic lines. Yet the reason for that is not only the salience conferred to ethnonationality by the consociational model. Nor is it ethnonationality’s politicization and instrumentalization via ethicized media, education systems, or religious

74 

A. Piacentini

institutions. At times, intra-ethnic political alliances between ethnic rulers and ethnic masses stem from more pragmatic reasons, such as the economic ones. The state’s overall economic conditions and the mechanisms of allocation of resources between the groups  may, in fact, represent a fertile ground for ethnopolitics and  a further instrumentalization of ethnonationality  but, in a greater detail, also for the development of ethnonationality’s new functions. From a temporal perspective, the centrality of economic deficiencies in affecting ‘ethnic issues’ is not a novelty: due to the economic recession of the 1960s, the economic divide between the northern Yugoslav republics (Slovenia and Croatia—more economically developed) and the southern Yugoslav ones (among which  Bosnia and Macedonia—considerably behind the standard), became wider. Already back in 1964, the Yugoslav authorities established the ‘Federal Fund for the Accelerated Development of the Underdeveloped Republics and Kosovo’ (FADURK) with the aim of filling the economic divide by redistributing the resources from the richest to the poorest units. Yet, when the ‘last economic crisis’ hit the SFRY at the beginning of the 1980s, economic problems soon generated tensions between the republics, assuming political and then ethno-political tones. In order to cope with the financial crisis, a few reforms were adopted at the end of the 1980s, such as the Company Law (1988), which allowed ‘socially-owned/state-owned companies to reorganize, merge, and to transfer social capital from one enterprise to another, thereby becoming mixed companies’ (Perry and Keil 2018: 3), and the Social Capital Circulation and Management Law (1989). The reforms had, however, the unfortunate consequence of provoking the bankruptcy of more than a thousand socially owned enterprises (Perry and Keil 2018: 3). Economic deficiencies got worse after the aggressive privatizations process, which occurred mostly with the small and medium enterprises while ‘the biggest and most lucrative assets remained in “government” hands during and after the wars’ (Perry and Keil 2018: 4). Economic disparities and particularistic mechanisms of redistribution of resources thus played a very important role in the Yugoslav dissolution itself, compromising interrepublican relations while contributing to redefine the functions ethnonationality could exert.

3  After Yugoslavia: The New World 

75

For what concerns our case studies, the economic factor has retained a key relevance also in the post-Yugoslav era, affecting many aspects of the social and political life.  As seen, while  Bosnia and Macedonia were, already back in Yugoslavia, among the poorest republics, the system was rather egalitarian and there were not significant differences inside the federal units themselves. Bosnia’s and Macedonia’s economic performances got, however and inevitably, worse with the fall of the SFRY: the war in Bosnia resulted in the impoverishment of the whole society; houses and cities were destroyed alongside industries and companies. The GDP per capita of the Bosnian population dropped and, at the same time, war dynamics favoured the enrichment of war-profiteers generally linked to paramilitary formations. After the conflict and in the context of state rebuilding, the new political elite ‘largely emulated the control over state resources of the previous regime (and) the consequence has been a substantial increase in economic and social inequalities’ (Bieber 2006: 34). Soon after the 1991 independence Macedonian initiated a privatization process, not exactly legal and transparent, which increased unemployment as well as corruption and clientelistic ties, finally making the economic transition slower and harder. Despite international aids in monetary terms, nowadays both countries are plagued by economic malaise,34 high levels of unemployment—particularly among the younger population, as well as political corruption and clientelism (Table 3.1). Additionally, it is not a secret that the ethnonational parties of both BiH and Macedonia  have, ever since the Yugoslav collapse,  largely exploited in their favour particular structural conditions so as to build and consolidate ethnicity-based trust relations with the ethnicized masses (Piacentini 2019b). Grounded on ‘ethnically selective’ mechanisms of resources’ allocation, and functioning through ethnic groups and ethnic parties membership,  ethnic clientelistic dynamics between parties and masses have not only prevented the development of other forms of solidarity different from the ethnonational one, but have also made of ethnonational belonging a proxy to access and enjoy rights and resources. Clientelism35 is, in fact, ‘an informal relationship between two actors enjoying asymmetrical socioeconomic power where the patron has the upper hand because he or she controls the kind of resources that his or her clients pursue but often cannot receive otherwise. Thus, it is a system that often establishes a relationship of domination and exploitation that

16.6

12.6

19.1

5.1 16.8 23.9 12.4 16.0 1.6 21.9 24.2

5.0 13.8 23.1 11.7 12.2 1.5 21.5 22.6

4.5 13.6 22.1 11.2 10.7 1.6 21.2 17.2

3.9 13.9 20.1 10.3 9.6 1.7 19.2

2016

20.6

3.3 12.2 17.6 9.2 8.0 1.7 15.4

2017

26.0

3.3 16.9 30.3 : 17.5 3.4 28.6

2007

4.6 15.3 26.1 10.9 18.1 1.6 21.6

2.8 12.1 29.3 : 12.7 2.3 23.2

2015

24.5

4.6 16.1 24.5 9.5 19.8 3.0 25.5

2012

26.7

5.1 15.1 23.8 10.4 18.3 3.3 24.7

2013

31.4

5.0 14.1 23.8 10.7 14.0 3.2 26.4

2014

27.6

4.5 13.3 20.1 11.3 12.3 3.4 25.2

2015

20.6

4.0 12.9 17.8 9.8 10.6 3.5 25.7

2016

25.1

3.5 12.8 17.1 8.4 8.6 3.9 19.4

2017

Source: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=File:Long-term_unemployment_rates_(persons_aged_ 15-74)_by_sex,_2007-2017_(%25_of_labour_force)_CPC19.png Source: Eurostat (online data code: unu_ltu_a) a 2012 and 2014: break in series b Based on 4 weeks criterion and using only active jobs search methods c This designation is without prejudice to positions on status, and is in line with UNSCR 1244/1999 and the ICJ Opinion on the Kosovo declaration of independence

EU-28 Montenegro Macedonia Albania Serbiaa Turkeyb Bosnia and Herzegovina Kosovoc

2014

Women

2013

2007

2012

Men

Table 3.1  Long-term unemployment rates (persons aged 15–74) by sex, 2007–2017 (% of labour force)

76  A. Piacentini

3  After Yugoslavia: The New World 

77

perpetuates the lock on power of resourceful political leaders’ (Kitschelt 2000). If to poor economic conditions we add a bureaucracy and administration heavily politicized and ethnicized, it cannot be too surprising that, in both the countries under analysis, politicians/political parties find it useful to promise (but not guarantee!) benefits entailing public resources (healthcare, housing, education) or job positions (especially in the public sector but also in the private) (Hicken 2011) as a condition to reciprocate the favour. The benefits patrons usually get from clients are votes and money—oftentimes both at the same time. Therefore, if on the one hand institutionalized ethnicity, poverty, and unemployment might fuel clientelism, on the other hand, ‘politicians have an interest in perpetuating economic stagnation and preventing the development of redistributive policies on more impersonal, merit-driven bases that escape their control’ (Manzetti and Wilson 2007: 954). By capturing their states while exploiting in their favour economic deficiencies and democratic mechanisms of allocation of resources, ethnic entrepreneurs have benefitted from already existing conditions while, at the same time, creating the circumstances for people ‘to need’ patrons’ help. In fact, as we shall soon see, many Bosnian and Macedonian voters oftentimes vote for ethnonationalist parties because they ‘depend upon the state for individualized benefits [and] expect to obtain greater access to […] benefits from elected officials belonging to their “own” ethnic group’ (Chandra 2009: 23). In this way, ethnonationality, already institutionalized and politicized, becomes even more salient, and for both the rulers and ruled turns into a tool suitable for self-interested mobilization. People have learnt that they can do nothing through institutions, but they can do anything through political parties. Whenever they do you a favour, they make it clear—that it has been done because of the party not because of the institutions, so that you know to whom you owe your vote, your loyalty.36

The negative outcomes are clearly manifold: not only does clientelism further weaken democratic institutions, but also compromises the general and collective view people have of democracy itself. As Vetters (2014: 20) showed in her study, these relational modalities between the captured state and the ethnicized masses ‘not only facilitate citizens’ access to

78 

A. Piacentini

public resources, but also lend continuity and coherence to a fragmented state apparatus’.

Ethnonationality and Ethnopolitics From a systemic perspective, ethnonationality in post-Yugoslav and post-­ conflict Bosnia Herzegovina and Macedonia has become the structuring principle of any aspect of the political and social life of the individuals. It determines institutional and political representation; the political parties’ image, narratives, and rhetoric; political alliances and clientelistic networks; media production and broadcasting; school systems and curricula organization, as well as classroom composition; employment procedures; urban planning, cities and neighbourhoods’ composition; associations and trade unions; cultural initiatives; cafés and restaurants; solidarity ties, as well as friendship and love relations. Structural changes entailing ethnonationality have not only had micro-social consequences, channelling people’s lives although never pre-determining their social and political behaviours; but have also redefined the concept of citizenship. From being a tool of reunification in Yugoslavia’s first decade to a tool of cooperation and solidarity from the 1960s onward, citizenship has then been surpassed in importance by ethnonational belonging, becoming first a tool of fragmentation (1990s), and then of ethnic engineering in post-­ Yugoslavia (Štiks 2010). Initially allowed but complemented and counterbalanced by feelings of supra-ethnic belonging, ethnonational identities have then become tools for building the post-Yugoslav states, and it has been particularly so in multiethnic republics such as Bosnia and Macedonia. In understanding this evolutionary process we must, however, account for the fact that Yugoslavia was not only a multinational federation—hence composed by different groups, each with its own ethnonational belonging—but also identities and belonging have always and necessarily been multilayered, hence multiple. As we have seen, there was the supra-ethnic identity promoted by Belgrade and reflected in a sense of citizenship and pride at being Yugoslavs; there were republican identities, yet an all-encompassing Bosnian Herzegovinian and Macedonian identities was never created; there were group identities informed by

3  After Yugoslavia: The New World 

79

one’s own ethno-cultural belonging, at times overlapping with the republican ones (as in the case of the ethnic Macedonians), other times informed by the religious element (as in the case of Muslims); and, finally, although neglected by the academic literature, there also were and are individual identities, subjectively felt and informed by one’s own specific background, experience, opinions, and perceptions. This complexity makes clear how hard it is to disentangle the processes and actors involved in this evolutionary process; and how even harder it is to discern between causes and consequences. We cannot say once for all what causes what, who is responsible for what. It is in fact not a matter of finding what element, but what the set of circumstances. Institutional design and economic conditions are among these; yet it is neither consociationalism nor economic malaise or the political elites’ behaviour taken alone who are responsible for ethnonationality’s semantic and pragmatic redefinition across time and regimes. It is always a matter of simultaneously present un-favourable conditions stemming from, and allowing for, particularistic dynamics and interactions between state and masses, parties and groups, politicians and individuals. And more importantly, these changes—as any change in any society—are not the product of top-down dynamics. The literature on the topic too often neglects the most important element: people, individuals before groups’ members. Individuals allow and legitimize changes, taking part in complex dynamics of interactions with and within their societies. Even when their range of action or set of possibilities seem limited, their behaviours are never predetermined, and there plausibly is always a choice. Even not picking a side is a choice. Not voting during elections is a choice. Moving abroad, ‘voting with the feet’, is a choice. In the long run, everything matters, everything produces consequences.

Notes 1. See VV.AA. 2016. Life and Numbers. Equitable ethnic representation and Integration at the workplace. Skopje: European Policy Institute (EPI); Shasivari J. 2013. ‘The past and the present of the constitutional system

80 

A. Piacentini

of the Republic of Macedonia in terms of the position of Albanians’, European Scientific Journal, 9:17, pp. 190–206. 2. The OFA tried to satisfy some of the Albanians’ demands, such as those concerning the use of languages: the compromise reached was that ‘any other language spoken by at least 20 percent of the population is also an official language’ (OFA, 6. 5). Yet until very recently the Macedonian language remained the only official one at state level; and it was only in the beginning of 2018 that the use of the Albanian language was extended by law all across the country. 3. Until 1990 the Bosnian Presidency was composed of seven members, representing both the three major groups and the ‘Others’ (Kapidžić 2014); Dayton’s presidency instead became triple, composed of one Croat and one Bošnjak member elected in the FBiH, and one Serb member elected in the RS. The Bosnian state is provided with a Parliamentary Assembly composed by the House of Peoples and the House of Representatives. Representation and decision-making mechanisms follow ethnic and territorial criteria. The Constitutional Court, composed of domestic and international members, is the only institution for which an ethnic composition is not prescribed; 4. The Washington Agreement was signed in 1994 between the authorities of the Croatian Republic of Herzeg-Bosna (auto-proclaimed in 1991 under the leadership of Mate Boban) and the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina; the territory was divided into ten autonomous cantons, hence establishing the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH). The existence of the FBiH has been ratified with the signing of the Dayton Peace Agreement in 1995, and it occupies 51 per cent of the Bosnian territory; the remnant 49 per cent is occupied by the Republika Srpska. 5. Partia Demokratike Shqiptare—Democratic Party of Albania. 6. Bashkimi Demokratik për Integrim—Democratic Union for Integration. 7. See Introduction. 8. Marusić, ‘Macedonia passes Albanian language law’, Balkan Insight, 11 January 2018 (accessed 6 February 2019). http://www.balkaninsight. com/en/article/macedonia-passes-albanian-language-law-01-11-2018 9. See Introduction. 10. Savez nezavisnih socijaldemokrata—Alliance of Independent Social Democrats, formerly Stranka nezavisnih socijaldemokrata—Party of Independent Social Democrats.

3  After Yugoslavia: The New World 

81

11. Milorad Dodik was Prime Minister of the Republika Srspka from 1998 to 2001 and from 2006 to 2010; since 2010, he has been the President of the Republika Srpska, and since 2018 he has been appointed Serb member of the Presidency of Bosnia Herzegovina. 12. Socijaldemokratska Partija BiH—Social Democratic Party of BiH. 13. In 2000 SDP won the elections and its chairman Zlatko Lagumdžija became Prime Minister; in 2006, Željko Komšić was elected as the Croat member of the Bosnian Presidency. 14. Anonymous, former SDP’s MP, Sarajevo March 2017. 15. Democratic Front. 16. Our Party. 17. For a deep and exhaustive analysis of state capture and related issues see: J. Džankić, 2018. ‘Capturing contested states. Structural mechanisms of power reproduction in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia and Montenegro’, Southeastern Europe, 43: 1, pp. 83–106; J. Hulsey, 2018. ‘Institutions and the reversal of state capture. Bosnia and Herzegovina in comparative perspective’, Southeastern Europe, 42: 1, pp. 15–32; V. Perry and S. Keil 2018. ‘The business of state capture in the Western Balkans. An introduction’, Southeastern Europe, 43: 1, pp. 1–14. 18. Bieber F. 2017, ‘What is stabilitocracy?’, BIEPAG, 5 May 2017. https:// biepag.eu/what-is-a-stabilitocracy/ (Accessed 26 June 2019). 19. See J. Hulsey, 2010. ‘Why did they vote for those guys again? Challenges and contradictions in the promotion of moderation in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina’, Democratization, 17: 6, pp. 1132–52; Husley Mujkić, 2010. ‘Explaining the success of nationalist parties in Bosnia Herzegovina’, Politička Misao, 47: 2, pp.  143–158; VV.AA. 2015. Analysis of the situation with hate speeches in the Republic of Macedonia. Skopje: Helsinki Committee for Human Rights of the Republic of Macedonia. 20. See P.  Kolstø (ed.), 2009. Media discourse and  Yugoslav conflicts. Representations of self and others. Farnham: Ashgate. 21. Small channels broadcasting in other minorities’ languages are also present and the private television channel Alsat-M provides programmes in both the Macedonian and Albanian languages. 22. Freedom House, Freedom of Press 2017, Macedonia Profile (accessed 23 October 2019). https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-press/2017/ macedonia 23. Anonymous, Nova Makedonija’s journalist, Skopje, March 2016.

82 

A. Piacentini

24. Freedom House, Freedom of Press 2017, Macedonia Profile (accessed 23 October 2019). https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-press/2017/ macedonia 25. Freedom House, Freedom of Press 2017, Bosnia Herzegovina Profile (accessed 23 October 2019). https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedompress/2017/bosnia-and-herzegovina 26. Anonymous, Former Oslobođenje journalist, December 2016. 27. See OSCE (2010). Age-Contact-Perceptions. How schools shape relations between ethnicities. 28. See UNICEF 2009, Divided Schools in Bosnia Herzegovina; Magill, 2010. Education and Fragility in Bosnia and Herzegovina, UNESCO; J. Brethfeld and N. Vadakaria, 2012. Leaving the past behind. The perceptions of youth in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Sarajevo: Nansen Dialogue Centre and Saferworld. 29. According to the ‘Two schools under one roof ’ project, Bošnjak and Croat children living in the FBiH go to school in the same building, which however is divided into two parts, two schools. The two schools have different curricula, classrooms, playgrounds, and teachers who teach in their group’s language, using different textbooks. 30. See S.P.  Ramet, 2014. Religion and  politics in  post-Socialist Central and  Southeastern Europe. Challenges since 1989. London: Palgrave Macmillan; M. Velikonja, 2003. Religious separation and political intolerance in Bosnia Herzegovina. College Station: Texas A&M University Press. 31. See A. Zdravkovski and K. Morrison 2014. ‘The Orthodox Churches of Macedonia and Montenegro: the quest for autocephaly’ in S.P. Ramet, Religion and politics in post-Socialist Central and Southeastern Europe. Challenges since 1989. London: Palgrave Macmillan. 32. In 2002, the Millennium Cross, a 66-metre tall cross, was built on top of the mountain Vodno, in Skopje. It was meant to symbolize 2000 years of Christianity and it was founded by the Macedonian Orthodox Church, the government, and foreigner donations. 33. Anonymous, member of the Macedonian Orthodox Church, Skopje, April 2016. 34. See UNDP, The ties that bind. Social capital in Bosnia Herzegovina, National Human Development Report. (Sarajevo, 2009); European Commission, Bosnia and Herzegovina Report 2018; European Commission, The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Report 2018.

3  After Yugoslavia: The New World 

83

35. See S.N.  Eisenstadt, and R.  Lamarchand, 1981. Political clientelism, patronage and development, London: Sage Publications; S.N. Eisenstadt and, L. Roniger, 1984. Patrons, clients and friends. Interpersonal relations and the structure of trust in society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; S.N. Eisenstadt and L. Roniger, 2007. ‘Clientelism in Communist Systems: a comparative perspective’, Studies in Comparative Communism, XIV: 2&3, pp. 233–45; N. Robinson, 2007. ‘The political is personal: corruption, clientelism, patronage, informal practices and the dynamics of post-communism’, Europe-Asia Studies, 59: 7, pp. 1217–24. 36. Anonymous, think-tank director, Skopje, June 2016.

References Babuna, A. 2000. The Albanians of Kosovo and Macedonia: Ethnic Identity Superseding Religion. Nationalities Paper 28 (1): 67–92. Bieber, F. 2005. Power Sharing After Yugoslavia: Functionality and Dysfunc-­ tionality of Power-Sharing Institutions in Post-War Bosnia, Macedonia and Kosovo. In From Power Sharing to Democracy. Post-Conflict Institutions in Ethnically Divided Societies, ed. S.  Noel, 85–103. Montreal & Kingston: MacGill-Queen’s University. ———. 2006. Post-War Bosnia. Ethnicity, Inequality and Public Sector Governance. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ———. 2017. What Is Stabilitocracy?. BIEPAG, May 5. https://biepag.eu/ what-is-a-stabilitocracy/. Accessed 26 June 2019. Brethfeld, J., and N. Vadakaria. 2012. Leaving the Past Behind. The Perceptions of Youth in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Sarajevo: Nansen Dialogue Centre and Saferworld. https://www.google.ba/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=we b&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjrqaWiiKPWAhWPZpoKHZO pAbAQFgglMAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.saferworld.org.uk%2Fdo wnloads%2Fpubdocs%2FLeaving%2520the%2520past%2520behind_perc eptions%2520of%2520youth%2520in%2520Bosnia%2520and%2520Her ze g ov i n a . p d f & u s g = A F Q j C N G d z y j C 1 U Z V s r 6 Z x RU K 6 5 U j J Uc FzA. Accessed 22 June 2019. Brubaker, R. 1996. Nationalism Reframed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bunce, V. 2004. Is Ethnofederalism the Solution or the Problem? In Nationalism After Communism. Lessons Learned, ed. A.  Mungiu-Pippidi and I.  Krastev,

84 

A. Piacentini

179–197. Budapest, New  York: CPS Books, Central European University Press. Carmichael, C. 2006. Violence and Ethnic Boundary Maintenance in Bosnia in the 1990s. Journal of Genocide Research 8 (3): 283–293. Chandra, K. 2009. Why Voters in Patronage Democracies Split Their Tickets: Strategic Voting for Ethnic Parties. Electoral Studies 28: 21–32. Dayton Peace Agreement. http://www.ohr.int/?post_ type=post&p=63984&lang=en. Accessed 16 July 2016. Džankić, J. 2015. Citizenship in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia and Montenegro. Effects of Statehood and Identity Challenges. Farnham: Ashgate. ———. 2018. Capturing Contested States. Structural Mechanisms of Power Reproduction in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia and Montenegro. Southeastern Europe 43 (1): 83–106. Eisenstadt, S.N., and R. Lamarchand. 1981. Political Clientelism, Patronage and Development. London: Sage Publications. Eisenstadt, S.N., and L. Roniger. 1984. Patrons, Clients and Friends. Interpersonal Relations and the Structure of Trust in Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2007. Clientelism in Communist Systems: A Comparative Perspective. Studies in Comparative Communism XIV (2&3): 233–245. European Commission, Bosnia and Herzegovina 2018 Report. https://ec. europa.eu/neighbourhood-enlargement/sites/near/files/20180417-bosniaand-herzegovina-report.pdf. Accessed 6 February 2019. European Commission, The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia 2018 Report. https://ec.europa.eu/neighbourhood-enlargement/sites/near/ files/20180417-the-former-yugoslav-republic-of-macedonia-report.pdf. Accessed 6 February 2019. Freedom House, Freedom of Press 2017, Bosnia Herzegovina Profile. https:// freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-press/2017/bosnia-and-herzegovina. Accessed 22 June 2019. Freedom House, Freedom of Press 2017, Macedonia Profile. https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-press/2017/macedonia. Accessed 22 June 2019. Hasibović, S. 2013. Media Transitions in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In Bosnia Herzegovina Since Dayton: Civic and Uncivic Values, ed. S.P.  Ramet and O. Listhaug, 261–284. Ravenna: Longo Editore. Hayden, R.M. 1992. Constitutional Nationalism in the Formerly Yugoslav Republics. Slavic Review 51 (4): 654–673. Hicken, A. 2011. Clientelism. Annual Review of Political Science 14: 289–310.

3  After Yugoslavia: The New World 

85

Hulsey, J. 2010. Why Did They Vote for Those Guys Again? Challenges and Contradictions in the Promotion of Moderation in Post-War Bosnia and Herzegovina. Democratization 17 (6): 1132–1152. ———. 2018. Institutions and the Reversal of State Capture. Bosnia and Herzegovina in Comparative Perspective. Southeastern Europe 42 (1): 15–32. Kapidžić, D. 2014. Ethnic Practice in Electoral Politics Bosnia and Herzegovina’s 1990 Presidency Elections. Southeast European and Black Sea Studies 14 (4): 556–584. Kitschelt, H. 2000. Linkages Between Citizens and Politicians in Democratic Polities. Comparative Political Studies 33: 845–879. Kolstø, P., ed. 2009. Media Discourse and Yugoslav Conflicts. Representations of Self and Others. Farnham: Ashgate. Lijphart, A. 1977. Democracy in Plural Societies: A Comparative Exploration. New Haven: Yale University Press. Lipset, S.M. 1994. The Social Requisites of Democracy Revisited: 1993 Presidential Address. American Sociological Review 59 (1): 1–22. Magill. 2010. Education and Fragility in Bosnia and Herzegovina. UNESCO. Malešević, S. 2010. The Sociology of War and Violence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2013. Nation-States and Nationalisms. Cambridge: Polity Press. Manzetti, L., and C.J. Wilson. 2007. Why Do Corrupt Governments Maintain Public Support? Comparative Political Studies 40 (8): 949–970. Marusić. 2018. Macedonia Passes Albanian Language Law. Balkan Insight, January 11. http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/macedonia-passesalbanian-language-law-01-11-2018. Accessed 6 February 2019. McCulloch, A. 2014. Consociational Settlements in Deeply Divided Societies: The Liberal-Corporate Distinction. Democratization 21 (3): 501–518. Mujkić, Husley. 2010. Explaining the Success of Nationalist Parties in Bosnia Herzegovina. Politička Misao 47 (2): 143–158. Mungiu-Pippidi, A., and I.  Krastev. 2004. Nationalism After Communism. Lessons Learned. Budapest, New  York: CPS Books, Central European University Press. Najčevska, M. 2000. Bilingualism in a Kumanovo Kindergarten. Local Government and Public Service Reform Initiative, 87–101. New  York: Open Society Institute. Ohrid Framework Agreement. http://www.ucd.ie/ibis/filestore/Ohrid%20 Framework%20Agreement.pdf. Accessed 22 June 2019.

86 

A. Piacentini

OSCE. 2010. Age-Contact-Perceptions. How Schools Shape Relations Between Ethnicities. http://www.osce.org/skopje/41442?download=true. Accessed 22 June 2019. Pašalić-Kreso, A. 2002. Education in Bosnia and Herzegovina: Minority Inclusion and Majority Rules. The System of Education in BiH as a Paradigm of Political Violence on Education. Current Issues in Comparative Education, Teachers College, Columbia University, pp. 6–13. ———. 2008. The War and Post-War Impact on the Educational System of Bosnia Herzegovina. International Review of Education 54: 353–374. Perica, V. 2002. Balkan Idols. Religion and Nationalism in Yugoslav States. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Perry, V. 2013. Classroom Battlegrounds for Hearts and Minds: Efforts to Reform and Transform Education in Post-War Bosnia and Herzegovina. In Bosnia Herzegovina Since Dayton: Civic and Uncivic Values, ed. S.P.  Ramet and O. Listhaug, 225–246. Ravenna: Longo Editore. Perry, V., and S.  Keil. 2018. The Business of State Capture in the Western Balkans. An Introduction. Southeastern Europe 43 (1): 1–14. Piacentini, A. 2019a. State’s Ownership and “State-Sharing”. The Role of Collective Identities and the Socio-Political Cleavage Between Ethnic Macedonians and Ethnic Albanians in the Republic of Macedonia. Nationalities Paper 47 (3): 461–476. ———. 2019b. “Trying to Fit In”: Multi-Ethnic Parties, Ethno-Clientelism and Power-Sharing in Bosnia Herzegovina and Macedonia. Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 25 (3): 273–290. ———. 2019c. Fragmented Democracy in Dayton’s Bosnia Herzegovina. Institutions, Political Parties and the Youth. In Historical Perspectives on Democracies and Their Adversaries, ed. J.  Augusteijn, M.  De Vries, and C. Hijzen, 253–277. Palgrave Macmillan. Poulton, H. 2000. Who Are the Macedonians? London: C. Hurst & Co. Ramet, S.P. 2014. Religion and Politics in Post-Socialist Central and Southeastern Europe. Challenges Since 1989. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Robinson, N. 2007. The Political Is Personal: Corruption, Clientelism, Patronage, Informal Practices and the Dynamics of Post-Communism. Europe-Asia Studies 59 (7): 1217–1224. Rusi, I., and K.  Spasovska. 2013. Uncertain Future: The Albanian-Language Media in Macedonia. In Civic and Uncivic Values in Macedonia. Values Transformation, Education and Media, ed. S.P.  Ramet, O.  Listhaug, and A. Simkus, 235–257. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

3  After Yugoslavia: The New World 

87

Šedo, J. 2010. The Party System of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In Party Politics in the Western Balkans, ed. V.  Stojarová and P.  Emerson, 85–98. New  York: Routledge. Sekulić, T. 2002. Violenza Etnica. Rome: Carocci. Shasivari, J. 2013. The Past and the Present of the Constitutional System of the Republic of Macedonia in Terms of the Position of Albanians. European Scientific Journal 9 (17): 190–206. Skrbiš, Z. 2005. The Apparition of the Virgin Mary of Međugorje: The Convergence of Croatian Nationalism and Her Apparitions. Nations and Nationalism 11 (3): 443–461. Šopar, V. 2013. The Media and Values in Macedonia Between Regulation, Privatization, Concentration, Commercialization and Pluralization. In Civic and Uncivic Values in Macedonia. Values Transformation, Education and Media, ed. S.P. Ramet, O. Listhaug, and A. Simkus, 217–234. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Spaskovska, L. 2010. In Search of a Demos: Transformations of Citizenship and Belonging in the Republic of Macedonia. Working Papers 2010–11, University of Edinburgh, The Europeanization of Citizenship in the Successors States of the Former Yugoslavia (CITSEE). Stefoska, I. 2013. Some Aspects of History Textbooks for Secondary School: The Case of Macedonia. In Civic and Uncivic Values in Macedonia. Values Transformation, Education and Media, ed. S.P.  Ramet, O.  Listhaug, and A. Simkus, 258–278. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Stepan, A., J. Linz, and Y. Yadav. 2011. Crafting State-Nations. India and Other Multinational Democracies. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Štiks, I. 2006. Nationality and Citizenship in the Former Yugoslavia: From Disintegration to European Integration. Southeast European and Black Sea Studies 6 (4): 483–500. ———. 2010, A Laboratory of Citizenship: Shifting Conceptions of Citizenship in Yugoslavia and Its Successors States. Working Papers 2010/02, University of Edinburgh, The Europeanization of Citizenship in the Successors States of the Former Yugoslavia (CITSEE). ———. 2015. Nations and Citizens in Yugoslavia and the Post-Yugoslav States. One Hundred Years of Citizenship. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. Stojarová, V. 2010. Legacy of Communist and Socialist Parties in the Western Balkans. In Party Politics in the Western Balkans, ed. V.  Stojarová and P. Emerson, 26–41. New York: Routledge.

88 

A. Piacentini

Torsti, P. 2013. Rival Histories & Textbook Reform in Bosnian Textbooks 1992–2009  in Post-War Bosnia and Herzegovina. In Bosnia Herzegovina Since Dayton: Civic and Uncivic Values, ed. S.P.  Ramet and O.  Listhaug, 205–224. Ravenna: Longo Editore. UNDP. 2009. The Ties that Bind. Social Capital in Bosnia Herzegovina, National Human Development Report (Sarajevo). UNICEF. 2009. Divided Schools in Bosnia Herzegovina; Magill, 2010. Education and Fragility in Bosnia and Herzegovina. UNESCO. Velickovska. 2013. Implementation of the Principle of Adequate Representation: Perceptions of Citizens. Report. Association Community Development Institute – CDI Association of the Units of Local Self-Government of the Republic of Macedonia – ZELS. Velikonja, M. 2003. Religious Separation and Political Intolerance in Bosnia Herzegovina. College Station: Texas A&M University Press. Vetters, L. 2014. Contingent Statehood. Clientelism and Civic Engagement as Relational Modalities in Contemporary Bosnia and Herzegovina. Social Analysis 58 (3): 20–37. VV.AA. 2015. Analysis of the Situation with Hate Speeches in the Republic of Macedonia. Skopje: Helsinki Committee for Human Rights of the Republic of Macedonia. ———. 2016. Life and Numbers. Equitable Representation and Integration at the Workplace. Skopje: European Policy Institute (EPI). Zdravkovski, A., and K. Morrison. 2014. The Orthodox Churches of Macedonia and Montenegro: The Quest for Autocephaly. In Religion and Politics in Post-­ Socialist Central and Southeastern Europe. Challenges Since 1989, ed. S.P. Ramet, 240–262. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Part II Ethnonationality and Generations

4 Between Group Status and Individual Benefits: The Case of Skopje

How have the structural changes we have explored so far impacted the Bosnian and Macedonian populations? And, more specifically, their modalities of framing and using their ethnonationality? Can we retrace dis-similarities and dis-continuities across generations socialized during and after the Yugoslav system? These are the questions this book tries to answer and, to do so, we now have to go deeper into people’s lives, learn why and how they have come to be the way they are. We need to explore generational experiences of socialization and perceptions of the federal units’ independence and post-­ Yugoslav reality, which means paying attention to the role individuals belonging to different generations played and play in shaping the reality they live in. With that said, it is worth stressing that the rationale behind the family/two generations focus is to see which ideas, rules, and patterns of behaviour related to ethnonationality have been transmitted, hence continued or not, between and across two generations socialized in different macro-environments. What follows is a careful investigation based on semi-structured interviews conducted in 2016 in Skopje with thirteen families, and it is grounded on the opinions, perceptions, and life experiences of individuals belonging to a ‘Yugoslav generation’ of parents born in the © The Author(s) 2020 A. Piacentini, Ethnonationality’s Evolution in Bosnia Herzegovina and Macedonia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39189-8_4

91

92 

A. Piacentini

1950s–1960s, and their ‘post-Yugoslav’ children born in the SFRY’s last years of life (cohort 1985–1990). This chapter first deals with the Yugoslav generation of parents and it then goes deeper into the younger post-Yugoslavs’ life; it begins with the memory of Yugoslavia and its experience and it ends with the current Macedonian ‘divided society’. The same bi-generational exploration will then be replicated in the next chapter, focused on the Bosnian reality and in the more specific context of Sarajevo. While the arguments presented do not have statistical relevance and cannot be generalized for the entire Macedonian and Bosnian populations, the exploration’s relevance does not diminish: single cases do matter, and they allow us to zoom into the particular, putting under the microscope something we have not explored before—such as the evolution of ethnonationality from a bi-generational perspective.

The Yugoslav Generation of Parents A couple of studies performed by Hodson et al. (1994; see also Massey et al. 1999) showed that during the Yugoslav decades the reality featuring the most multiethnic Yugoslav federal units was rather different. While Bosnia was the most diverse of all the federal units, it also was the most tolerant. Macedonia, instead, was the least tolerant—with ethnic Albanians representing the most significantly intolerant group in Yugoslavia, and regardless of their status of minority (as in Macedonia) or majority (as in Kosovo). Ethnic Macedonians, instead, given the majority status they occupied in ‘their’ federal unit, happened to be rather intolerant towards the minorities in order to legitimate their aspirations of dominance (Hodson et al. 1994: 1548). As we shall see, in Macedonia issues related to both the groups’ size and the socio-political status they occupied and wished to occupy within the small republic constituted the pivotal point around which inter- and intra-group relations have gravitated, concurring to tailor the meanings and functions ethnonational origins acquired throughout the decades and across regimes and generations. Yet, before looking at the Yugoslav generation’s experience, one remark is due: while the book ventures into ethnonationality’s changes avoiding individuals’ ascription into categories, the reality depicted by the two

4  Between Group Status and Individual Benefits: The Case… 

93

surveyed generations was one gravitating exclusively around the two largest groups. Hence, and for this reason, the arguments put forward in the next pages will overall mirror this ‘us and them’ dichotomy.

Collective Memories of Transition Yugoslavia was the country where the parents surveyed in this book were born and socialized. These men and women in their sixties generally had a positive memory of that country, and the Yugoslav decades acknowledged as a florid period of their lives, where ‘things were better than today, and even for us Albanians’.1 Yugoslavia was described as a ‘more democratic system’2 where people were guaranteed decent socio-economic conditions, job opportunities, free and good quality educational and health systems, as well as freedom of movement. As seen previously, the system was committed to assuring both national and social equality so that, while letting people free to identify themselves in ethnonational terms, it also was fostering supra-ethnic feelings of attachment as expressed by the Bratstvo i Jedinstvo slogan. ‘Each of us had a national identity but we were part of Yugoslavia…people could express themselves, there were differences but there also was respect’,3 explained a woman. This positive memory about Yugoslavia was not however coupled with a persistent attachment towards it. This generation in fact largely and rather unanimously showed what might be defined as a ‘rather cold and detached’ attitude: no one was ‘Yugonostalgic’—a term avoided and to some extent disliked. The Yugoslav system and society were not criticized, yet also not missed. The new system, namely independent post-Yugoslav Macedonia, slowly transiting towards democracy and capitalist economy, while hoping for European Union integration, was by this generation’s members framed in terms of progress, a ‘moving beyond’. The parents interviewed were objectively acknowledging the ‘more prosperous’ living conditions of the Yugoslav time, however somehow distancing themselves from it— as if it was synonymous with backwardness, opposite to the current steps forward. As one mother said, ‘now we have progress, we cannot compare that period with nowadays’.4 The (Yugo)nostalgia for that time was commonly depicted as the symptomatic effect of individuals’ failed

94 

A. Piacentini

adaptation to the new system and conditions, and those called ‘Yugonostalgic’ were generally described as unable to find their place in the ‘new world’. As the empirical material revealed, the profound reasons explaining this generation’s ‘positive yet detached’ attitude towards the Yugoslav system was closely related to the 1980s and 1990s events taking place all over the region and in Macedonia in particular—whose collective experience impacted not only this generation’s political mobilization but also understandings and usages of ethnonationality. Although at the individual level, and in the cases analysed, no significant life’s changes occurred, the parents testified how the period immediately before and after Macedonian independence was experienced rather differently by the two major groups. The ethnic Macedonian families, in fact, recognized they largely saw independence as ‘something necessary, a continuation of the normal way of living’,5 a final step towards full recognition as a nation and (nation)state which had to be celebrated. As a mother remembered: ‘people were very happy. With my older son, he was 8 months, we all went in the city centre to celebrate.’6 The ethnic Albanian families, instead, saw independence as the epitome of an injustice against their group, the culmination of already existing status differences between them and the numerical majority. They largely agreed that, it was ‘when Macedonia became independent, [that] they started to discriminate [against] us’.7 After having seen their collective rights taken back, disappointment among the Albanian community prevailed, and there could barely be a good narrative about Yugoslavia. As many pointed out, it was in those transitional times that people started to get interested and involved in politics. ‘Even if you were not engaged, you were pushed by the system. Even if you were not into politics, then politics would have found you. It was difficult to remain neutral.’8 Regardless of one’s own personal experience of the transition, it was the collective one that eventually affected and shaped also the individual attitudes towards the past, the present, and the future, tailoring a new way of understanding, signifying and, as we shall soon see, also using ethnonationality. The ethnic Macedonian parents generally acknowledged the Yugoslav past as good but not the best, as the best was/is their (ethnic nation) state’s independence. The ethnic Albanian ones, instead, described and remembered the Yugoslav past as rather fair in terms of opportunities and living conditions but, in light of the events that occurred from the

4  Between Group Status and Individual Benefits: The Case… 

95

late 1980s onwards, they reframed the Yugoslav decades in terms of a base for their group’s (further) discrimination. The 1990s, which confirmed their community’s ‘subordinated-to-the-majority’ status, affected both the group’s attitude towards the past and the future, and the meanings attributed to ethnonationality—now going beyond the identity-­ and-belonging sphere to penetrate the sphere of political claims. Structural changes affecting the ethnonational groups’ politico-­institutional destiny, then, also inevitably impacted and shaped individuals’ attitudes and everyday interactions alike.

The Fluctuating Path of Inter-Ethnic Relations The ethnonational groups in Macedonia, especially the two biggest ones—ethnic Macedonians and ethnic Albanians—have always lived apart. The Yugoslav generation surveyed, in fact, remembered how relations have never been close—yet, according to their memories and life experiences, it seems contacts have followed a ‘fluctuating path’. These fluctuations mirrored the politico-institutional changes happening in the small republic which, as seen, entailed majority–minority issues and dynamics; and, inevitably, the notion of ethnonationality—as both belonging to a majority or minority group, and the size of the group itself, became decisive to obtain and enjoy a variety of politico-­institutional rights and socio-economic benefits alike. From a temporal perspective, there emerged three main ‘fluctuations’ characterizing inter-ethnic contacts, which can be described as: (1) relaxed but superficial during Yugoslavia; (2) tense and distant from independence until the signing of the OFA (decade 1991– 2001); and (3) currently going back to normality, with ‘normality’ meaning superficial but relaxed, however featured by both sides’ collective frustrations and dissatisfactions. Let’s thus have a closer look at these fluctuations. (1) Brotherhood and Unity? In the Yugoslav decades relations between the groups composing the multiethnic society of Macedonia, and Skopje more specifically, were ‘good but artificial’,9 ‘forcedly close’10 even if within the framework of ‘Brotherhood and Unity’. People already had clear-cut identity

96 

A. Piacentini

boundaries, hard to overcome even in the capital city of Skopje. The parents, however, did not link this social distance to the different languages spoken by the two main communities, nor to their religious traditions. On the contrary, and as a consequence of collective experiences and feelings, the explanation furnished was either based on cultural difference or institutional injustice. The ethnic Macedonian parents explained long-term social distance between them and the other major group by saying that the ethnic Albanians were ‘culturally different’: ‘Albanian people were not educated and did only physical work. Maybe for us Macedonians they were second-class citizens…we did not speak with each other very much.’11 As they recalled, the two groups ‘have always been separated. […] Albanians did not do the same things we did, they stayed home with their families’,12 therefore groups of friends have always been mainly monoethnic, and relationships with the other communities were never close and intimate. According to the ethnic Albanians the nature of the social distance was not based on cultural superiority/inferiority, but it was institutional and political, being the ‘Macedonians […] more powerful than the Albanians [and the ethnic Albanians] the last to gain some benefit’.13 Although the Yugoslav system was trying to assure both national and social equality, particularly after the constitutional changes enacted in 1963 and 1974, the Macedonian society was apparently featured by both disparities. And the two major groups living in it had thus interiorized a different, collectivity-grounded perspective from which they viewed and understood their living environment. In turn, collective experiences and memories informed individuals’ opinions, perceptions, and behaviours, making clear how crucial and meaningful ethnonationality has always been in the Macedonian society. It is worth mentioning that the ethnic Macedonians have always been a numerical majority, and according to the Yugoslav system, they enjoyed ‘a different treatment’ in virtue of their status as a ‘constituent nation’ (narod)—contrary to the ethnic Albanians which, instead, were classified as a ‘nationality’ (narodnost). For this reason, the numerical majority group perceived the country as its own, while ethnic Albanians and other groups were seen and treated as ‘minorities’. Additionally, although it is true that the 1974 Yugoslav constitution equalized the ethnic Albanians (and Turks as well) with the ethnic majority, that equality was more on

4  Between Group Status and Individual Benefits: The Case… 

97

paper than in reality, and the republican authorities increasingly behaved as if the federal unit of Macedonia was their own ethnic nation-state. In the 1980s instances of institutional discrimination, triggered by some policies and provisions enacted by the Yugoslav Macedonian authorities14 began worsening the inter-ethnic situation, letting to the surface antipathies until then cautiously hidden under the ‘brotherhood carpet’. Ethnicity-based majority–minority dynamics then become more visible with the SFRY collapse, assuming political tones and even a more violent shape. As a few ethnic Albanian fathers recalled, in those times ‘if you were protesting or simply asking for your rights, you were labelled as nationalist or irredentist, hence against the system and persecuted’.15 It was thus very hard ‘to work for the good of the Albanians. It was an unofficial way to do politics.’16 Eventually, with the 1991 Macedonian declaration of independence, both ethnonationality and the size of the groups acquired a new and crucial importance, shaping the ethnonational groups’ claims, frustrations, and political mobilization. (2) The 1991–2001 Decade and (Ethnic) Collective Frustrations The decade 1991–2001 was by the parents’ generation described as a rather tense period, generally framed through the prism of political antagonism between the groups. Those years have been described, by the Yugoslav parents in terms of competition over the socio-political status the groups occupied and wished to occupy in the Macedonian republic, and they also expressed diverging opinions about both the conflict and the post-conflict Ohrid Framework Agreement (OFA). The armed clash was by most if not all of this generations’ ethnic Albanians ‘supported […]. It was not against the Macedonians but against the government’.17 The consequent OFA, which largely addressed the ethnic Albanians’ demands, was in fact looked with resentment by the ethnic Macedonian parents, overall agreeing that ‘the people from the Albanian nationality were not satisfied with the situation […] our government started to give them rights, but they were not satisfied until 2001—you know, the conflict’.18 Conversely, the ethnic Albanians framed the Peace Agreement in terms of a (partial) success, given that ‘before 2001 Albanians did not exist basically. […] now we are employed in the state.’19 The OFA, seen as an undesired

98 

A. Piacentini

compromise by the ethnic majority, and as a step forward by the other major group, institutionalized an already existing antipathy (partly ideologically minimized during Yugoslavia) mainly connected to the sociopolitical status the groups occupied and wish to occupy in the larger state (Piacentini 2019b). These rivalries grounded on ethnonationality’s collective dimension also impacted the micro-world, producing a more pronounced ethnonational attachment and closeness with the in-group members. Interestingly enough, many parents remembered the ‘switching flats’ phenomenon, according to which ‘before 2001 many Albanians lived in Aerodrom, and many Macedonians lived in Ćair. Then, after the conflict, they switched: Albanians moved to Ćair and Macedonians to Aerodrom. They say, “for safety reasons”.’20 The neighbourhoods mentioned, Aerodrom and Ćair are, nowadays, respectively a (predominantly) ethnic Macedonian and an ethnic Albanian neighbourhood, but they are not the only ones  to be almost completely ethnically homogeneous. This kind of ‘naturally emerged’ ethnic segregation, although institutionally sustained, stem from individuals’ will to stick with the in-group while avoiding the others. And it eventually further contributed to ‘divide Skopje along the left and right side of the river’.21 (3) Back to Normality In the years after the conflict and the signing of the OFA, inter-ethnic relations slowly went back to normality—meaning distance without tensions. Ethnic Albanians and other smaller groups obtained more collective rights and, thanks to the establishment of ethnic quotas to be achieved in the public administration, also a higher degree of representation in the state’s bodies. However, due to different reasons and in different ways, both the major groups (still) feel discriminated against. According to the ethnic Macedonian parents surveyed, discrimination against them as a collectivity—not as individuals—is institutional and rooted in the OFA’s provisions in matters of the groups’ representation in the state bodies. As many agreed, ‘with the OFA there is a percentage of Albanians that has to be employed, but they are not employed because of their qualifications but because of the agreement’.22 As a consequence, ‘now Macedonians are the poor people and Albanians the rich ones’.23 A more radical yet existing

4  Between Group Status and Individual Benefits: The Case… 

99

opinion is that ‘Šiptars24 […] are working to […] progress their own agenda, like Great Albania or a sort of federalism’.25 The ethnic Albanian parents were, instead, unanimously agreeing that institutional discrimination is slowly getting better given their increased presence in the state bodies and institutions, while the social one persists due to rooted cultural prejudices against them. As a woman said while talking about her workplace, ‘this woman […] when she understood I was Albanian she said she was Albanophobic. […] There were cases in which she wanted to provoke me, and if there were Albanian clients coming in, she was going out from the office saying “bleah”.’26 The stories of this generation’s members shed light on how social behaviours have always been modelled upon individuals’ ethnonationality, and how the varying degree of social distance was directly connected to antipathies and rivalries stemming from issues and dynamics concerning the two main groups’ rights and degrees of politico-institutional representation which, in turn, sustained cultural prejudices and behaviours of avoidance. The Yugoslav generation’s explanation and experience of this ‘fluctuating path of inter-ethnic relations’ has made clear that meanings and functions acquired by the ethnonationality of belonging moved beyond the personal sphere of identity to penetrate the one of politics and institutions. A clear example concerned the ethnic divide between the two largest groups which, although  always existed, over time has slightly changed its ‘core essence’: until before the 2001 conflict the divide was perceived to be socio-cultural by the numerical majority, and politico-institutional by the second largest group; after 2001 and the OFA implementation, instead, it was perceived by the numerical majority as politico-institutional due to the ethnic quotas system’s implementation; while, by the other largest group, as socio-cultural due to the persistence of cultural prejudices—now having the upper hand on the progressive amelioration of institutional discriminations. In virtue of the structural changes brought about by the OFA and the implementation of ethnic power-sharing, ethnonationality retains its individual identity-­related meanings and functions, yet it has also acquired new collective and politico-institutional meanings and functions as well—as we shall soon see. Interestingly enough, although at the individual-personal level no significant and negative experience was  mentioned, this generation of

100 

A. Piacentini

parents—regardless of their ethnonationality—unanimously framed the socio-political reality through the prism of ethnic collectivism, making clear how politico-institutional dynamics rotating around, and shaping, the concept of ethnonationality, impacted and affected also the individuals’ perceptions and behaviours. Interiorized ethnic-collective experiences stemming from politico-institutional changes then informed and shaped individuals’ modalities of thinking and behaving with and within their society, eventually accounting for people’s active roles in the ethnonationality’s evolutionary process. How connections between structural and social, majority and minority, collective and individual dynamics have contributed to tailor ethnonationality’s new functions—hence the way individuals negotiate and mobilize it—is the topic of the following section.

Political Attitudes and Opinions The birth of the first ethnonational political parties in 1990 rather straightforwardly channelled political preferences and behaviours, and it was even more so after 2001 and the OFA signing. Many of the parents surveyed remembered how, during Yugoslavia, ‘politics was not interesting’ because everyone ‘had good salaries, winter holidays, summer holidays, the possibility to visit any country…so no one cared about where the money came from’.27 It was ‘after Tito died and Milošević came to power that the situation got worse’.28 Social, political, and economic disparities among the groups then increased in the first decade after independence, and collective frustrations and fears eventually culminated in the 2001 conflict. At the time of the interviews,29 all the parents belonging to the ethnic Albanian group said they have always supported DUI, the party created post-conflict by the ‘freedom fighter’ Ali Ahmeti and cherished as the most valid political option to represent and satisfy their (collective) interests. The parents belonging to the ethnic Macedonian group were, instead, mostly siding with the (back then opposition party) SDSM, keeping a distance from the nationalism endorsed by VMRO-DPMNE.

4  Between Group Status and Individual Benefits: The Case… 

101

Nevertheless, and despite the different—ethnic based—electoral preferences, political disappointment towards the political class seemed to be a shared feeling among the parents’ generation, hence transversal to the group of belonging. Most voters expressed their dissatisfaction towards politicians and parties not ‘working for them’, and the major political parties—namely VMRO-DPMNE, SDSM, and DUI—have been negatively described, blamed as responsible for the institutional malfunctioning and the divide between the communities. As a consequence of the political crisis and scandals that erupted in 2015 and 2016,30 a common and cross-ethnic opinion was that ‘the most influential parties, both Macedonians and Albanians, are […] playing the same game, also the opposition’.31 Some complained ethnonationality is politicized particularly in times of electoral camping, and particularly by the media which ‘do not portray reality [because] they are controlled’.32 Others complained about the institutional malfunctioning and the undemocratic conditions plaguing the country, as one woman pointed out: The governmental institutions are not independent from the party; the institution where I work in, it should be independent, but it is not. The control is established via employment. They employ their own people. […] There is pressure […] the government is dictating how to write the reports. […] If you do not respect their indications, either you go to jail—happened to some journalists, or you are fired. Simple.33

At first glance there, thus, seems to be a discrepancy between that politically grounded and individually maintained inter-ethnic social distance we encountered before on the one side, and the apparently similar and cross-ethnic political distrust and opinions (not electoral preferences) towards the ruling elite on the other. Yet, if we explore the reasons behind this political disappointment, we notice there actually is no discrepancy: the ethnonationality-grounded way of framing reality (and acting in it) persists in articulating narrations and explanations, and even when the arguments put forth by this generation’s members seem to converge surpassing ethnonational differences.

102 

A. Piacentini

Ethno-clientelism and the status of the groups One of the most striking reasons explaining this generation’s political disappointment and mistrust, leading many of these parents to say ethnonationality is politically instrumentalized for power purposes, was connected to the ‘employment issue’. The issue concerns the common practice of hiring people and employing them in the state’s bodies and institutions through party membership; a practice that can safely be addressed using the concept of ‘clientelism’ or, better, ethno-clientelism—given it functions according to ethnonational criteria and memberships. What explains the fact that there actually is no discrepancy between inter-ethnic social distance and cross-ethnic political distrust was the fact that, according to the vast majority of the interviewees, the most mentioned and most worrying of the ethnic clientelism’s aspect was the one involving and affecting the ethnonational groups’ socio-political status within the state and society— while considerably less were the concerns and worries expressed about its negative and society-wide outcomes and consequences. But let’s proceed with order. First of all we need to define once again what clientelism is (see Chap. 3)—or, better, what do we mean by ethnic clientelism? According to the literature, clientelism is ‘an informal relationship between two actors enjoying asymmetrical socioeconomic power where the patron has the upper hand because he or she controls the kind of resources that his or her clients pursue but often cannot receive otherwise. Thus, it is a system that often establishes a relationship of domination and exploitation that perpetuates the lock on power of resourceful political leaders’ (Kitschelt 2000). Clientelism is thus about personalized dyadic relationships based on loyalty, where patron and client/s may have either a direct or indirect relation characterized by an asymmetrical but reciprocal exchange of favours. Indeed, it is the patron who dictates the rules and s/he always can revoke the favour. Particularly, ‘political clientelism is characterized by a politician who acts as the patron, offering goods, services, jobs, resources, protection, or other variables of value to a (group of ) voter(s), in exchange for political support, which in most of the cases, includes the vote itself ’ (Gallego 2015: 402). Coming back to our discussion, clientelism—by the respondent addressed as ‘the employment issue’, emerged as perhaps the element best

4  Between Group Status and Individual Benefits: The Case… 

103

explaining how ethnonationality’s meanings, and above all functions, have changed across time: clientelism, indeed, does not simply function through party connections but, in an ethnically polarized multiparty system, it does so according to ethnic group and ethnic party membership. In turn, voters instrumentally mobilize their ethnonational origins to access rights and benefits redistributed according to ethnic—rather than citizenship—criteria. Leaving aside considerations regarding the state’s functioning, let’s point the attention on what was said before—namely that most of the Yugoslav generation’s members surveyed were less concerned about the society-wide consequences of the practice, and (much) more about the ones affecting their own ethnic group. Ethno-clientelism in Macedonia is, in fact, deeply connected to the pre- and post-OFA situation, particularly to the groups’ institutional representation, and therefore to the very issue of state identity—whether mono-, bi-, or multinational (Piacentini 2019b). The ethnic Macedonian parents surveyed were largely concerned about their group’s alleged decreased supremacy as a consequence of the increased presence of ethnic Albanians in the state institutions. Conversely, most of the ethnic Albanians surveyed were positively arguing that, all in all, they are finally employed in the state bodies. As one woman said gladly: ‘they gave me the job, I have been waiting for 20 years and they gave it to me, so I respect them’.34 As explained in the previous chapters, the independent state of Macedonia was from the very beginning articulated and set up in ethnonational terms, and the ethnic Macedonians’ status as dominant group had not only to be understood in ethnic, rather than civic, terms, but also confirmed by their hegemonic presence in all the spheres of socio-­political life—hence reflected in the administrative, political, cultural, and religious spheres. And so it was until before the OFA which, eventually, put an end to the ethnic nation-state’s dream by giving both the state and its institutions a ‘more ethnically diverse’ connotation. We can thus understand why many of those belonging to this generation, and regardless of their ethnonationality, were disappointed by their political representatives—generally described as working not sufficiently hard in satisfying

104 

A. Piacentini

their own people’s interests. Yet this narrative was much more pronounced among the ethnic Albanian families, which largely agreed that despite DUI’s promises, ‘the number of Albanians employed in the state is still not fulfilled’.35 The ethnic Macedonian parents were instead ‘more cautious’ in their statements, yet most probably given the political crisis and the suspicion climate generated by the 2015 wiretapping scandal (otherwise called ‘bombs’) and the accusations against VMRO—the Macedonian ethnonational party—traditionally associated with anti-Albanian and nationalist sentiments. In the light of these political and inter-group dynamics and feelings, we can now better understand this generation’s attitudes towards ethno-­ clientelistic practices: the deeply rooted rivalry between the two main groups made them see reality—social and political—in terms of ethnic collective antagonisms and competition, in turn allowing  ethno-­ clientelism to assume an ambivalent sense. On the one side, as some parents recognized, ethno-clientelism negatively affects the state’s functioning and the services offered; but, on the other side, it has become a viable way to reach collective goals—meaning the groups’ status’ elevation or decay via their institutional representation. The underlying rhetoric was in fact that, in some circumstances, ‘the end justifies the means’—even if these are not properly legal. Ethno-clientelistic practices were thus framed by this generation’s members as a collateral effect of an otherwise just and superior goal: on the ethnic Albanian side, it was framed as a sort of ‘social repayment’ because of previously suffered discriminations while, on the ethnic Macedonian side, it was meant to be a way to re-establish their dominant role in the hierarchy, so to show (or re-establish) who is the owner of the state (Piacentini 2019b). While always retaining identity-related meanings and functions, ethnonationality seems to serve purposes mirrored in the collective functions it has acquired, as its mobilization helps in ameliorating the groups’ socio-political statuses in the larger society. As a consequence of macrostructural changes impacting the status of the groups, the state with its institutions and bodies has become the battlefield of a silent conflict in which ethnonationality stands as the main tool assuring—or, if not, at least leading towards—the victory, represented by the achievement of collective goals.

4  Between Group Status and Individual Benefits: The Case… 

105

In light of this book’s aims, we can say that the generational impact of macro-changes lies in the instrumental and pragmatic meanings and functions ethnonationality has acquired. Dimensions (macro and micro) and levels (individual and collective) are intertwined together, making it very hard to discern one from the other. As this generation has demonstrated, in fact, politico-institutional rivalries and antagonism have affected, and are reflected in, very detached/segregated social relations maintained in place by the individuals in virtue of their antithetical collective purposes. In this relation of circularity, politically embedded collective issues shape individuals’ behaviours, so that ethnonationality can be individually mobilized to achieve collectivitywide purposes.

The Post-Yugoslav Generation of Young Adults At this point, the reader is perhaps expecting an even more ‘polarized’ picture featuring the younger generation—as those who grew up and got socialized in post-Yugoslav Macedonia did so in a much more divided society, where the collapsed framework of Brotherhood and Unity could not any longer hide ‘ethnic’ antipathies. Yet, when approaching the generation of young adults born in the latter end of the SFRY years, we need to be careful and take nothing for granted. The reconstruction of their living environments will in fact reveal something interesting about ethnonationality’s evolution, and especially about the inter-generational dis-­ similarities and dis-continuities we are investigating.

Growing Apart The School’s ‘Purity’ The school system is probably the first and most important socializing environment to be considered when approaching the post-Yugoslav generation. The Macedonian school system is a segregated one, which means

106 

A. Piacentini

pupils either go to ethnically homogenous schools or, sometimes, the same school building provides education for both of the two major communities but in different classrooms, floors, or shifts. Classrooms ‘in Macedonia are always pure Albanian or pure Macedonian’36; and chances for inter-ethnic socialization, encounters, and friendships are very low, and more likely to happen once the High School years have been completed. But those to be divided are actually the ethnic Macedonians and the ethnic Albanians pupils, while those belonging to other smaller groups generally do aggregate according to their religious belonging. For example, pupils of Turkish origins will attend an ethnic Albanian school/ classroom, while ethnic Serb pupils will go to a Macedonian school. Not surprisingly, such a non-socializing environment negatively affects social contacts and friendship relations, which remain confined to the in-­group. It is in fact not uncommon to hear ‘confessions’ such as the following: I do not have Albanian friends. Never had—neither in school nor in university.37 I am now communicating with this Albanian girl and…I did not expect her to be different but…she is as anybody else. This is my first communication with an Albanian girl—I have never spoken to an Albanian girl before.38

Although seeming extreme, the above situations are not reporting an isolated reality: the ethnic Macedonians, who are a numerical majority, rarely have close and more intimate ties with people from other groups— which are more likely to be only acquaintances or colleagues from work. On the other side, those belonging to smaller groups are more used to mingling with each other by virtue of their numerical inferiority.39 But it is not only the school system that compromises cross-ethnic contacts; as their parents explained, the city itself is a divided one, and so are its neighbourhoods.

The City, the Neighbourhood The river Vardar divides the city of Skopje into two ethnic sides: the northern one mostly inhabited by ethnic Macedonians, and the southern

4  Between Group Status and Individual Benefits: The Case… 

107

one mostly inhabited by ethnic Albanians. Among others, the neighbourhoods of Aerodrom and Karpoš are typical ethnic Macedonian neighbourhoods, while Čair or Butel are ethnic Albanians. The Roma population, the most discriminated and excluded of all, is instead concentrated in the ‘ghetto-municipality’ of Šuto Orizari, created after the 1963 earthquake to relocate the Roma who lost their houses. In the previous pages, we have already seen how increased antagonism between the two major groups led towards the ‘switching flat’ phenomenon, so that people consciously took a physical distance from each other. One of this ‘ethnic urban planning’ consequences is visible today, as ‘you can find Albanians that never crossed the Stone Bridge alone—because, unfortunately, we call it “the other side”. But also Macedonians that have never been in Ćair.’40 Or again: ‘if you go to Aerodrom, no Albanians. If you go there, you have to go with a gun [laughs]. I am kidding but…no seriously, I am being honest, if you go there you have to go with something because you can be beaten up by the Macedonians.’41 The only place in Skopje that is to some extent ‘ethnically mixed’ seems to be the Old Bazaar (otherwise called Turska čaršija). It is located in the city centre, where the Stone Bridge is, marking the invisible boundary line between ‘one side and the other’. Nowadays it is the place where many young people hang out, yet the mingling of people is only superficially inter-ethnic. The city is separated in two parts: the Albanian one, which is actually more multicultural, and the Macedonian one. But it is not a clear line, people can move. […] A few years back, maybe 5 or 6 years ago, there was almost no place where young people from different ethnic groups could mix. […] But today is not like this anymore. When I go out in the old bazaar, most of the places are visited by Albanians, Macedonians, and Turks as well […]. But still, even today, we know which place is Macedonian and which one is not.42

The ‘ethnic-mix’ is thus only apparent; it is confined to a certain area of the city of Skopje, where people of different backgrounds are physically present in the same space, but contacts and interactions remain confined to the in-group. As a consequence, the youth do not mix and, overall, the

108 

A. Piacentini

groups live different and separated lives. ‘We are not living, cooperating, together. There are no friendships, not even love relations. They live in their side; we live in ours. We do not bother each other.43 As for the older generation, inter-ethnic relations are also in this generation’s case rather distant. And, once again, the source of this distance is both structural and cultural, entrenched and reproduced by society’s organization and sustained by stereotypes and prejudices circulating in it. Next to structural divisions, as those characterizing the school system and the city, there also are some rooted ‘popular sayings’ explaining how and why the distance between the two major groups is also culturally sustained. The young adults mentioned ‘anecdotes and jokes’ connected to both the ‘low cultural status’ of the ethnic Albanians, and the ethnic Macedonians’ ‘attitude of superiority’ towards the others. For example, among the ethnic Macedonians it is rather common to say that ‘because they [the ethnic Albanians] lived in the mountains for many years, they were conducting incest…so we have jokes about that, because many—I do not want to sound racist, but many of them do not look right.’44 While on the other side, it is common to argue that ‘a Macedonian in Ćair would be treated like a guest because of our hospitality, and no one will touch him. But they do not do the same with us.’45 The younger generation made it clear that these stereotypical and negatively connoted anecdotes/jokes about the ethnic groups are not simply circulating in the kafanas,46 but also within doors, hence learned at home, from parents and relatives alike. As a young man confessed: ‘for my parents […] Albanians…this is very fascist to say but “they know their place in society”… […] Their place is below us, out of the city, on the mountains.”47 Most of them acknowledged how this divide between the two major groups is also and especially politically created and fostered. They, in fact, agreed that ‘the politicians did that! We are separated because politicians are influencing us. […] And it is because of their personal interests.’48

Perceptions of Ethnic Politics Instead of  placing themselves somewhere in the right–left continuum, the younger generation was operating a distinction between ruling and

4  Between Group Status and Individual Benefits: The Case… 

109

oppositional parties, siding either with one or the other (among the ethnic Macedonians the tendency was to side with the opposition party— SDSM; while the ethnic Albanians mostly supported DUI). As said previously, the empirical material used in this book was collected in the year 2016 when the political crisis was at its peak due to the wiretapping scandal (February 2015) and during the ‘Colourful Revolution’.49 The ‘bombs’ divulged facts about electoral frauds, corruption, and money laundering—particularly (but not exclusively) connected to the massive investments made for the urban project ‘Skopje 2014’.50 The political situation was wobbly, and about to break down—as it eventually did. As a consequence, some young adults started to be interested in politics due to the ongoing political crisis: ‘when the Prime Minister Gruevski presented the project Skopje 2014, when I saw it, I was like “Oh my god! What’s happening?!”, and that is when I started to listen to what they are talking about, listen to news and other people’s opinions’.51 Others instead, gave up with politics because they were too disappointed: I was used to be interested previously […], thinking that the country was moving towards Europe’s direction and to the accession process […] Then, I do not know, things slowed down and, ever since then, it’s just stagnation—nothing is changing, it’s the same people, the same messages being spread to people. I stopped reading the news years ago. […] I got so much used to living in this type of society that I do not even pay attention to anything anymore.52

This generation of young adults, familiar only with the VMRO–DUI coalition, was very much disappointed by the ruling political class— described as ethnocentric, populist and nationalist, as well as pragmatist. Indeed, the (back then) ruling parties VMRO and DUI have been able to gain mass support by using nationalism and ethnocentrism while ably exploiting people’s anger and frustration and promising a better future to their respective groups. A very common opinion among this generation’s members was that: Although it is not official, we live in a sort of federation. Western Macedonia and the institutions there are mainly run by DUI. You have the majority of the people working there who are Albanian, and for a Macedonian it is very hard

110 

A. Piacentini

to go through the institutions because not everybody speaks Macedonian. Then you have Eastern Macedonia and Skopje that is pro-Macedonian, and if you are Albanian you have problems with your language. Economy is the same: VMRO has several companies which are favoured when doing business—private companies; and DUI also has its own private companies which are favoured in western Macedonia. So you can see two separate words, they only join up when there are elections, when there are some important issues. For example, when there is an economic crisis, and the wellbeing of DUI and VMRO is threatened—that’s the moment to have ethnic tensions […]. They use this nationalist rhetoric in order to control the population.53

Contrary to the older generation, the younger one was  much more aware, and concerned, about the negative influence ethnic politics has on citizens’ lives, especially in fostering the divide for political purposes. One example often mentioned was the parties’ control over the media and the information circulating in the country. ‘Media are very polarized, they are instruments inside of the ruling parties, they are actually working on deepening cleavages in the society. […] they are  creating a public opinion to fit within this divisions and clashes that the ruling elites are producing.’54 Alongside the school system and the city’s divisions, the younger generation thus also acknowledged the media as another powerful tool used by the ruling elite to ‘easily serve people with lies’,55 shaping the whole population’s modalities of framing ethnonationality.

I f You Cannot Beat ’em, Join ’em: Ethno-Clientelism and Individual Benefits While discussing politics and political preferences, the young adults largely drew attention to the issues of clientelism and corruption—in some cases involving them directly. As in the case of their parents, the phenomenon of clientelism was reduced to the sole issue of public employment and no other ‘favour’ was mentioned. The practice seemed to be rather common, consisting in doing ‘activities for the party […] They bring them members. […] it is just because of the job.’56 Clientelism is, indeed, a rather rooted practice in the Macedonian society, to the point

4  Between Group Status and Individual Benefits: The Case… 

111

that many agreed  that ‘this country, its fundament, is clientelistic’57; or again they said that ‘it is a cultural thing. Maybe it has gone too far with VMRO […] but if in the future SDSM comes to govern Macedonia, then the trend will continue, and it will be just a new façade’.58 This generation’s members widely agreed that clientelistic practices are a political tool created and exploited by the main political parties in order to maintain their power positions at the expense of state functioning and society’s well-being. From this perspective, as argued by Wimmer (2004) and pointed out by the interviewees, political parties see their constituencies as mere ‘ethnic groups of interests’, (poor) people that can easily be manipulated. In fact, ‘people have been promised with a job, and then they vote for them. So they [political parties] are not really taking care of services—but you know, people are poor, they need a job, so basically that’s the only promise worth giving.’59 While discussing reasons and motivations behind people’s involvement in these ‘networks’, the young adults have drawn attention to dimensions that did not emerge during the conversations with the older generation, their parents. If the older generation, predominantly if not solely, drew attention to the group dimension—framing and explaining clientelistic practices in terms of the socio-political statuses occupied by the ethnonational groups—the young adults furnished a different picture, focusing on the individual dimension and shedding light on the reasons—above all economic—behind individuals’ involvement into those practices. As a young woman explained: ‘this person I know, she was working for a governmental institution and simultaneously for the party— going to meetings, gathering other people that will vote for the party. They bring them members. She does not like [***], it is just because of the job.’60 In order to reciprocate the favour, meaning obtaining a job in the public institutions, the client-voter has not only to vote for the party during elections but also, for instance, to advertise party activities on social media, participate in rallies and protests, and bring more votes to the party. On its side, the patron-party needs to oversee ‘the work’ of the voter-client before dispensing the favour, till the point that many felt ‘watched and controlled’, as the following excerpts make clear:

112 

A. Piacentini

I know that if I accept it, I have to do whatever they want. You are in a trap, you really are. You have to do whatever they say, you cannot decide what to do in your job, you have to vote for them, you have to attach posters for them when elections come, you have to share everything on Facebook. You are [***].61 Yes…ok. I am a member of the party. [***]. I also got a job from them. […]. It was 2006, I was 18 years old and I started to go to the party meetings […] They have the party branch for the youth, I was going to meetings, we were discussing the problems of our place, it was good, I wanted to contribute to the good of my village. It was both in Skopje and in my village. It was OK at the beginning, but then they were using me: ‘you must go there, you must do that, you must’. […] It is not a good job but if my income collapses I will be…I live by myself, it will be a problem. […] They are first telling you ‘you must’, so if you do not, they will take other actions—they say ‘you will lose your job’. The biggest percentage of the people going to meetings is obliged to do so, and there are many who will again and again vote for them just because of that, people are afraid.62

Clientelism has been explained in terms of political/power strategy based on economic insecurities, a bonding practice able to assure dominant parties with a certain degree of electoral support. The younger generation, less familiar with the political issues of the 1990s—a time when they were too young to understand and be interested in politics—did not frame and explain clientelistic practices in terms of ideological/national struggles, status elevation/decay of their own ethnonational groups, or collective frustrations. Rather, in terms of bad politics and individuals’ need of survival; ‘in the last couple of years no one voted for them because they liked the political ideology. Mostly they did it because they needed something to survive.’63 This different way of understanding, framing, and describing the same practice compared to their parents represents an interesting generational difference concerning ethnonationality’s meanings and functions: because of their different life experiences, parents were largely seeing the clientelism’s collective outcome—meaning the increased institutional representation of one group at the expense of another. The collective dimension was the dominant one in their explanations. Their children, instead, less

4  Between Group Status and Individual Benefits: The Case… 

113

familiar and probably less emotionally attached to ‘old national struggles’, were describing ethno-clientelism as a political strategy employed to maintain power by exploiting economic malaise in order to ‘push’ people into those particularistic networks. In a state unofficially divided into two major ethnic communities, and functioning according to ethnicized mechanisms of representation and redistribution of resources, ethnonationality has, for the younger generation, become a proxy, a tool instrumentally mobilized for individual purposes—so that, according to ‘who you are’, you know which door you have to knock at.

 he Family Environment: Ethnonationality Has T Always Mattered After this general picture of the two generations, we can now shift attention to the family unit and environment. From a structural point of view, all the family units surveyed were monoethnic and only rarely ethnic Macedonians had some personal relation/family tie with ethnic Serbs, yet  never with ethnic Albanians  or other groups. The younger generation has not been used to mingle with youth of other groups. This intra-group closeness, as seen, did depend on a few structural factors, such as the composition of the neighbourhoods of Skopje, as well as that of the schools and classrooms. Nevertheless, and despite their social behaviours of ‘avoidance’, the Yugoslav generation of parents has largely raised its children according to a ‘Yugoslav type’ education—stressing the need to maintain good relations between individuals, without focusing on people’s ethno-cultural and religious backgrounds. Despite their ‘positive but cold and detached’ attitude towards Yugoslavia, this generation of parents did positively acknowledge and remember the Yugoslav educational system, highly valued all over the federation. The parents were  unanimous in saying they have taught their children the only worthy distinction is between ‘good and bad’ people. Nevertheless, given that the parents have never been accustomed to mixing, this habit has persisted up to today, and in such a family environment their kids

114 

A. Piacentini

have been raised and socialized. It goes that their children, although taught not to distinguish between ethnicities, have at the same time and for the most part grown up in monoethnic environments, and socialized according to the dominant, ethnically segregated framework. Compared to the ethnic Macedonians, the Albanian families, although never mixing with other groups in terms of marriages, emerged to have slightly more frequent contacts with members of other groups; and their children, although they too attended monoethnic schools, have grown up in slightly more mixed environments. This small difference was, however, not due to a different behavioural attitude of the ethnic Albanian families; rather, it was the inevitable consequence of being a numerical inferiority in a mixed context—hence the impossibility of avoiding contacts, although superficial, with the numerical majority. Ethnonationality thus seems to clearly and sharply shape people’s lives, the whole society is structured along its lines. Nonetheless,  despite  its politicization, parents said they have never been used to discussing political issues, and the ethno-political ones especially, at home and with their children. Politics was considered something bad, not worth talking about; comments on the topic generally occurred while watching the TV news, and deeper discussions or confrontations were generally avoided. Parents overall, were neither interested or involved in politics, and said they have never influenced their children’s political opinions and electoral preferences. The younger generation largely confirmed their parents’ words, as politics has never been a matter of debate, not even in those few cases of diverging opinions. ‘My father is conservative; he is probably also racist. My father still hates Albanians, my mother does not. I do not know why he hates Albanians. […] We do not speak in detail about things; it is […] never a conversation.’64 However, the two generations happened to have very similar political opinions and attitudes, and only a few ‘very different ideas’.65 Regarding the most important historical-political events that took place in the country—such as the SFRY dissolution or the 2001 conflict, both parents and children confirmed they have had, even in these cases,

4  Between Group Status and Individual Benefits: The Case… 

115

just some vague conversations in the course of the years. Yet the case of the ethnic Albanian families was slightly different, in a sense that parents did more frequently talk with their children about the ‘Albanian issues’, telling them stories and personal experiences. Overall, however, the parents’ generation—regardless of ethnonational origins—has provided their children with a few ‘basic’ memories of the Yugoslav time and their Yugoslav experience. And their children, generally, did not ask many questions, most of them confessing they have never been really interested in that ‘topic’. The following excerpt, provided by a young woman born in the late 1980s, happened to be very meaningful, as she said: I only have partial information about it. I was very much born in this new world […] there are people that still today listen to Yugo rock and talk about Yugo actors. I do not know any of them. […] I do not know what that Ekaterina Velika you are mentioning is…66

Just for the record, Ekaterina Velika (EKV) was not some ‘seasonal’ Yugoslav band: it was one of the most famous and greatest Yugo-rock bands of all times, whose songs are still listened to by many and broadcasted on some radio channels. Although this was only one among other examples, the young adults’ little knowledge of their parents’ ‘Yugoslav life’ seemed not to be a rare phenomenon, as sometimes it was only during the interviews I was conducting that these post-Yugoslav young men and women were discovering facts about their parents and their ‘previous life’. Many, for instance, did not know their mothers and fathers were members of the Socialist Party and were still keeping their Yugoslav party card. The younger generation, born during the years of the transition and completely socialized in the ‘new world’, has in fact demonstrated a rather superficial knowledge and detached opinion about ‘that world’. Yugoslavia was for both generations ‘another world’; and the nostalgia for it was generally framed as the symptomatic effect of individuals’ failed adaptation to the ‘new system’ and conditions. Although at this stage it might not seem that important, the parents–children transmission of positive, Yugoslav, memories and experiences will result in being a determining

116 

A. Piacentini

factor when exploring inter-generational dis-similarities and dis-continuities concerning the semantics and pragmatic side of ethnonationality. As we shall see in the next chapter about Bosnia Herzegovina, the transmission of positive Yugoslav memories and life experiences from one generation to the other happened to be an element guaranteeing a certain degree of inter-generational continuity—which is different from the inter-generational similarity overall featuring the families surveyed in Macedonia.

Notes 1. Father, age 60, ethnic Albanian, Skopje, August 2016. 2. Mother, age 56, ethnic Albanian, Skopje, August 2016. 3. Mother, age 60, ethnic Macedonian, Skopje, April 2016. 4. Mother, age 55, ethnic Serb, Skopje, March 2016. 5. Father, age 59, ethnic Macedonian, Skopje, May 2016. 6. Mother, age 51, ethnic Macedonian, Skopje, May 2016. 7. Father, age 60, ethnic Albanian, Skopje, August 2016. 8. Father, age 58, ethnic Albanian, Skopje, September 2016. 9. Father, age 52, ethnic Albanian, Skopje, July 2016. 10. Father, age 58, ethnic Albanian, Skopje, September 2016. 11. Mother, age 60, ethnic Macedonian, Skopje, March 2016. 12. Mother, age 55, ethnic Serb, Skopje, March 2016. 13. Father, age 58, ethnic Albanian, Skopje, September 2016. 14. After the Kosovo riots in 1980, Macedonians saw Albanian nationalism and irredentism as a menace to both the territorial integrity of the republic, and the very existence of the Macedonian nation. For further details, see Chap. 2. 15. Father, age 58, ethnic Albanian, Skopje, September 2016. 16. Father, age 62, ethnic Albanian, Skopje, April 2016. 17. Father, age 52, ethnic Albanian, Skopje, July 2061. 18. Mother, age 51, ethnic Macedonian, Skopje, May 2016. 19. Mother, age 57, ethnic Albanian, Skopje, September 2016. 20. Mother, age 51, ethnic Albanian, Skopje, July 2016. 21. Father, age 61, ethnic Macedonian, Skopje, April 2016. 22. Father, age 57, ethnic Macedonian, Skopje, May 2016. 23. Mother, age 60, ethnic Macedonian, Skopje, March 2016.

4  Between Group Status and Individual Benefits: The Case… 

117

24. The term šiptar/shqiptar is a pejorative term used to refer to Albanians in a negative way. 25. Father, age 56, ethnic Serb, Skopje, May 2016. 26. Mother, age 55, ethnic Albanian, Skopje, April 2016. 27. Mother, age 56, ethnic Macedonian, Skopje, May 2016. 28. Father, age 58, ethnic Albanian, Skopje, September 2016. 29. The interviews were conducted from February to September 2016, a highly tense period, for Macedonia. The political crisis was at its peak; in April 2016 the ‘Colourful Revolution’ began, and it also was a time of electoral campaign. Moreover, VMRO-DPMNE was publicly accused of money laundering, corruption, and non-transparent employment in state institutions—therefore, to openly support VMRO was by many seen as a shame. 30. See previous note. 31. Father, age 62, ethnic Macedonian, Skopje, April 2016. 32. Mother, age 51, ethnic Albanian, Skopje, July 2016. 33. Mother, age 58, ethnic Macedonian, Skopje, April 2016. 34. Daughter, age 27, ethnic Albanian, Skopje, March 2016. 35. Father, age 52, ethnic Albanian, Skopje, July 2016. 36. Daughter, age 27, ethnic Albanian, Skopje, March 2016. 37. Daughter, age 29, ethnic Macedonian, Skopje, March 2016. 38. Son, age 28, ethnic Macedonian, Skopje, February 2016. 39. This reflection concerns the city of Skopje while, generally, the majority–minority status of each group depends on the group’s size and consequent politico-institutional power detained in the specific area and context considered. 40. Son, age 25, ethnic Albanian, Skopje, April 2016. 41. Daughter, age 26, ethnic Albanian, Skopje, July 2016. 42. Son, age 26, ethnic Macedonian, Skopje, March 2016. 43. Son, age 25, ethnic Macedonian, Skopje, April 2016. 44. Son, age 26 ethnic Macedonian, Skopje, March 2016. 45. Son, age 25, ethnic Albanian, Skopje, July 2016. 46. Kafanas are typical Balkan local bistros serving alcoholic beverages and coffee, traditional food and light snacks (meze). 47. Son, age 28, ethnic Macedonian, Skopje, February 2016. 48. Daughter, age 26, ethnic Albanian, Skopje, July 2016. 49. The Colorful Revolution began in April 2016 and it consisted of massive everyday protests, mainly held in the city of Skopje, against the government.

118 

A. Piacentini

50. The project ‘Skopje 2014’, ideated by Nikola Gruevski (former Prime Minister and leader of VMRO) foresaw, among other things, the building of statues of both ancient Macedonian figures and other of Macedonia’s historical figures and heroes. The project resulted in being quite controversial for many reasons, such as the non-transparent investments and the conveyed nationalist narrative (see Piacentini 2019a. ‘Make Macedonia Great Again—The New Face of Skopje and the Macedonians Identity Dilemma’ in E. Doğan (ed.) Reinventing Eastern Europe—Imaginarıes, Identities and Transformations, London: Transnational Press London, pp. 77–93; Vangeli 2011. ‘Nation building ancient Macedonian style: the origins and the effects of the so-called antiquization in Macedonia’. Nationality Papers, 39: 1, pp. 13–32). 51. Daughter, age 28, ethnic Macedonian, Skopje, May 2016. 52. Daughter, age 29, ethnic Macedonian, Skopje, March 2016. 53. Son, age 26, ethnic Macedonian, Skopje, April 2016. 54. Son, age 25, ethnic Macedonian, Skopje, May 2016. 55. Son, age 26, ethnic Macedonian, Skopje, March 2016. 56. Daughter, age 28, ethnic Macedonian, Skopje, May 2016. 57. Son, age 28, ethnic Macedonian, Skopje, February 2016. 58. Son, age 25, ethnic Macedonian, Skopje, April 2016. 59. Daughter, age 27, ethnic Albanian, Skopje, August 2016. 60. Daughter, age 28, ethnic Macedonian, Skopje, May 2016. 61. Daughter, age 27, ethnic Albanian, Skopje, March 2016. 62. Anonymous, age 28, ethnic Macedonian, Skopje, May 2016. 63. Daughter, age 29, ethnic Macedonian, Skopje, March 2016. 64. Son, age 26, ethnic Macedonian, Skopje, April 2016. 65. Daughter, age 28, ethnic Macedonian, Skopje, May 2016. 66. Daughter, age 29, ethnic Macedonian, Skopje, March 2016.

References Gallego, J. 2015. Self-Enforcing Clientelism. Journal of Theoretical Politics 27 (3): 401–427. Hodson, R., D. Sekulić, and G. Massey. 1994. National Tolerance in the Former Yugoslavia. American Journal of Sociology 99 (6): 1534–1558. Kitschelt, H. 2000. Linkages Between Citizens and Politicians in Democratic Polities. Comparative Political Studies 33: 845–879.

4  Between Group Status and Individual Benefits: The Case… 

119

Massey, G., R. Hodson, and D. Sekulić. 1999. Ethnic Enclaves and Intolerance: The Case of Yugoslavia. Social Forces 78 (2): 669–691. Piacentini, A. 2019a. Make Macedonia Great Again – The New Face of Skopje and the Macedonians Identity Dilemma. In Reinventing Eastern Europe  – Imaginarıes, Identities and Transformations, ed. E.  Doğan, 77–94. London: Transnational Press. ———. 2019b. State’s Ownership and “State-Sharing”. The role of Collective Identities and the Socio-Political Cleavage Between Ethnic Macedonians and Ethnic Albanians in the Republic of Macedonia. Nationalities Paper 47 (3): 461–476. Vangeli, A. 2011. Nation-Building Ancient Macedonia Style: The Origins and the Effects of the So-Called Antiquization in Macedonia. Nationalities Papers 39 (1): 13–32. Wimmer, A. 2004. Nationalist Exclusion and Ethnic Conflict. Shadows of Modernity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

5 Between Cosmopolitanism and Survival: The Case of Sarajevo

Sarajevo was and still is a peculiar, unique, reality. And to some extent, so were and are its inhabitants. In the following pages, words and perceptions of Yugoslav parents and post-Yugoslav children composing a total number of thirteen families will guide us into a journey about ethnonationality, understanding how it changed, what actually changed, and what the consequences. Contrary to the Macedonian context, where all the families were composed of the triad mother-father-children, in the case of Sarajevo a couple of families were only composed of mothers and children—as fathers passed away during the war. This ‘lack’ has not been considered as a methodological weakness but, rather, a determining feature of the Bosnian context and in particular of the two generations accounted for, a feature that could possibly influence these generations’ modalities of signifying and using ethnonationality. Once again, the chapter begins with the Yugoslav parents and ends with the post-Yugoslav young adults, finally providing a family overview. Given the Bosnian context has always been rather different compared to the Macedonian one, a short premise before entering in the two generations’ lives is needed.

© The Author(s) 2020 A. Piacentini, Ethnonationality’s Evolution in Bosnia Herzegovina and Macedonia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39189-8_5

121

122 

A. Piacentini

From Melting-Pot to What? In Bosnia Herzegovina groups’ boundaries and collective identities are well and sharply defined from a political and institutional point of view, yet not exactly from an individual one. Life experiences, often characterized by moving within Bosnia and (former) Yugoslavia itself, territorially scattered family ties, and sometimes ethnically mixed backgrounds, have made people’s ways of identification and feelings of attachment and belonging difficult to define. Some people, for example, might have lived in Sarajevo for decades but were ‘born in that part of the country that nowadays is Republika Srpska’.1 Others, instead, were ‘born in Sarajevo and during Yugoslavia I was saying I was Yugoslav because I am from a mixed marriage—my father was a Serb and my mother a Croat. I have two sisters, one was Yugoslav and atheist, the other one says she is Serb because she is married with a Serb guy. Me myself, I now say I am Croat because I am married to a Croat.’2 And again, other people’s backgrounds may clearly reflect the old Yugoslavism and Yugoslav melting-pot, as this woman acknowledged: ‘I was proud of being a Yugoslav. But now when asked, I say I am from Serbia because I was born there. But I am a Muslim from Serbia married to an Orthodox Serb from Bosnia.’3 The tragedy of war, alongside the post-conflict ethnicity’s territorialization and politicization, influenced people’s lives in many different ways, and so their identities/identifications—producing either exclusive ethnonational and/or ethno-territorial feelings of belonging and attachment or, on the contrary, civic ‘alternative’ ways of identification (Piacentini 2020) detached from politicized labels. It is estimated that every second person in BiH was displaced, either internally or forced to move abroad.4 Some indeed had to ‘move to Istočno Sarajevo with the war [because] it was dangerous [but] still work in Sarajevo’.5 Many are in fact those who see the Republika Srpska (RS) as their only homeland, since Bosnia, to them, ceased to exist in the 1990s together with the SFRY. As one woman who moved from Sarajevo to the RS stated: ‘the cause was the war. I belong to the Serbian nation, I am Serb from RS, I am orthodox by tradition, and I speak Serbian. About Bosnia … I do not see it as my state, at all, I just have that citizenship and documents.’6 Others feel and identify only and

5  Between Cosmopolitanism and Survival: The Case of Sarajevo 

123

exclusively as Bosnian Herzegovinian citizens—yet point out how nowadays the ‘Bosnian Herzegovinians are not allowed to be that. Serbs, Croats and Bošnjaks do not allow us. We are in extinction.’7 Others again feel ‘not only Bosnian but Sarajevan in the first place’.8 Without entering again into details of the role of politics and institutions in shaping and/or conditioning people’s ways of identification and ethnonationality’s meanings and functions, the two-generations analysis presented in this chapter will illustrate the micro-impact macro-factors had on the two generations and on ethnonationality’s evolutionary process more in general. Particularly, we will see once again how crucial is the role played by the micro-environment in which people live—Sarajevo in this case, as well as, and especially, by the experience and legacy of Yugoslavia—which, as these two generations will demonstrate, represents a milestone when it comes to understanding inter-generational dis-­ continuities and dis-similarities in Sarajevo.

The Yugoslav Generation of Parents The Bosnian older generation experienced the Yugoslav decades and the Yugoslav society rather differently compared to their fellow Yugoslavs in Macedonia. As previously seen, Bosnia Herzegovina was a ‘Yugoslavia in miniature’, it always represented and embodied the Yugoslav notion of ‘Brotherhood and Unity’ and, given its peculiar ethnic composition, the Yugoslav authorities were highly committed in assuring both social and national equality. Bosnia also was the most secular of all the federal units, and ethno-religious backgrounds never hampered social relations which, indeed, remained peaceful until the war.

Yugoslavia Mon Amour Yugoslavia seems to be still deeply rooted in the hearts of the most, and the older generation’s attitude towards that country, system, and society was radically different compared to the one that emerged in Macedonia. Yugoslavia was described as a country that ‘supported me and my dreams’9;

124 

A. Piacentini

where people ‘were all breathing the same air’.10 The Yugoslav system and society not only provided people with good job opportunities, education, health care, and freedom of movement: equality was a pillar of the entire system. The Bosnian parents have largely emphasized this last point—real equality and brotherhood among all the people living in BiH—by saying that ‘Brotherhood was real. We were all the same’11; ‘No one was rich, and no one was poor. We were all the same’12; and ‘we really lived like that. Same schools, same classes. We didn’t know “who was who”, we did not talk about nations. It was normal to work, eat together, to visit someone; we did not have any problem. It was then … that they destroyed the country.’13 The concept of ‘Yugonostalgia’ was widely used to signify a different set of things to be nostalgic for—yet all of them apparently lost in the 1990s. As one man stated: ‘now we have lost everything. I am very Yugonostalgic, very much. It is something I would like to be again, it was wonderful. I am sorry my children are so young; they cannot remember, and it is not usual for us to talk about that period. Such memories are not good for our hearts.’14 The concept of Yugonostalgia encompassed now-lost aspects of life, ranging from pre-war better living conditions, especially in the fields of economy and education; to the possibility of travel in and outside the SFRY. But it also included the pride of being Yugoslav citizens which, as many agreed, ‘meant something’15; as well as those good and ‘normal’ relations between equal people allowing anyone, for example, ‘to go to Kosovo and not be looked bad because I am Serb. […] I am nostalgic, that was my life’.16 The way the concept of ‘Yugonostalgia’ was used and articulated by this generation’s members points the attention to two interconnected key and critical elements: first, the post-1990 importance acquired by ethnonationality, and not only from a politico-institutional perspective but also from a social one; and second, the redefinition of the concept of citizenship, constitutionally downgraded and surpassed in importance by ethnonational belonging, but also not linked to individuals’ positive feelings of attachment to BiH as a whole (as we shall see later). It is, therefore, in the light of these reflections that we should frame the Bosnian older generation’s attitude towards Yugoslavia and their nostalgy: regardless of their ethnonational origins, self-declared identities,

5  Between Cosmopolitanism and Survival: The Case of Sarajevo 

125

personal experiences, and places of birth/residence, all the parents surveyed and belonging to the 1950–1960s generation missed the previous Yugoslav system; and this is because, summarizing their words, ethnonationality did not matter—or, at least, it did not in ordinary people’s lives.

The Interrupted Path of Inter-Ethnic Relations The parents’ positive attitude towards Yugoslavia may partly be understood and explained in relation to, or as a consequence of, what happened to them and to Bosnia more generally in the 1990s: the war. Several factors make for a difference between the Yugoslav and post-Yugoslav decades, and are the reasons accounting for nostalgia of the previous system and society. To mention just one, social relations: BiH up until the conflict was really featured by close and peaceful contacts between people—contrary to Macedonia that, although multiethnic, was always characterized by superficial and distant inter-group relations. The war, however, destroyed not only Yugoslavia but Bosnia and the people’s lives as well. Many had to move, many lost their homes, and many more also their loved ones: ‘what I miss from Yugoslavia is my husband’.17 Clearly the conflict, willing or not, did affect social relations between people and groups, and we can, therefore, distinguish between a ‘pre-’ and ‘after-’ war period. However, as stated at the beginning of the book, the 1990s should not be considered as a ‘year zero’, and ethnonationality’s acquired saliency should be understood from an evolutionary perspective, as the result of combined and mutually dependent dynamics of interactions between state(s) and masses. Nonetheless, it is also true that most, if not all of the people in BiH do consider the war as a ‘breaking event’—something that destroyed a world and laid the foundations for another one. As seen in the previous section, social contacts and inter-ethnic relations remained good and very close up until the war, and all across the country. Until then ‘when you met someone new, and his or her name was…whatever, nobody would notice if s/he was Serb, Croat, Muslim, Jew, Gypsy. National identity was not important at all, it was something personal, a private thing.’18 But as a consequence of the conflict and the subsequent nationalist rule, relations took place ‘between groups’—no longer

126 

A. Piacentini

between individuals—and became colder than before, overshadowed by some degree of suspect and mistrust. Yet a shared opinion  among the interviewees was that ‘we did not choose the war; people did not want either war or these bad relations’.19

The War and the Loyalty Dilemma The war still represents an open wound for most people and, although never directly asked about it, many of those belonging to this Yugoslav generation inevitably shared some of their memories during our conversations. Particularly interesting happened to be those shared by some men, as their memories—summarized by the following life’s anecdotes— clearly point the attention onto ethnonationality’s sudden change and politicization, and the consequent ‘loyalty dilemma’ afflicting many during those years of ‘vacuum’. I did not move to Banja Luka or anywhere else because I was not influenced by that propaganda. This is my country, more mine than it is to Izetbegović and Karadžić. […] I will never move from here.20 I was born in Serbia, I am a Serb, but I have always lived in Sarajevo. It may be a bit strange I am not living in RS, but during the war I joined the army— the Bosnian army, not the RS army. It is strange, I know. But in big cities it was normal. It was normal for me, because of my education and my family. All my family stayed here. My daughter was born at the beginning of the war. We stayed here to defend Sarajevo, not Bosnia.21 Yugoslavia was much better, we were all equal and, in practice, middle-class citizens. […] I cannot really consider myself as Yugonostalgic—in the sense that I struggled for another Yugoslavia. I have never liked the idea of Bosnia being independent, nor the way Yugoslavia was dissolved. […] When we were living together […] we all felt ourselves to be Yugoslavs. […] The connections we had will never come back. […] Bosnia is not my homeland anymore. My homeland is now Republika Srpska.22

A crucial aspect to be considered while discussing ethnonationality’s evolution and the ‘loyalty/ies dilemma’ is the role played by the city of Sarajevo and, particularly, by the siege’s experience itself. If on the one hand we

5  Between Cosmopolitanism and Survival: The Case of Sarajevo 

127

cannot but acknowledge the positive role the city and the siege’s experience had in favouring special solidarity ties, loyalties, and feelings of belonging/ identification, on the other hand we must also mention that they have created particular forms of discrimination. As we all know, not only Bosnia is divided into two ethnically connoted Entities (and cantons) but, keeping the focus on Sarajevo, we cannot forget that Istočno Sarajevo (East Sarajevo) also exists, and belongs to the Republika Srpska (RS). Immediately before/ during the war a considerable portion of Bosnian Serbs living in Sarajevo (and in what has now become the FBiH) moved ‘to the other side’—meaning to Istočno Sarajevo, or to other municipalities of the RS, generally not coming back. As a consequence, those (Bosnian Serbs) who remained in Sarajevo and did not join the (Serbian) Yugoslav army are, by those who stayed, usually considered ‘loyal’, ‘highly valued and appreciated’,23 while those who left the city and joined ‘the other side’ are generally considered ‘traitors’ (of Sarajevo, more than BiH). If we add the fact that, due to a different set of reasons, the city of Sarajevo has progressively become a Bošnjak majority city,24 we can thus understand how the life of people belonging to groups now in minority may not always be easy. A Bosnian Serb woman born and raised in Sarajevo, and coming from a ‘Sarajevan’ family, described her life changes as follows: During Yugoslavia my father was an Orthodox priest and if there was some problem you could call the police. There was order, it was a system…not like now. My father says it was better before […] Both mom and dad came from religious families, they were believers, and we have never had a problem […] Now in Sarajevo we are a minority. There are administrative obstacles for us— as I guess it is the same with Muslims and Croats where they are a minority. They do not want us here, they want us to give up, not to have children here. It is not easy to be a minority. […] The easiest way, here, is to leave.25

The situation described above does not depict an isolated case but an unpleasant situation happening all over the country. It clearly explains the social consequences of institutionalized ethnonationalism, according to which people are institutionally and politically supposed to live in their own side of the country, with their own people, and where their own parties will take care of them. Yet some remained and do try to retain their old friendships, relations, habits, and normal way of living. But many others

128 

A. Piacentini

left and, obviously, not all of them because they were poisoned by nationalist ideals: some, in fact, left the city (or the entity) because of that discrimination, which is not only institutional but also social; they left because they felt in danger, not welcome anymore in a place they called ‘home’, in a place that suddenly was not supposed to be their home any longer. ‘It was dangerous, we had to move’26—said a father who moved in 1992. Yet regardless of personal decisions and feelings, and the side they fought for, this generation’s members widely highlighted how the pre-war life climate was better, and justified such an opinion by remembering the absence of ethnic distinctions. They inevitably did recognize the new importance acquired by ethnonationality, yet stressed that ordinary people still mostly do not have problems with each other: ‘everyday life is not as tense as they [the politicians and the media] say in public. It is the politicians making everything difficult. If people would be left alone, reconciliation would be much better.’27 For the purpose of our analysis about ethnonationality’s evolution, it is very important to stress that none of the older generation’s members ever named or blamed other ethnic groups for what happened to the country and to them and their families more specifically. On the contrary, they unanimously  blamed the ethnonational,  ruling political leaders. And instead of marking the borders between ethnonational groups (as in the case of Macedonia), the dichotomy ‘us and them’ was by them used to distinguish between ‘us’—the ordinary people, and ‘them’—the political class.

Political Attitudes and Opinions The 1990s brought about considerable political changes and, as we have already seen, the Bosnian post-Yugoslav political environment is one very ethnically polarized. The political scenario is characterized by what in literature is defined as ethnopolitics, to the point that Bosnia has been defined as an ethnocracy (Howard 2012; Hulsey and Stjepanovic 2017). Of the same opinion were also the Yugoslav generation’s members

5  Between Cosmopolitanism and Survival: The Case of Sarajevo 

129

surveyed, which largely agreed that ‘nationalism is profit. […] the way to win;’28 and media are ‘branches of the parties’.29 In line with the arguments detailed in Chap. 3 about the ethnopolitical strategies used to gain and maintain the masses’ support, the use of media for political and ideological purposes was widely stressed by the parents interviewed, and many agreed that ‘without TV we would not even know we have inter-ethnic problems’.30 Regardless of their alleged collective identity and the party voted for, this generation’s political orientations and opinions were very similar, aligned in seeing the Bosnian politicians as self-interested power-seeking individuals ‘sit[ting] together and agree[ing] on what to do next to divide people, put them against each other’,31 therefore profiting from institutional divisions and the war’s wounds. While complaining that ‘the people who let Yugoslavia fall apart are still alive and they are still poisoning groups’,32 many expressed their disenchantment towards any possible change, not only in the political sphere but also in the economic and social ones. As one man stated: ‘in the 1990s, when the war ended, I was optimistic, it could not get worse than that, only better. But now […] I am more pessimist and I do not see anything good coming.’33 A key aspect highlighted by this generation was the dangers brought about by the heavy nationalist propaganda spread through media—and ever since the late 1980s, when the political leaders’ ‘main goal was to divide people according to ethno-religious beliefs. They started with propaganda, saying we were not equal.’34 Political propaganda targeting each and sole ethnonational group, and oriented against the others, has strengthened the widespread perception that ‘they talk only for their people, not for the people of Bosnia’,35 eventually consolidating the belief that the political leaders ‘do not want unity in BiH. […] they help each other to stay in power, and maybe they do not even mean what they say. But that creates divisions among people.’36 Nevertheless, it is not only the politicians who are not believing and not behaving as if Bosnia Herzegovina is a united country. Very often the people also have the same opinion. To inform this perception is especially the reality brought about by the DPA and by Bosnia’s internal partitions. The DPA, although recognized

130 

A. Piacentini

as the only solution to stop the killings back in 1995, does however represent a huge obstacle: ‘this Dayton system is really horrendous, inefficient for everyone, and everybody knows that. I think of Bosnia as a temporary state, in the future it will fall apart as happened to Yugoslavia.’37 Most of the parents interviewed expressed their resentment towards the division between the Federation of BiH and the Republika Srpska, stating— regardless of ethnonational backgrounds—that the unity existing in Yugoslavia was definitely better than the current fragmentation. Many ‘would like to see Bosnia once again one country’ but they are well aware it is a utopian wish. Nowadays Bosnia ‘nije država, it is not a country, it is an experiment’,38 the ‘product of democracy’.39

The Politics of Fear and Insecurity As explained in the Introduction, ethnonationality’s meanings and functions are influenced by the institutional framework in which interactions take place, but also (and especially) by the distribution of power between the groups and the networks of political alliances—which means by the kind of dynamics occurring between the state and the masses, the rulers and the ruled. Scholars have asked questions about the reasons why in contexts of ethnopolitics, and in Bosnia Herzegovina in this case, the largest part of the population, do (still) vote for nationalist parties though complaining of the bad economic and political situations of their country (see Mujkić and Hulsey 2010; Hulsey 2010; Piacentini 2019). When asked about this issue, the answer provided by this older generation may be summarized in two words: fear and insecurity. The politics of fear encompasses both the collective and the individual dimensions; there is the fear of being ruled by others and losing ‘a privileged’ position (collective dimension), and the fear of not surviving in a poor country (individual dimension). In both cases, fear and insecurity come from the perception of losing that illusionary protection ethnonational parties are able to offer to their people which, in turn, is by them ably exploited. The older generation explained that ‘the problem here is to survive. People are not interested in elections.’40 Such statements make clear that ethnonational

5  Between Cosmopolitanism and Survival: The Case of Sarajevo 

131

parties’ electoral support, and the consequent mobilization of ethnonationality, is largely matter of survival—both collectively and individually. Similar to the Macedonian case, one of the reasons why people do support ethnonationalist parties during elections is the possibility of gaining benefits and resources redistributed according to ‘ethnicized’ criteria (see Piacentini 2019). A common opinion stated by many was: if you want to gain something, you have to be in a party. […]. People join political parties for job reasons, to simply be able to survive. If you work in the public administration, then everything is easier: you have easier access to services like health and education, you have good chances also your doctor is a member of your same party, then you jump the queue. Everything is connected.41

The connections between ethnic power-sharing principles, economic malaise, and a political class capturing the state institutions, has thus brought about a situation in which ‘clientelism and nepotism are becoming part of our culture […] many have “found their luck” by doing these kinds of things’.42 From this perspective, the instrumental mobilization of one’s own ethnonational belonging emerged as a tool to deal and cope with a deeply ethnically fragmented society: besides job opportunities, parents also mentioned favours concerning medical services and education, finally pointing the attention to the all-encompassing ethnonationality’s ability to open doors. Concerning our interest for ethnonationality’s meanings and functions, we can see how, although the Bosnian ethno-clientelism’s rules are very similar to those we encountered in the Macedonian case, the explanations and reasons furnished by this generation were very different compared to our previous case study. In Macedonia, as seen, the older generation’s members largely framed the ethno-clientelistic ties between parties and masses highlighting the collective dimension, hence groups’ socio-political statuses and their struggles for representation in the state bodies. The people surveyed in Bosnia, instead, never spoke about ethnic quotas, nations’ institutional equal representation, or groups’ socio-­political statuses. Instead, they drew attention to the individual dimension, and explained those party–masses dynamics in terms of bad and manipulative politics ‘pushing’ ordinary, poor people into the loop. This kind of very persisting narrative once again stressed how the dichotomy ‘us and them’

132 

A. Piacentini

in the Bosnian case is used to differentiate between the ordinary people and the political elite, not the ethnic groups. Regardless their ethnonational origins and self-identifications, the parents belonging to this generation—socialized and grown up during the Yugoslav decades, widely recognized how the ethnic-based institutional asset on the one hand, and the ethnopolitical entrepreneurs on the other, are the prime elements blocking any possible step forward; and not only in terms of political reforms and economic measures, but also and especially in matter of social cohesion. Accordingly, when it comes to ethnonationality’s meanings and functions, the conversations with the parents made clear a two-level distinction: social-contextual and politico-­ institutional. As they said, at the social and individual level ordinary people still do not pay attention to others’ origins, they do not avoid ‘certain’ people nor ‘certain’ places or territories (or, at least, this happens to be the general trend in the urban areas). But when it comes to political and institutional issues, hence when the individual needs to access the state structure, ethnonationality does matter. Yet, in most of the cases, the importance conferred to ethnonationality is more due to practical and pragmatic reasons than to a spontaneous and deeply rooted attachment to ‘the nation’. As seen, the instrumental mobilization of ethnonationality, reflected in support for ethnonational parties, is linked to ethnonationality’s key function as a proxy to access benefits and resources redistributed according to ethnic, collective, criteria.

 he (Post-)Yugoslav Generation T of Young Adults As in their parents’ case, many of the young adults born between 1985 and 1990, hence belonging to what is here addressed to as ‘the Post-­Yugoslav generation’, did not, or could not, declare themselves in ethnonational terms. Sometimes the reason was their family backgrounds and ties; other times it was the connections/absence of connections with the religious element. In other cases again, it was because of their political opinions and their being against the politicization of identities and backgrounds. The young adults explained their ‘identity complexity’ as follows:

5  Between Cosmopolitanism and Survival: The Case of Sarajevo 

133

I do have Serbian citizenship, but I am not Serb. I spent almost all of my life in Sarajevo, but I do not consider myself as Sarajevan, I do not consider myself as Serbian too because I do not have contacts with Serbia […]. I am Muslim, but only by tradition.43

Even clearer was this young woman’s argument: I cannot say I am Serbian, although mom is from Serbia, but she is Muslim, and dad is Serb but from Bosnia. I am from here. I am not atheist but I do not belong to any religion. I do celebrate everything […]. That is why I would never identify myself as Muslim or Serb but always as Bosnian Herzegovinian. I am Bosnian Herzegovinian, I belong to ‘others’. I am not a constituent people of this country, but it is OK if this implies not to pick a side.44

This generation of young adults, born in the last Yugoslav years and socialized in a post-war ethnically divided environment, feels the ethnic collectivism’s weight on their shoulders (Piacentini 2018); and to the point that, to some, ethnonationality and belonging issues have become existential questions. As a young man coming from a Bosnian Serb family who moved to the RS during the war yet still retaining working, educational, and friendship ties with-in the city of Sarajevo, explained: I feel I do not belong to anything. It is a bad feeling; it is like I am not close to anything. As s****y country as it is, still Bosnia is my country. […] I am Serb, yes, part of one constituent people but I do not identify myself with those right wing hard-core nationalist Serbs. I am a minority in Republika Srpska because I am leftist, and I am a minority in Sarajevo because I am Serb. Also, I should be an Orthodox since I am Serb, but again, I am not. […]. I feel like an intruder.45

Consequently, also many of these young adults developed a sense of belonging detached from ethnic-political categories, and self-identified themselves in civic terms, yet always acknowledging their ethno-religious backgrounds. ‘I am ethnically Serb, but I am from Bosnia Herzegovina, it is a different thing. I am Bosnian’46—pointed out one young man. Or again, a young woman coming from a Bosnian Croat family said, ‘me personally, I feel Sarajka’.47

134 

A. Piacentini

With this in mind, we can now proceed by going deeper in these young adults’ lives, understanding how their living environments, personal experiences, opinions, and parents’ teachings, have shaped their modalities of framing and using their ethnonational backgrounds.

Living the ‘Yugoslav Way’? The Bosnian society is commonly depicted as a divided one; nevertheless the younger generation surveyed in this book, that one  born between 1985 and 1990, had the chance to grow up in a rather mixed environment where segregation was not (yet) an integral component of their lives. Yet they spent their early childhood in a besieged city and in the immediate war’s aftermath; they have grown up surrounded by ethnonationalisms coming from all sides; they lost friends and family members, and had to learn how to cope with war’s wounds and hatreds. But, as we shall see, thanks to the persistence of common spaces around them, and particularly their parents’ teachings, these young adults have been able, or at least they try their best, to challenge those invisible ethnic boundaries (Piacentini 2018) suffocating the Bosnian population.

School and Brainwashing Contrary to their fellows in Macedonia, those born in the late 1980s in BiH went to primary school during the war and, some of them, in besieged Sarajevo. Their childhoods and school experiences have, thus, been rather different compared to the ones of their peers from Skopje. Many of them experienced the first attempts of ‘ethnonationalist indoctrination’ in school in the early 1990s. As a girl schooled in a village close to Sarajevo remembered, ‘in 1994, when I was going to primary school, during the war, the teacher taught us that our country was Croatia, our capital Zagreb, and our president Tuđman. I am from Kiseljak, 30 km from Sarajevo.’48 However, this reality did not pertain only to the less central areas, but also to some Sarajevo’s schools as well: ‘the teacher asked me with whom I was living at home. […] I used the wrong word to say

5  Between Cosmopolitanism and Survival: The Case of Sarajevo 

135

“dad”, I said “tata”, but in the Muslim way they say “baba”. So, the teacher said to me “you can say you do not have baba, because he did not teach you properly”.’49 Nevertheless, most of the Sarajevo schools have retained, even after the war’s end, their mixed character or, better, their ‘ethnically blind’ connotation: ‘during elementary here in Sarajevo they were all Bošnjaks and I was the only Croat. But I never felt that people were looking at me or treating me differently, not at all. I immediately met people and made new friendships. In high school, I attended the Catholic Centre here in Sarajevo, the name is misleading: we were totally mixed in my classroom.’50 Despite some cases of ‘less ethnically diverse’ classrooms and clear nationalist indoctrination, these young adults have largely been able not to remain encapsulated within the boundaries of their ethnonational belonging. Contrary to what we have seen in the case of their fellows in Macedonia, all of the young adults from Sarajevo, and since childhood, ‘of course [had] friends of other groups. It would be very difficult not to.’51 This inter-ethnic mix, despite nationalist indoctrination and segregated education, is largely due to the fact that, in Sarajevo especially, the distance between the different communities has traditionally been much shorter than in the Macedonian case. As a young man explained, in Sarajevo: ‘there is no problem. […] There is no rejection at a personal level.’52 Therefore, Sarajevo—as a city and, especially, as a symbol of coexistence and resistance—played and still plays a very important role in shaping inter-ethnic contacts as well as ethnonationality’s meanings and functions.

The City, the Sarajevans, and the Bosnian Herzegovinians In the previous chapter, when looking at the environment in which the generations have been socialized into and live in, we had occasion to notice how the urban configuration of Skopje may contribute to disincentivize inter-ethnic relations and social contacts—therefore reinforcing certain ethnonationality’s meanings and functions. The case of the city of Sarajevo is, instead, slightly different as the city has a particular historical heritage of ‘mixing of cultures’—as it is written at Ferhadija Street. Sarajevo is where the secular character of both different religious faiths and its inhabitants permitted a very peaceful living together; the place

136 

A. Piacentini

where any people, group, religion, and identity has traditionally been respected and cherished, and where this respect allowed for the building of truly positive inter-group relations. ‘Sarajevo is the best part of interethnic relations because we are actually the most mixed part of the entire country. In Sarajevo […] there are not problems, hate speeches and nationalism.’53 Sarajevo has been by both generations considered to be a very special place. For this reason many of its inhabitants, belonging to any generational cohort, developed a special bond with the city, to the point that they did and still do identify themselves exclusively as ‘Sarajevan’, avoiding any other form of identification. This ‘alternative’ identity not only symbolizes attachment towards the city; more precisely, it does so towards what the city means. The ‘Sarajevan’ identity has emerged to be a cosmopolitan identity that does not deny the existence of ethnonational groups and identities; on the contrary, it includes all of them. Similarly, the identification as ‘Bosnian Herzegovinian’ has emerged to be not only featured by a sense of attachment towards the country, but also in this case means to include and symbolize the country’s plurality (see Piacentini 2020). Like the ‘cosmopolitan idea’ circulating in the anti-nationalist discourses in the 1990s (Jansen 2008), in both generations’ case—when it happened— the self-identification in terms of Sarajevan and/or Bosnian Herzegovinians was meant to be in opposition to hegemonizing nationalisms and ethnonational/ethno-territorial divisions, taking a distance from identity’s politicization and individuals’ categorization (see Touquet 2015). As we shall see in the next section, in addition to family backgrounds and Sarajevo’s heritage, the young adults’ political opinions and perceptions emerged to be a further factor influencing ethnonationality’s meanings and functions, finally also accounting for the investigated inter-­ generational dis-continuities and dis-similarities.

Politics and Ethnonationalism The younger generation from BiH, as with the one from Macedonia, found some difficulties in positioning along the right–left continuum. They generally defined their political orientation to be liberal and anti-­nationalist, consistently taking the distance from the conservative and right-wing

5  Between Cosmopolitanism and Survival: The Case of Sarajevo 

137

narratives expressed by the political parties ruling BiH. Not surprisingly, as with their fellows from Macedonia, the Bosnian young adults were also very critical towards and disappointed by their political class, seen as responsible for the country’s several problems and divisions. Regarding the ethnic polarization featuring the political scenario, this generation’s members agreed that ‘the three parties are cooperating in keeping the status quo, it is the same situation for twenty years. […] Politics uses nationalism to divide people. They need to keep the machine working and without divisions the system would collapse.’54 The political climate has also been compared to a ‘cold war, a war without weapons’.55 Similar to the previous case study, the young adults living in Sarajevo also pointed attention to the fact that ‘those who are leading these parties have strong instruments’56 and keep on ‘[coming] back to the 1990s because it is the only way, the only way to divide people again, and so the way to stay in power […] according to Bakir and Dodik’.57 ‘Bakir (Izetbegović) and (Milorad) Dodik’ are, respectively, the Bošnjak and Serbian members of the tripartite Bosnian Presidency, generally identified as the two main Bosnian leaders representing the two Entities of BiH. Given the politicized overlap between ethno-cultural and ethno-­ territorial divisions, the young adults pointed out how vital it is for the political class to keep alive and nurture social divisions across ethnonational lines. Cohesion between people, decreased importance of ethnonational identities, and the developments of supra-national feelings of attachments, would indeed destroy that ethnopolitical system the political class has been so committedly nurturing in the last two decades. In line with the arguments presented in Chap. 3, the young adults from Sarajevo mentioned the manipulation of media, indoctrination via the school system, and ethno-clientelistic networks, as the main strategies used by the political elite to rule-by-divide. They also expressed some major concerns about the youngest generations, those born in the 2000s, as they are indoctrinated by the education system and the media. The young people are more vulnerable and more divided, they are growing up in homogeneous areas, especially in the rural areas. Without knowing each other you develop fear, and fear leads to hate, and hate to war.58

Finally, these post-Yugoslav young men and women made an important distinction when it comes to the politicization of ethnonational

138 

A. Piacentini

identities and origins: acknowledging that anyone in the society is exposed to the same kind of influences, though to different extents, they pointed attention to the fact that on the one side, educational experiences and places of residence may help (as happened in their case) in being less susceptible and vulnerable to ethnonationalist indoctrination; while on the other side anyone—themselves included—is equally exposed and vulnerable before economic insecurities.

Individual Survival Through Ethno-Clientelism Bosnia is a country plagued by economic malaise and high levels of unemployment, particularly among the youth. To find a job is a hard task for most people, and high levels of education and university degrees do not guarantee (anymore) economic stability; on the contrary, and regardless of the educational level, it is the right connections, especially those in political parties, that might do so. As seen in their parents’ cases, clientelism is a widespread phenomenon mainly but not only related to job opportunities and functioning according to party—and ethnic group—membership. Also in this generation’s case, clientelism  has been acknowledged as one of the most successful strategies used by the political elite to bind the ‘ethnicized masses’ (Piacentini 2019) while exploiting economic problems for power purposes. The following excerpts explain the phenomenon, as well as the reasons leading many—particularly young people, often well educated, and coming from urban areas—to join ethnonational parties: My sister is part of a political party because she wants to get a job and some money. She is unemployed, she finished her studies and worked 7–8 months in a school and that’s it. Now she is unemployed and trying to find a job … so that’s why she is in the party, she hopes to get a job.59 It is quite common to get a job thanks to the party, especially [***] here. My brother got a MA and then he was unemployed for some months, looking for a job. A neighbour of us, from [***], clearly told him that, if he was going to join the party, he could have helped him. Another friend of mine, she is a journalist and very talented, was looking for a job and, during the interview, they asked her in which party she was member.60

5  Between Cosmopolitanism and Survival: The Case of Sarajevo 

139

The ethnonational ruling parties have acquired a new function as ‘employers’ as a consequence of their capture of state institutions and bodies. Therefore people often do find it easier to go knock on the party’s doors, using their ethnic, collective identity as a proxy to obtain individual benefits. Yet, this way of behaving has largely been criticized by the young adults surveyed, and acknowledged as the symptomatic effect of a ‘culture of passivity’ (Piacentini 2019) affecting a sizeable portion of the population. Many of my friends are not even willing to try to apply for some job because—I quote—‘the job is insecure’. I mean, what job on this planet is secure now?! So they prefer to spend their years and energy, and talent and knowledge, hoping and digging through that system to get a job in a public service institution— where, again, it is only an illusion of stability because this state can collapse at any moment. That way of thinking is pervasive: people would rather go for 300€ in a public institution doing nothing and dying in it, than try to do something by themselves. Because at the end, we do not believe in anything anymore.61 In these last elections I saw many of my former colleagues’ candidates for some parties. They did not find a job, so they thought the only way was to enter into politics. […] They do not understand anything about politics, but they earn 700 BAM and it is better than nothing—especially if you are from a village. Or you can subscribe to the party, then they will find you a job; if the party is a dominant one, then it is immediate. They [the parties] also make fake concourses: you apply but it is already known who will get the job. […] That thing has become normal; it is the only way really working if you want a job. Even those well-educated do that. But it depends also on family’s education: my mother would never allow me.62

The young adults condemned ethno-clientelistic practices recognizing that, by getting involved in those networks, people do end up legitimizing the power of those same parties blamed for Bosnia’s problems. As one young man stated: ‘the worst thing is that people are following blindly that kind of thing […] because they have benefits, jobs, money and everything else’.63 Those involved into clientelistic practices have never been negatively judged, but rather commiserated and, in a way, ‘justified’ in the light of the system’s coercive potential in not leaving (m)any other alternative. ‘People need money, need to survive’, was the most common

140 

A. Piacentini

explanation furnished by this generation’s respondents. A young man, while talking about his ‘dream job’, said the following: I am not part of any political party but maybe I will also be forced one day. If you want to find a job here, you have to be member of a party—a party winning in some area, which has money, connections. Maybe one day I will be forced to become a ‘slave of the party’. Maybe when I will want to set a family, to have a life on my own … you need a job, you cannot stay home all day. I will do anything to find it legally, but if I will not … believe me, I do not want to do these things, but you know … we are forced, youth are forced to join that system. You have to survive. Friends from faculty are leftist as I am, liberal as I am, but many of them joined some nationalist party … they needed a job, they had to. You have to be recruited, like in the army, do some stuff for them and maybe you will have a future. Parties are not providing just jobs in the public administration; they are providing jobs in the real economic sector. There are private companies run by political parties—if you want to apply you have to be in the party, if you are a random citizen, although skilled, no way. They will select the guy who is maybe 15th in the list, but in the party. For example, I am seriously and actively trying to work in the police … well, if you want to work in the police, which is not supposed to be political, still you have to know someone who will help you to go through the application.64

The feelings shared by many are those of frustration, delusion, and disenchantment. This generation of young adults perceives the system ‘is forcing them’ to be part of it against their will. The political parties ruling the country, besides being blamed for the creation and perpetuation of the social divide, are also blamed for having created the conditions pushing people into ‘the ethnopolitical loop’, so that they will sooner or later contribute—willingly or not—to maintain the status quo. It might be argued that there always is a choice, and that people are not puppets in the hands of some superior entity. This is undoubtedly true, and these reflections are not denying people’s agency; yet in certain circumstances we must recognize that to behave outside the dominant framework may be very hard, hence the ultimate choice goes for the lesser evil. Furthermore, these considerations open up two other reflections: first, the ruling political parties and the state have become the same political entity, there is no real distinction between the two, and the political

5  Between Cosmopolitanism and Survival: The Case of Sarajevo 

141

parties, similar to the Macedonian case, are both nations’ representatives and distributors of resources. Second, ethnonational origins serve to channel individuals into the system, and are used as a proxy towards one’s own goal by both the rulers and the ruled. Accordingly, the self-interested mobilization of ethnonationality emerged to be, and has been described as, a way to cope with life’s difficult conditions in an ethnically divided state and society. Coming back to our investigation about ethnonationality’s meanings and functions, we can conclude by saying that, according to this generation’s representatives, ethnic origins do not have a strong influence and importance at the individual, social, level; but, as already argued, they do have a considerable weight when it comes to issues connected to politics and institutions—representing the key able to open the system’s doors.

 he Family Environment: Ethnonationality T Has Never Mattered Politics pervades almost any of life’s aspects, and people seem to be quite careful in not letting it enter into their homes. As in Skopje, also in the context of Sarajevo ‘no politics at home, no point to talk about it’.65 However, although ethnic politics is generally left out from family conversations, the Bosnian parents have widely told their children about the Yugoslav system and society. This Yugoslav generation of parents, born between the 1950s and the 1960s, grew up in an environment that, nowadays, we would call ‘ethnically mixed’ but that, back then, simply was the normality. People were not used to know, nor did they care about, others’ ethno-religious origins. It was even impolite to ask about it, as these were matter of one’s own private, not public, life and identity. By recognizing how much better it was back in Yugoslavia, when people were not labelled because of their personal names, these parents tried their best to ‘teach [their] kids according to the brotherhood’s values’,66 opposed to ‘these “new values”…ethnicity and religion [….] where you are either X or Y’67—and despite the war, the siege, and the ethnonationalisms surrounding them. As a mother said: ‘my daughter went to a Catholic gymnasium here in Sarajevo and neither my husband nor me are Catholic. She is

142 

A. Piacentini

singing in the choir, and once per year she sings in the church. And we are proud of her.’68 What emerged to be a key value to be taught and transmitted to their offspring was, indeed, the respect for any individual and the avoidance of categorizations based on personal names and surnames— from which, sometimes, it is possible to infer ethnic backgrounds. The maintenance and preservation of good inter-ethnic relations or, more appropriately, good relations between ordinary citizens, also emerged to be an essential component of their kids’ education: not only a value to be preserved and transmitted, but the actual antidote against nationalism and ethnocentrism, the only way not to be pervaded by fear. This generation of parents, due to many and different, yet personal, reasons, did not show any hostility or hate towards other groups, only towards the ethnic politicians. As seen at the beginning of the chapter, many of them actually had mixed backgrounds, were involved in a mixed marriage themselves, or had family ties either in the other Bosnian entity or in other former Yugoslav republics. It is reasonable to say that the maintenance of good inter-ethnic relations among people still represents a value to be preserved; however, due to the general circumstances and structural conditions, its practical implementation is often confined to the more superficial level of everyday life. Overall, as in the Macedonian case, parents and children happened to be very similar to each other, generally sharing the same opinions and attitudes and, in the Bosnian case, both trying to behave according to the ‘old values’ system’. As stated at the beginning of the chapter, in a few families’ cases fathers passed away during the war, so one could have expected these experiences to have negatively affected attitudes and behaviours, perhaps leading towards more ‘conservative positions’ and certain degrees of ‘hate’ or ‘intolerance’. On the contrary, those fatherless young adults demonstrated a surprising capacity in overcoming their loss while learning from the past, stressing how important it is to ‘continue living together. […] let [the past] go because we cannot live like this. Especially my generation…this is an endless circle of nationalism.’69 They did not show resentments or hate towards any other group, yet pointed out how their family environment and their mothers’ teachings have been crucial in shaping their attitudes. As a Bosnian Serb young woman

5  Between Cosmopolitanism and Survival: The Case of Sarajevo 

143

explained: ‘some people think I am weird because I have Muslim friends and my dad died in the war. They consider me “too open”. But my mother never told me bad things about other people, she never said I should hate someone. On the contrary she suggested I go to a catholic school. She never prohibited me anything. Also, her best friend is a Muslim.’70 Obviously, it is worth pointing out that this kind of reaction and behaviour is not the rule, and perhaps most of those who have gone through a similar experience do think and behave very differently. Yet if we consider the absence of any inter-group violence and physical tension, all across the country and ever since the signing of the DPA, we can assume a sizeable portion of the Bosnian population has overall developed the peculiar ability of overcoming war-related tragedies by discerning and distinguishing from politically-instigated and individually-­caused violence.

The Yugoslav Heritage In line with these reflections stand the younger generation’s ‘neutral’ ­attitude towards ethnonationality—an attitude by them acknowledged as inherited from their families and parents’ value systems, and transmitted especially by the telling of stories concerning the ‘previous’ Yugoslav life. The central role played by their families and parents in transmitting the ‘old Yugoslav values’ was further stressed by the fact that, as the young adults oftentimes pointed out, there is a wide gap between their generation and the following, younger, ones. Those born from the late 1990s onwards have, indeed, been depicted as much more nationalist and close-­ minded compared to them—born between 1985 and 1990. The reason for this gap was generally attributed to the fact that ‘they [the younger generations] learned nationalism from parents, and grew up where nationalism was approved, normal, encouraged’.71

144 

A. Piacentini

Therefore, it is not only the personal experience but also the generational one—especially connected to the conflict—to have a major role in shaping people’s opinions and behaviours.  The generation of young adults surveyed in this book may thus be considered an ‘in-between’ generation which, despite being born immediately before the end of an era and the beginning of another one, had the luck of being exposed and socialized according to a ‘non-aligned’ model taught by their parents through the telling of positive memories and experiences rooted in the Yugoslav past. Recalling what was previously stated about the parents’ ‘Yugonostalgia’ and how to properly understand the concept, the following statement happens to be particularly meaningful and helpful in our inter-­generational investigation. As one young woman proudly said: Oh they [her parents] love Tito and Yugoslavia, and I am very proud of that. I am also nostalgic of that period because they always talk about it, and they say only good things. Yes, they are nostalgic and us with them! […] They say life was good, everyone had a job, everyone was satisfied. Every year people could go on vacation, while now there are people who for twenty years do not go. They say that, even when things were not going too well, that was not reflected on the people. People were not suffering. Now, the situation is drastically different.72

What seems to explain this ‘in-between’ generation’s overall political opinions, understanding of ethnonationality and social behaviours, and apparently makes a key difference between them and the younger generations is, therefore, their family environments and their parents’ positive Yugoslav experience. I was born in 1989, my generation is disgusted by the system. When I was supposed to run my bike, it was war outside. There is lots of anger inside us. And most of us do not want to be part of this system. Those youth in national parties, they do not even know what means to live in a basement for years.73

In conclusion, we can safely say the positive emphasis parents put on Yugoslavia, used as a perfect example of how a multiethnic society should function, played a very important role: by recognizing ‘the old values’ as paramount values upon which any society should be built, the Yugoslav generation of parents taught their children the importance and the richness

5  Between Cosmopolitanism and Survival: The Case of Sarajevo 

145

of ‘unity in diversity’. The two Bosnian generations emerged to be aligned with the previous system’s set of values, recognizing the current divisive role ethnonationality often plays is politically—not socially—generated and fostered. Finally, as in the Macedonian case, Yugoslavia emerged to be part of the past, ‘another world’; however, contrary to the Macedonian case, the Yugoslav society is the kind of society the two Bosnian generations analysed in this book would (still) like to live in. The nostalgia for the past emerged in the Bosnian case, thus, does not denote the symptomatic effect of individuals’ failed adaptation to the new system (as depicted in the Macedonian case); rather, it denotes the failure of the system itself.

Notes 1. Mother, age 54, self-identified Bošnjak, Sarajevo, August 2016. 2. Mother, age 52, ethnic Serbo-Croat, self-identified Croat, Sarajevo, October 2016. 3. Mother, age 55, ethnic Serbian Muslim, not self-identified, Sarajevo, December 2016. 4. VV.AA. 2015, Youth Study Bosnia and Herzegovina 2014, Sarajevo: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung. 5. Father, age 58, self-identified Serb from the RS, Sarajevo, September 2016. 6. Mother, age 55, self-identified Serb from the RS, Sarajevo, October 2016. 7. Father, age 64, ethnic Bošnjak, self-identified Bosnian Herzegovinian, Sarajevo, November 2016. 8. Father, age 59, ethnic Serb, self-identified Sarajevan, Sarajevo, September 2016. 9. Mother, age 63, self-identified Bošnjak, Sarajevo, April 2017. 10. Father, age 58, self-identified Croat from BiH, Sarajevo, August 2016. 11. Mother, age 62, ethnic Bošnjak, self-identified Bosnian Herzegovinian, Sarajevo, October 2016. 12. Mother, age 57, ethnic Serb, self-identified woman, Sarajevo, October 2016. 13. Mother, age 55, ethnic Muslim-Serb, self-identified Sarajevan, Sarajevo, September 2016. 14. Father, age 59, ethnic Serb, self-identified Sarajevan, Sarajevo, September 2016.

146 

A. Piacentini

15. Father, age 55, self-identified Bošnjak, Sarajevo, August 2016. 16. Father, age 65, ethnic Serb, self-identified Yugoslav, Sarajevo, December 2016. 17. Mother, age 52, self-identified Bošnjak, Sarajevo, Sarajevo, September 2016. 18. Father, age 59, ethnic Serb, self-identified Sarajevan, Sarajevo, September 2016. 19. Father, age 58, ethnic Serb, self-identified Serb from RS, Sarajevo, September 2016. 20. Father, age 65, ethnic Serb, self-identified Yugoslav, Sarajevo, December 2016. 21. Father, age 59, ethnic Serb, self-identified Sarajevan, Sarajevo, September 2016. 22. Father, age 58, ethnic Serb, self-identified Serb from RS, Sarajevo, October 2016. 23. Son, age 30, self-identified Bošnjak, Sarajevo, Sarajevo, March 2016. 24. See Popis Stanovništva, Domaćinstava i Stanova u Bosni i Hercegovini, 2013. Rezultati Popisa. Census of the Population, Households and Dwellings in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 2013. Final Results. Agencija za Statistiku Bosne i Hercegovine. Agency for Statistics of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Sarajevo, June 2016. 25. Anonymous, member of Interreligious Council of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Međureligijsko vijeće u Bosni i Hercegovini, MRV) Sarajevo, September 2016. 26. Father, age 58, self-identified Serb from the RS, Sarajevo, September 2016. 27. Mother, age 55, ethnic Serbian Muslim, not self-identified, Sarajevo, December 2016. 28. Father, age 62, ethnic Bošnjak, self-identified Bosnian Herzegovinian, Sarajevo, November 2016. 29. Father, age 60, self-identified Bošnjak, Sarajevo, March 2016. 30. Mother, age 55, ethnic Serb, self-identified Sarajevan, Sarajevo, September 2016. 31. Mother, age 55, ethnic Serbian Muslim, not self-identified, Sarajevo, December 2016. 32. Mother, age 52, ethnic Serbo-Croat, self-identified Croat, Sarajevo, October 2016. 33. Father, age 58, self-identified Serb from the RS, Sarajevo, October 2016. 34. Father, age 66, ethnic Serb, self-identified Yugoslav, Sarajevo, December 2016.

5  Between Cosmopolitanism and Survival: The Case of Sarajevo 

147

35. Mother, age 52, ethnic Serbo-Croat, self-identified Croat, Sarajevo, October 2016. 36. Mother, age 55, ethnic Serb, self-identified Sarajevan, Sarajevo, September 2016. 37. Father, age 58, self-identified Serb from the RS, Sarajevo, October 2016. 38. Father, age 58, self-identified Croat, Sarajevo, August 2016. 39. Father, age 65, ethnic Serb, self-identified Yugoslav, Sarajevo, December 2016. 40. Mother, age 57, ethnic Serb, self-identified woman, Sarajevo, October 2016. 41. Father, age 60, self-identified Bošnjak, Sarajevo, March 2017. 42. Mother, age 54, self-identified Bošnjak, Sarajevo, August 2016. 43. Son, age 30, self-identified Bošnjak, Sarajevo, March 2016. 44. Daughter, age 27, self-identified Bosnian Herzegovinian, Sarajevo, November 2016. 45. Son, age 25, ethnic Serb, not self-identified, Sarajevo, October 2016. 46. Son, age 25, ethnic Serb, self-identified Bosnian Herzegovinian, Sarajevo, September 2016. 47. Daughter, age 25, ethnic Croat, self-identified Sarajevan, Sarajevo, August 2016. 48. Daughter, age 28, ethnic Croat, self-identified Croat from BiH, Sarajevo, October 2016. 49. Daughter, age 30, ethnic Bošnjak, self-identified Bosnian Herzegovinian, Sarajevo, October 2016. 50. Daughter, age 25, ethnic Croat, self-identified Sarajevan, Sarajevo, August 2016. 51. Daughter, age 26, ethnic Serb, self-identified Sarajevan, Sarajevo, August 2016. 52. Son, age 30, self-identified Bošnjak, Sarajevo, March 2016. 53. Son, age 28, ethnic Bošnjak, self-identified Sarajevan and Bosnian Herzegovinian, Sarajevo, August 2016. 54. Daughter, age 30, ethnic Bošnjak, self-identified Bosnian Herzegovinian, Sarajevo, October 2016. 55. Daughter, age 28, self-identified Croat from BiH, Sarajevo, October 2016. 56. Son, age 25, ethnic Bošnjak, self-identified Sarajevan and Bosnian Herzegovinian, Sarajevo, August 2016. 57. Son, age 25, ethnic Serb, self-identified Bosnian Herzegovinian, Sarajevo, September 2016.

148 

A. Piacentini

58. Daughter, age 30, ethnic Bošnjak, self-identified Bosnian Herzegovinian, Sarajevo, October 2016. 59. Son, age 25, ethnic Serb, self-identified Bosnian Herzegovinian, Sarajevo, September 2016. 60. Daughter, age 26, self-identified Bošnjak, Sarajevo, September 2016. 61. Son, age 30, self-identified Bošnjak, Sarajevo, March 2017. 62. Daughter, age 26, ethnic Serb, self-identified human being, Sarajevo, October 2016. 63. Son, age 28, ethnic Bošnjak, self-identified Sarajevan and Bosnian Herzegovinian, Sarajevo, August 2016. 64. Son, age 25, ethnic Serb, not self-identified, Sarajevo, October 2016. 65. Father, age 60, ethnic Croat, self-identified Croat from FBiH, Sarajevo, October 2016. 66. Father, age 58, ethnic Serb, self-identified Serb from the RS, Sarajevo, October 2016. 67. Mother, age 55, self-identified Serb from the RS, Sarajevo, October 2016. 68. Mother, age 55, ethnic Serbian Muslim, not self-identified, Sarajevo, December 2016. 69. Son, age 28, ethnic Bošnjak, self-identified Sarajevan and Bosnian Herzegovinian, Sarajevo, August 2016. 70. Daughter, age 26, ethnic Serb, self-identified human being, Sarajevo, October 2016. 71. Daughter, age 26, ethnic Serb, self-identified Sarajevan, Sarajevo, August 2016. 72. Daughter, age 25, ethnic Croat, self-identified Sarajevan, Sarajevo, August 2016. 73. Daughter, age 27, self-identified Bosnian Herzegovinian, Sarajevo, November 2016.

References Howard, L.M. 2012. The Ethnocracy Trap. Journal of Democracy 23 (4): 155–169. Hulsey, J. 2010. Why Did They Vote for Those Guys Again? Challenges and Contradictions in the Promotion of Moderation in Post-War Bosnia and Herzegovina. Democratization 17 (6): 1132–1152.

5  Between Cosmopolitanism and Survival: The Case of Sarajevo 

149

Hulsey, J., and D. Stjepanovic. 2017. Bosnia and Herzegovina. An Archetypical Example of Ethnocracy. In Regional and National Elections in Eastern Europe. Territoriality of the Vote in Ten Countries, ed. A.H. Schakel, 35–58. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Jansen, S. 2008. Cosmopolitan Openings and Closures In Post-Yugoslav Antinationalism. In Cosmopolitanism in Practice, ed. M.  Nowicka and M. Rovisco, 75–92. Aldershot: Ashgate. Mujkić, A., and J. Hulsey. 2010. Explaining the Success of Nationalist Parties in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Politička Misao 47 (2): 143–158. Piacentini, A. 2018. The Weight of Ethnic Collectivism. Youth, Ethnicity and Boundaries in Post-Conflict Bosnia Herzegovina. Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism 18 (3): 262–280. ———. 2019. “Trying to Fit In”: Multi-Ethnic Parties, Ethno-Clientelism and Power-Sharing in Bosnia Herzegovina and Macedonia. Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 25 (3): 273–290. ———. 2020. “Nonaligned Citizens”: Ethnic Power-Sharing and Nonethnic Identities in Bosnia Herzegovina. The Case of Sarajevo’. Nationalities Papers 48 (1): 1–14 Popis Stanovništva, Domaćinstava i Stanova u Bosni i Hercegovini. 2013. Rezultati Popisa. Census of Population, Households and Dwelling in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 2013. Final Results. Agencija za Statistiku Bosne i Hercegovine. Agency for Statistics of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Sarajevo, June 2016. http://popis2013.ba. Touquet, H. 2015. Non-Ethnic Mobilisation in Deeply Divided Societies, the Case of Sarajevo Protests. Europe-Asia Studies 67 (3): 388–408. VV.AA. 2015. Youth Study Bosnia and Herzegovina 2014. Sarajevo: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung. http://projects.ff.unimb.si/~cepso/web/cepss/data/ Bosnian%20youth%20study%20report.pdf.

6 The Story of Ethnonationality

At this point, it should be clear that state structures and political actors have a key responsibility when it comes to influencing and shaping people’s lives, proposing and sometimes imposing certain ideas and uses of ethnonational belonging, filling political categories with sharply defined meanings. Nevertheless, the previous chapters also shed light on the often neglected role individuals play, as they have the ability and the power to influence the state assets and politics by legitimizing or not the dominant framework in which they live, and the rules governing their societies. Acknowledging that the task pursued by this book was not an easy one, and the topic was hard to disentangle, this final chapter attempts to tell the story of ethnonationality by putting all the pieces together. Much of the work has already been done; hence, the following pages try to build a coherent discourse about ethnonationality’s evolution, and they do so proceeding by steps. The first step is a country analysis. This means to look at Macedonia and BiH from a structural point of view, illustrating how, why, and to what extent political, ideological, and institutional changes have contributed to shape ethnonationality’s meanings and functions over time, penetrating and influencing people’s © The Author(s) 2020 A. Piacentini, Ethnonationality’s Evolution in Bosnia Herzegovina and Macedonia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39189-8_6

151

152 

A. Piacentini

realities. In this way we will better define the characteristics of the contexts in which people live, the strategies and mechanisms political actors use to influence and reach them, eventually laying the bases to properly understand people and generations’ ways of thinking and acting with and within their plural realities. The second step connects macro and micro. This means to point the attention to each generation surveyed looking at their ways of signifying and possibly using ethnonational backgrounds in light of the influence structural factors, actors, and changes have possibly had on them. This generational perspective answers questions about how members of differently socialized generations interact with and within their plural societies, laying the basis for the investigated inter-­ generational dis-similarities and dis-continuities. Lastly, the third step shifts the attention on the family unit and performs an inter-generational comparison. After having understood how the macro may influence the micro, and how and why the micro may interact with the macro and within the micro, the last step orders the complexity of political and family socialization, providing  knowledge about the inter-generational transmission of meanings and usages of one’s own ethnonationality.

Context, Strategies, and Mechanisms Same Game, Same Rules Malešević (2004) argued that for ethnonationality to become salient, mere social contacts between groups and individuals are not enough; rather, it is when social contacts happen at particular moments, such as to respond or cope with a changing environment, that the political mobilization of cultural differences eventually makes ethnicity and nationality relevant. This approach, however, is true also in the opposite direction— meaning that groups’ cultural differences may be politically, and thus also socially, deemphasized to decrease their relevance. The difference lies in the final goal that the political actors involved in the process seek to pursue.

6  The Story of Ethnonationality 

153

As we have seen, the Yugoslav system, in order to gain legitimacy and survive, needed to discourage ethnonational sentiments while fostering unity and solidarity untied from ethnonationality, so emphasizing the common features the groups shared. Once the Yugoslav system began to collapse, and in order to cope with the changing environment, groups’ cultural features had been politically mobilized so to attract and gather the masses on a different legitimizing base. Ethnonationality Nowadays, in both Macedonia and BiH, the main political parties—and ever since the very beginning of the multiparty system’s implementation—, campaign almost exclusively on an ethnonational basis, not competing against each other but within the borders of their respective ethnonational communities. Relying on particular institutional assets thought to favour inter-group cooperation, political parties of both countries have been able to establish new alliances with ‘their own ethnicized masses’, hence generating new dynamics of power distribution. In order to gain legitimacy, ideological and institutional strategies have been used to highlight and safeguard ethnonational differences, in turn convincing the masses that only the ethnonational groups’ political representatives (rather than citizens’ representatives) could truly satisfy the masses’ needs and interests. Ideological indoctrination, partly allowed by the state structure, and generally based on fear of ‘otherness’—be that articulated in terms of institutional overruling or cultural contamination—emerged to be a key strategy to make the system function while keeping alive internal divisions drawn upon ethnonational lines. As Wimmer (2008a, b) argued, what influences the saliency of groups’ boundaries is the overarching institutional framework, the distribution of power between the groups, and the networks of political alliances shaping elite and non-elite interests and behaviours. But more precisely, it is the interactions between different social and political groups, based on compromises entailing ‘an exchange of the guarantee of political loyalty for the promise of participation and security’ (Wimmer 2004: 32), that allows for state functioning.

154 

A. Piacentini

In the context of institutionalized ethnopolitics, as is the case of Macedonia and BiH, both the elites and the masses have generally found it more convenient to interact within, rather than across, the boundaries of the ethnonational groups—so that, eventually, they started trusting each other, identifying with each other. In this way, ethnically selective patterns of behaviours and interactions have become routinized and taken for granted, becoming normal. The ruling political elite has also assumed ‘new’ functions, considerably blurring the distinction between the state and ruling parties. These latter, indeed, are largely seen as the state, and they have also become distributors of resources. As it emerged in the empirical chapters, public resources (and rights) are often redistributed to individuals in the quality of ethnic groups’ members and via ethnonational political parties—rather than to individuals in the quality of citizens and via depoliticized/de-ethnicized state institutions. In fact, together with ideological indoctrination via media and school systems, another strategy widely employed by ethnic entrepreneurs committed to ‘ruling by dividing’ is the large use of  ethno-­ clientelistic practices. As shown, the economic deficiencies and high rates of unemployment featuring both the Bosnian and Macedonian societies have allowed the parties-patrons to sell the masses-clients a ‘new’ kind of illusionary protection: the economic one. Political leaders in both Macedonia and BiH are often either or both in control of entire sectors of the public administration/public companies, and owners of private companies. In this way, and at some conditions (always involving voting during elections), they have been able to tie needy people while assuring themselves power. Therefore, where ideology does not arrive, the money arrives. However, it is worth saying again that establishment and normalization of such kind of dynamics, and in both the two countries surveyed, has been partly allowed and incentivized by the state structure itself— based on ethnic power-sharing mechanisms introduced as post-­ conflict measures. Although meant to favour the main societal groups’ participation in the decision-making processes, ethnic power-sharing mechanisms, applied in two countries already plagued by inter-group

6  The Story of Ethnonationality 

155

tensions and antipathies, could barely promote non-ethnic politics. Indeed, strength and appeal of ethnocentrism and nationalism have not decreased over the years; on the contrary, by exploiting the consociational mechanisms in their favour, the ethnic representatives of both countries have been able to ‘democratically’ rule by dividing—so making ‘divide et impera’ the way to do politics and govern their plural societies.

…But Different Legitimizing Grounds If ethnopolitics and ruling by dividing have become that pronounced and long-lasting, it is because they have been based on solid legitimizing grounds—which, however, consistently differ between the two countries analysed here—and ever since the rise of ethnonationalism at the end of the 1980s.

State Ownership and Groups’ Status in Macedonia In Macedonia, ethnonational parties do not sell protection from culturally and religiously different others (hence, protection in terms of ‘cultural contamination’), but mainly protection in terms of institutional representation of the groups composing the larger state. Given majority/ minority dynamics intertwined to far-back rooted collective frustrations related to the socio-political status occupied by the groups, political discourses in Macedonia have always been articulated on two oppositional narratives: ‘this is our state’ on the ethnic Macedonia side, and ‘this is also our state’ on the ethnic Albanian one. Ethnic Macedonians have constantly been contested as a distinct nation by the neighbouring states, and so was the territory of Macedonia—always considered a geographical area until when, within the establishment of the Socialist Yugoslavia, both the group and part of the geographical Macedonian territory have been politically recognized as separate and distinct. Ethnic Albanians in Macedonia, instead, have always been the largest among the smaller groups but, in spite of that, both during Yugoslavia and in independent Macedonia, have been treated as a minority and as

156 

A. Piacentini

belonging to a lower status—socially, culturally, and politically. However, if this lower status was ideologically overshadowed during the Yugoslav decades, given the Brotherhood and Unity policy, it became official in 1991. Trying to satisfy their historical dream of full statehood, ethnic Macedonians claimed the exclusive ownership of their state, eventually built on contestation rather than consensus; while ethnic Albanians, seeing their recently little-improved status fiercely downgraded to a minority, asked for status elevation to a co-constituency, where the co-state’s ownership meant political recognition and representation. Hence, mistrust between the two communities, ideologically overshadowed during Yugoslavia, became clearer in the 1990s, erupting in the 2001 conflict. Finally, with the new institutional asset set up by the OFA, collective frustrations and national struggles for recognition and representation found a sort of equilibrium and political legitimacy within the consociational frameworks, where representatives of the two biggest collectivities share power and state institutions alike (Piacentini 2019). However, since then, ethnic Macedonians feel themselves to be institutionally discriminated against, and their nation and (nation-)state endangered; while ethnic Albanians feel themselves to be finally levelling up the socio-political hierarchy and getting closer to their wished-for, but not yet achieved, status of a co-constituent nation of the Macedonian state. These historical, political, and institutional developments and dynamics, characterizing Macedonia since its Yugoslav past, make clear that when we try to understand the evolution of meanings and usages of ethnonationality in the Macedonian contexts we must consider two main issues: (1) far-back and deeply rooted collective frustrations and (2) majority–minority dynamics connected to different ideas of the very nature of the state—whether mono, bi-, or multinational. Collective frustrations connected to the status the groups occupy, and wish to occupy, within the state (practically speaking, a failed exclusive state’s ownership on one side, and a failed official co-ownership on the other one) indeed reveal a deeply rooted debate over the state’s ownership and explain why, for ethnonational political parties, to sell protection in terms of the groups’ representation in the state bodies is so important— the main political narrative from any side.

6  The Story of Ethnonationality 

157

The main cleavage between the ethnic Macedonian and ethnic Albanian communities, hence, is about the state’s ownership articulated in terms of ethnic groups’ collective rights and representation in the state bodies. According to what emerged from the interviews performed in Skopje, what has changed over time is only the official/institutional way in which ‘apparently ethnic’ cleavages and issues are articulated and managed. Overall, indeed, ethnonationality has always mattered, channelling groups’ claims and discontents, eventually affecting also the micro-world and the kind of social interactions between the groups.

The Bosnian No Man’s Land1 In BiH, instead, we can observe a different reality. By relying on both the absence of an ethnic majority above 50 per cent and on the experience of the war, ethnonational political parties in Bosnia play on a different political platform, and generally sell the illusionary protection from ‘cultural contaminations’ from the hand of different others. Since the 1990s, in fact, nationalist political discourses in Bosnia Herzegovina have always been based on cultural and religious clashes and incompatibilities, more than on co-ownership of the state. The articulation of nationalist rhetoric on cultural-religious grounds has been made possible because of the small distance and little differences between the three main Bosnian groups; as Conversi (1999) explained, when groups share many elements, then ethnic entrepreneurs have to fabricate some new ones in order to mark the groups’ boundaries. This explains the heavy ideological indoctrination pursued by those leaders, which had and have to constantly remind (and scare) people about their (little) differences if they want to preserve, and legitimize, their power positions. The implementation of consociational mechanisms in 1995 had then the effect of creating a sort of equilibrium—albeit fragile and paradoxical— in which the three ethnonational groups’ representatives can separately deal and rule over their ethnic masses without cooperating with each other, so keeping the situation immobile while gaining constant power by feeding people with different types of fear. To summarize, national leaders in Macedonia and BiH play the same game and follow the same rules but operate in and on two different

158 

A. Piacentini

legitimizing grounds. Although social and political ethnic-based divisions have, in both cases, to be nurtured and deepened via ideological and pragmatic/economic strategies, the difference between the two case studies lies in the main ‘justifying’ narrative—that is (mainly) about the groups’ socio-political status in the Macedonian case, while (mainly) about the groups’ cultural incompatibilities in the Bosnian one. It follows that although in both BiH and Macedonia the groups are involved in a debate over the very nature and identity of their states, the employed narratives are rather different: in BiH the state is ‘no one’s state’—each of the three groups see it differently but, more importantly, two groups out of three do not recognize it as their own, and seek for their ‘ethnicized portions of territory’ either autonomy or secession. In Macedonia we can observe the opposite: the state is seen as their own by both major groups, and both want to improve their respective group’s status at the expense of the others. Concluding, from a structural perspective, ethnonationality retains its political and institutional saliency—yet the state system has progressively and openly become ethnopolitical, favouring people’s adherence to collective and politicized identities, as well as ethnonationality’s self-interested mobilization. While highlighting how the institutions’ shape and the political elite’s behaviour play a decisive role in shaping ethnonationality’s meanings and functions by managing ethnic diversity and negotiating power among groups, these reflections do not want to deny people’s agency. On the contrary, without people’s support, ethnopolitics—and thus the multilayered salience acquired by ethnonational origins—would not be possible: if ‘divide et impera’ has become the way, if ethnonationality has become the criteria to access the state and enjoy rights and benefits, it means the vast majority of the people—moved by different reasons and interests—did and still do find advantages in keeping, aligning, and supporting, the status quo. However, not everyone does. In fact, people’s alignment or resistance, and the kind of interaction they entertain with and within their plural societies, largely depend on their understanding of ethnonationality—which, although it cannot be separated from the macro-influences they have been and are exposed to, also depends on their personal experiences.

6  The Story of Ethnonationality 

159

Generations With-in Their Plural Societies In the light of what was explained so far and pertaining to both countries’ macro-level, what follows looks at the main micro-differences that emerged in the meanings and functions people attribute to their own ethnonationality—and, in turn, about the nature of the interactions they entertain with and within their societies. The generational comparison provided here aims to make clear how and to what extent macro structures and events have influenced/influence the micro, and how the micro interacts with-in the macro. Only then, the overview describing different inter-generational dis-continuities within a family can be understood.

The (Differences Between) Yugoslav Generations The Macedonian and Bosnian generations of parents, born between 1952 and 1965 and socialized during the Yugoslav decades, happened to be rather dissimilar from each other. These differences seemed  to be largely due to the macro-features of their respective countries, not to their ethnonational origins. Indeed, in BiH no ethnic distinction could be made, and groups’ boundaries happened to be rather blurred; in Macedonia, instead, although the dividing line between the two major groups was more clearly traceable and group antagonism more perceivable, the specular positions assumed by the ethnic Macedonians and the ethnic Albanians on certain issues were rooted in politics. For what concerns the kind of mutual interactions between macro and micro—state and masses, the generation of parents from Macedonia, regardless of ethnonational origins, was perfectly aligned to the new system and no nostalgia from the past was impeding that alignment. Opposite to this was the case of the generation of parents from Bosnia which, again regardless of ethnonational origins, was sticking with the ‘Yugoslav understanding’ of ethnonationality, trying not to align to the drastically changed surrounding. Not by chance, the dichotomy aligned/non-aligned— rooted in the Yugoslav heritage of the Non-Aligned Movement—is here employed to denote either compliance with the rules in place in the

160 

A. Piacentini

society and normalized patterns of behaviours; or, on the contrary, an attitude of resistance and noncompliance with it. By bearing in mind the previous macro analysis, the main differences emerged between the two Yugoslav generations are the followings:  (i) Nature of the Social Distance and Use of the ‘Us and Them’ Dichotomy The social realities of Skopje and Sarajevo have emerged to be very different. While Skopje has been described as a ‘divided city’, where even in the most mixed area (the Old Bazaar) places and people are ethnically separated, Sarajevo has been described as still a rather mixed reality where the avoidance of certain groups and people is not really possible. The parents included in the Macedonian sample lived, since the Yugoslav era, in rather segregated social environments. Social divisions have been related to both groups’ cultural differences and politico-­ institutional mechanisms of exclusion/inclusion. In turn, inter-group relations have been described as ‘cold and superficial’ and the dichotomy ‘us and them’ was always employed to distinguish between the two main groups. As shown, given the deep-rooted ethnicization of political narratives and demands, it cannot be surprising that that generation’s members largely described their socio-political reality in the same terms, yet each one from its own ‘ethnic’ point of view. Socio-political dynamics were explained through the prism of (ethnic) collectivism and in terms of the groups’ struggles for recognition and status elevation and, in a broader perspective, in terms of state ownership. In the Bosnian sample, instead, parents have always been used to living together, never paying attention to people’s ethnonational backgrounds— which began to socially matter in the 1990s, and especially with and after the conflict. Inter-ethnic relations between ordinary citizens have, in this case, been described as ‘still rather good’ and mainly depicted as relations between human beings rather than ethnic groups—to further stress that ethnonationality has never mattered from a social perspective. However, acknowledging that this is not the rule, and that ethnonationality does matter in the larger Bosnian socio-political environment, the dichotomy ‘us and them’ did emerge also in this case. Curiously, however, the generation of parents from Sarajevo did use the ‘us and them’ dichotomy not to

6  The Story of Ethnonationality 

161

distinguish between people belonging to different ethnic groups but, rather, to distinguish between us—the poor  people, and them—the (new) political class (Đilas 1957). (ii) Political Attitudes Given these premises about the nature and quality of social interactions, social environments, and attitudes towards the groups composing the larger society, it cannot be too surprising that the parents interviewed in Skopje and in Sarajevo also had different political attitudes. The inhabitants of Skopje were all supporting ethnonational parties, with ethnic Albanians supporting the party stemming from the 2001 conflict, while ethnic Macedonians mainly the leftist and liberal one (still ethnonational despite its recent opening up towards other communities during the 2016 electoral campaign). The support for ethnonational parties, especially in the ethnic Albanian case, was motivated in terms of collective interests’ protections and groups’ institutional representation. Nevertheless, on the one side the political scenario (analysed in detailed in Chap. 3) has shown there is not much alternative besides ethnonational political representatives, since multiethnic and civic parties hardly exist; on the other side, groups’ protection in terms of institutional representation is, ever since the first government formed in 1991, a key point addressed and stressed by the main parties—which, as seen, largely campaign on this platform and articulate their narratives in ethnic terms. The inhabitants of Sarajevo, instead, generally supported parties campaigning along civic and ethnically inclusive platforms, which reflected their overall anti-nationalist and anti-elite political positions. The support for national parties was framed and explained in terms of fear and need of survival—both in quality of individuals and groups’ members— in a society where ethnonational belonging is the principle according to which people are represented, interests safeguarded, and resources redistributed. The explanation the Bosnian parents generally gave was in terms of bad governance and political-institutional coercive powers not leaving people (m)any alternative. As a consequence of the different political attitudes between the two parents’ generations, different attitudes towards phenomena involving

162 

A. Piacentini

the groups composing the society also emerged. The clearest example was about ethno-clientelism, widely present in both the two case studies’ societies. In Macedonia, given that groups’ institutional representation is collectively understood as synonymous of groups’ status—either elevation or decay—and groups’ status in the larger society has always been a matter of concern and debate between the two groups, clientelistic practices running along ethnonational lines and aimed at improving/decreasing the representation of certain groups in the state’s bodies were morally condemned but practically normalized and sometimes practiced, and generally described as a sort of collateral effect of an otherwise superior goal. The Bosnian sample, once again, revealed a slightly different attitude. Ethno-clientelistic practices were condemned and framed in terms of political strategies implemented by ethnic entrepreneurs ‘to trap’ people exploiting the state’s bad economic conditions. Indeed, the Bosnian parents framed people’s involvement into clientelistic networks in terms of need of surviving in a poor country; and those who engage in those practices—instrumentally mobilizing their ethnonationality even when not ideologically supporting the parties selling the favour—were generally commiserated, depicted as surrendered to a coercive context in order to survive the ethnopolitical scaffolding. (iii) The Attitude Towards Their Yugoslav and Post-Yugoslav States and the Concept of Yugonostalgia Finally, a few other main differences, all interconnected, emerged between the two older generations. As seen before, the Macedonian reality is featured by long-term and deeply rooted collective frustrations and majority–minority dynamics connected to different ideas of the very nature of the state—mono, bi-, or multinational. It goes that the events characterizing the 1990s, when Macedonia was established as an ethnic nation-state and the ethnic Albanians treated once again as second-class citizens, also produced a ‘rather cold’ attitude towards Yugoslavia and justified the then alignment with the new system. From an ethnic Macedonian perspective, the

6  The Story of Ethnonationality 

163

collapsing structure, acknowledged as objectively good, was however not the best, since the best was collectively seen as the recently-achieved full sovereignty and statehood. From an ethnic Albanian perspective, instead, the subordination experienced in the nascent independent state was seen as the continuation of an already existing subordination; so, although Yugoslavia was acknowledged as a rather fair and good system, it served as a base for a graver discrimination. In both the two major groups’ cases, the changing macro environment produced a cold attitude towards the Yugoslav past, and the alignment with the new system was based on the (past and future) struggles for national recognition and status elevation. In line with what Mishler and Rose (1997: 420) argued in their study about trust and scepticism in postcommunist societies, ‘the ultimate failure and collapse of Communism also may serve, perversely, to encourage public trust in the institutions of the new regimes’. Consequently therefore, the concept of Yugonostalgia was used to illustrate people’s failed adjustment to the new conditions. In BiH, instead, we find the opposite attitude. Emotional attachment to the Yugoslav past widely emerged during the interviews and regardless of the ethnonationality of the respondents. In particular, the respondents highlighted, and missed, the life climate in BiH at that time—a time in which ethnonationality was not important in ordinary citizens’ lives and where it did not constitute a social obstacle. The concept of Yugonostalgia was in the Bosnian case framed completely differently and aimed at illustrating the failure of the new system itself, not of people in adjusting to it. This shift of attention from people’s failed adjustment—in the Macedonian case, to the state’s failure—in the Bosnian case, may thus be explained as a subjective and ‘periodic revision based on more recent experiences and evaluations of contemporary performance’ (Mishler and Rose 1997: 436), particularly the political ones.2 This, in turn, points the attention to the two generations’ different attitudes towards their respective new systems more in general. In the Macedonian case, regardless of the ethnonationality of the respondents, the new independent system was widely accepted and preferred; while in the Bosnian case, it generally was despised and acknowledged as the reason for Bosnia’s destruction, often depicted as a ‘non country’.

164 

A. Piacentini

(iv) Identities and Identifications Last but not least, identities and ways of self-identification also happened to be different. In the Macedonian case, identities emerged to be collective and crystallized with no option for crossing the borders of ethnonational belonging and creating alternative, non-aligned forms of self-identification. In the Bosnian case, once again, identities emerged to be fluid and definitely multiple, despite their sharp ethnicization and crystallization from a politico-institutional point of view. This difference, however, is also linked to the two countries’ respective social-divisions backgrounds: in Skopje, as seen, the two major groups have never really mixed together although coexisting in the same city; and mixed-marriages have never been a common practice. In Sarajevo, instead, people have always been used to sharing not only the same urban spaces but also to mix in their personal lives; and mixed marriages were common—at least until before the war. Therefore, in light of both Sarajevo’s cultural heritage and the parents’ socialization, in the context of Sarajevo some have developed ‘alternative forms of identification’ aimed at escaping ethnic categorizations imposed from above. Next to the ‘Bosnian Herzegovinian’ identity stood also the ‘Sarajevan’ one—however both identities linked and stressed the plural character of the country and, especially, the cosmopolitan features of its capital city.

Aligned and Non-aligned In light of the above, we can now understand why the parents from the Macedonian sample were aligned with the new system while those from the Bosnian sample generally were not. Many factors have influenced the ways people signify and attribute meanings to their ethnonational belonging: as seen, institutions’ shape, political parties’ narratives, old groups’ frustrations, collective memories about Yugoslavia and their respective conflicts, the features and the heritage of their cities of residence, and so on. Therefore, the alignment of the older generation from the Macedonian sample, regardless of the ethnonationality of the respondents, may be

6  The Story of Ethnonationality 

165

explained in terms of interiorization of deep-rooted, yet still dominant, antagonist narratives articulated in ethnic terms which have then shaped interaction’s dynamics and patterns of behaviour. This interiorization has, in turn, produced a strong and exclusive identification with the group of belonging (Huddy 2001), and the identification with it is strictly tied to major issues such as the state’s identity and the state’s ownership. Ethnonationality, therefore, emerged to be not only a politicized element used by political representatives to articulate old frustrations stemming from different social statuses and power positions within the state, but also a social filter interiorized by most people and able to a priori channel and exclude interactions. The overall non-alignment of the older generation from the Bosnian sample, again regardless of the ethnonationality of the respondents, may instead be explained in terms of interiorization of the previous dominant narratives, interactions’ dynamics, and patterns of behaviour. Coupled with a total awareness of ethnonationality’s politicization and exploitation for political purposes, the identification with the group of belonging (when possible, given the often mixed backgrounds of the respondents) was not stated in exclusive terms but, rather, was one among many others. Nevertheless, occasional forms of adjustment emerged also in the Bosnian case but, more than the result of interiorized feelings of ethnonational attachment and satisfaction with the new system, these have been explained in terms of survival and resignation to it. In those cases, identification with the group of belonging, but above all with the party representing it, meant a shortcut to obtain resources. Ethnonationality, in the Bosnian case, emerged to be mainly if not only a strongly politicized element used by political representatives to gain and maintain power positions while, at the social level, a politically created obstacle challenged when, and if, possible.

The Post-Yugoslav Generations The Macedonian and Bosnian young adults surveyed in this work happened to be more similar to each other than the members of the older generation. Their similarities pertained generally to the way their

166 

A. Piacentini

socio-­political realities were described and, to some extent, also to the modalities of signifying and using their ethnonationality. However, differences also emerged, and these played a very important role in differentiating the two young generations—the Macedonian one, largely aligned and adjusted to the system, while the Bosnian one mostly sticking with the previous system’s ethnonationality’s conceptions and related behaviours.

Same Perspective, Different Environments The young adults of both countries, aged between twenty-five and thirty years old, have grown up after the fall of Yugoslavia and Socialism, and in societies surrounded by ethnonationalism and featured by divisions drawn upon ethnic lines. When describing their current social and political realities, as well as particular phenomena such as ethno-­ clientelism, both the two countries’ young adults furnished rather complex and ‘de-ethnicized’ descriptions of the same. Regardless of their ethnonational belonging, they all were very critical towards the political class, described as self-interested and nurturing/exploiting social divisions for power purposes. In both states, the post-Yugoslavs have pointed attention to the strategies used by ethnic entrepreneurs to indoctrinate and bind the ethnic masses, mentioning the negative consequences of ethnically segregated education, politically controlled and ethnicized media, and clientelism growing due to economic deficiencies. Concerning this last phenomenon, the explanations given by the young adults showed a sense of frustration stemming from a clash between their future hopes and a corrupted state system selling opportunities and benefits according to ethnicity and party membership, rather than educational and working skills. However, the phenomenon of ethno-­ clientelism seemed to be more pronounced and normalized in the context of Skopje while, in Sarajevo, only a few said they personally know someone engaged in those practices, and none of them had ever been involved in it. Acknowledging that anyone in their societies is living in the same conditions and experiencing the same problems, the young adults from both countries were framing their realities from an individual perspective— definitely prevailing over the collective one. These young men and women

6  The Story of Ethnonationality 

167

were not distinguishing between ethnonational groups. Any form of rivalry based on ethnonational belonging did not emerge, and the salience of these collective identities was said to be politically exasperated. The ethnonationality of belonging was in fact compared to a skill spendable in order to progress (or survive) in the society, by obtaining benefits and resources redistributed to ethnic groups’ members and via ethnic parties’ membership. The role of politicians and ethnonationalism in ­dividing/ deepening the divide between groups has been acknowledged and described by both the post-Yugoslav generations, which saw in the political class—rather than in the citizenry or in the ethnonational groups—the source of their respective countries’ problems. The prevailing political attitude was thus one of anti-nationalism and anti-elitism, mirrored in mistrust towards the state and its institutions, and political disengagement. Nevertheless, besides these similar attitudes, a few differences between the two younger generations did emerge as well, and these happened to be determinant when retracing those dis-similarities and dis-continuities between the older and younger generations, finally informing ethnonationality’s evolution. (i) Context of Residence Although we can safely consider both Macedonia and BiH divided societies, the contexts of Skopje and Sarajevo are, as already seen, rather different from each other and, in turn, they had a different influencing potential. For example,  while both younger generations experienced divided education in their childhood, Sarajevo’s heritage of ‘unity in diversity’ and its ‘less-divided’ spaces helped the Bosnian young adults not to live within encapsulated ‘ethnic bubbles’. They have, indeed, been able to develop and cultivate inter-ethnic friendship relations, highlighting the impossibility of avoiding ‘other people’. The young adults from Sarajevo, thus, happened to be better equipped and thus more able to overcome politicized groups’ boundaries and live social lives as much as possible untied from ethnic distinctions. As in their parents’ case, ethnonationality was acknowledged as one of the many identity’s components, as well as an element misused for power purposes—however challenged as much as possible in their everyday lives thanks to the still mixed character of the city of Sarajevo.

168 

A. Piacentini

Their fellows from Skopje, instead, depicted a different reality characterized by more encapsulated social environments, ranging from their family units to their primary and secondary schools, from their groups of friends to the places where they hang out and have fun. A couple of them, indeed, said they never had friends belonging to other groups, and the boundary line between the different ethnonational groups definitely emerged as more blurred and easier to cross in Sarajevo than Skopje— where, instead, the boundary line is sharper and not easy to overcome. The young adults from Skopje, indeed, showed the existence of a discrepancy between theory and practice, meanings and functions, ideas and behaviours concerning ethnonationality. On the one side, ethnonationality was  acknowledged as politicized and exploited for power purposes; while, on the other side, it sharply defined their identities and channeled them into their social lives, making it very hard to shift, redefine, and cross group boundaries. Accordingly, although very similar (regardless of ethnonational origins) in their ways of framing and describing their social reality, the young adults from Skopje were behaving ‘according to the rules’, not challenging ethnic categorizations and adapting to the context. Yet it is worth stressing that, more than a conscious and ideologically connoted establishment of boundaries, the young adults’ use of the ‘us and them’ dichotomy seemed the outcome of normalized and well-rooted patterns of interaction, further consolidated by the features of their macro and micro environments. Therefore, their behaviour adjusted to the system. (ii) Family Backgrounds and Narratives Another difference between the two younger generations was connected to their family units: yet what emerged to have a great influencing potential on their ways of framing ethnonationality was not much the mixed or monoethnic nature of the family environment. Rather, it was their parents’ memories and attitudes towards the Yugoslav past.

6  The Story of Ethnonationality 

169

The Bosnian parents have, indeed, stressed the importance of nurturing and preserving good human (rather than ethnic) relations by bringing to their children the positive example of the Yugoslav Bosnian society (meaning, the pre-war non-nationalist society)—depicted as a model society featured by understating and respect for diversity. In the Macedonian case instead, the parents’ cold attitude towards the Yugoslav Macedonian society (meaning, the pre-independence society), together with the de facto different social reality experienced, has deprived this young generation of a positive alternative example of how social relations within a plural society could and perhaps should work. However, contrary to their parents, the young adults from Macedonia pointed attention to the multinational nature of their state, never referring to debates over the mono, bi-, or multinational character of Macedonia, acknowledging the need for shared feelings of belonging.

Aligned and Non-aligned In light of these generational similarities and differences, we can understand why the young adults from Macedonia were overall aligned with the new system, while the young generation from Bosnia was not. As in the older generation’s case, many factors have influenced the way these younger generations attribute meanings and mobilize their ethnonational belonging, yet the features of their cities of residence, and the narratives circulating in their family environments have played a key role. Although both the younger generations were framing their socio-political realities in the same terms, with the individual dimension prevailing over the collective one, the overall alignment of the young generation from Macedonia (and regardless of the ethnonationality of the respondents) may be explained in terms of interiorization and normalization of the interaction’s dynamics and patterns of behaviour governing their society. This interiorization has (as in their parents’ case) produced exclusive identification with the group of belonging—which is taken for granted; but, contrary to their parents, it is neither ideologically nor politically connoted. Accordingly, and more precisely, the arguments put forward by the young adults from Skopje drew attention to a discrepancy between semantic and pragmatic ideas and behaviours concerning

170 

A. Piacentini

ethnonationality. On the one side, ethnonationality was acknowledged as one identity component very much politicized and instrumentalized by the political class, also but not only in virtue of the power-sharing mechanisms. The negative consequences of this collective identity’s politicization were acknowledged, and many expressed their wish of bringing the communities closer. On the other side, however, this ‘conceptual awareness’ was not reflected in their social behaviour—as for the most part, the young adults were following those same rules they were criticizing; not challenging ethnic categorizations and boundaries but taking them for granted. Nevertheless, it is worth stressing that the behavioural compliance with the status quo was, generally, the outcome of normalized and rooted patterns of interaction, further consolidated by the features of their macro and micro environments, more than a conscious and ideologically connoted establishment of boundaries. The overall non-alignment of the younger generation from Sarajevo (again regardless of the ethnonationality of the respondents) may, instead, be explained in terms of interiorization of the previous system’s dominant narratives, interaction’s dynamics and patterns of behaviour, largely transmitted by their parents and still partly featuring the micro-reality of Sarajevo. As in their parents’ case, identification with the group of belonging (when possible) was only one feature among others; and the choice for alternative and more inclusive forms of identification, such as the Bosnian Herzegovinian and the Sarajevan ones, illustrated their attempt in going against that politically sponsored collectivization on an ethnic basis. Occasional forms of alignment with the system were acknowledged by both the Macedonian and Bosnian post-Yugoslav generations, and described in terms of survival and resignation to ethnopolitics, so as to highlight the instrumental character assumed by the origins of belonging. In conclusion, although both younger generations described ethnonationality as something that should not (be used to) divide people, the Sarajevo’s reality helped the Bosnian young adults in living their everyday lives as much as possible untied from ethnonational distinctions and categorizations. While, instead, the same cannot be said for the young adults from Skopje, where ethnonationality emerged to be a normalized social filter interiorized by the most and able to a priori channel and exclude interactions.

6  The Story of Ethnonationality 

171

Ethnonationality Across Generations The parents and children from both Sarajevo and Skopje happened to be very similar to each other. Nevertheless, a closer look beneath the surface reveals that only in the case of the families from Sarajevo it is appropriate to talk about inter-generational continuity concerning the meanings and functions of the ethnonationality of belonging.

Similarity and Partial Interruption in Macedonia The Yugoslav and post-Yugoslav generations living in Skopje seem to be very similar to each other, as both appeared aligned with the new system and no nostalgia from the past was hindering the alignment process. Given this similarity between parents and children, we could think of a perfect inter-generational continuity for what concerns meanings and functions attributed to ethnonationality. However, a look beneath the surface reveals that the kind of continuity emerging is only superficial: the barely-changed surrounding environment and modalities of interactions within the society have allowed for an inter-generational similarity mirrored in similar patterns of behaviours; yet this behavioural similarity is not enough to account for a linear transmission of values and attitudes from one generation to the other. This does not mean parents have not had any influence on their offspring—far from it. It only means that there has been an interruption concerning the modalities in which ethnonationality is understood, framed, and used by the two generations— which are rather different although the final outcome, hence the surface appearance, looks  the same. Both the generations are aligned with the new system and surrounding environment, but within two different points and dimensions. The parents’ generation, socialized in Yugoslavia but in a republic resembling an ethnic nation-state and in which majority–minority dynamics always had relevance, has maintained a rather constant attachment towards their own ethnonational group and attitude towards the  others. More precisely, the older generation had the tendency to explain and frame events and phenomena in the light of the 1991–2001

172 

A. Piacentini

decade’s events, hence they were aligned (or stuck) to that point of the transition. They seemed to have interiorized those deep-rooted antagonist narratives—which have then shaped interaction dynamics and patterns of behavior with and within the society. The ethnic collective dimension was, in fact, the prevailing one in their discourses; and their arguments were generally articulated in terms of ethnic collectivities struggling for recognition and status elevation. Ethnonationality, which already back in Yugoslavia was important and connected to the groups’ socio-political statuses, has remained so. Ethnonationality, in the older generation’s case, hence  emerged to be not only a social filter able to channel and exclude social interactions but also, and more importantly, a tool mobilized by individuals to serve collective goals first of all. To this generation, therefore, ethnonationality has always mattered, channelling groups’ claims and discontents, eventually affecting also their micro-­ world and the kind of social interactions they entertained with the other societal groups. In terms of social behaviours, the younger generation was also going along with the ethnic divisions present in the society, not actively challenging them. The ‘us and them’ dichotomy was also in this generation’s case rather frequently featuring discourses and arguments, and ethno-­ clientelistic practices entailing the instrumental mobilization of ethnonationality largely acknowledged (and sometimes  practiced) also among the younger ones. However, besides superficial inter-generational similarities, the inner substance—namely the  meanings and functions of one’s own ethnonationality—emerged to be rather different across the two generations. The parents’ way of framing and using ethnonationality, more politically and ideologically connoted, has not been transmitted to their children, so there has been an interruption accounting for inter-­ generational similarity rather than continuity. The younger generation of their children, who did not personally live through any political transition or national struggle, had the tendency to frame and explain socio-­ political phenomena and reality in light of the current ethnopolitics, and from an individual—rather than a collective—perspective. These variations beneath the surface represent an important generational difference, which testify about how (particularly) the events featuring the 1990s have deeply shaped the parents’ ways of conceiving ethnonationality, as

6  The Story of Ethnonationality 

173

well as the groups composing the larger state, and the state’s nature and identity itself; and how this way of signifying ethnonationality has however not been transmitted from one generation to the next. This different way of conceiving ethnonationality and thus societal phenomena was especially evident while discussing groups’ institutional representation and connected clientelistic practices: if the older generation showed a sense of collective frustration on the one side, and a sense of ‘final upgrading’ on the other, the young adults (regardless of their ethnonationality of belonging) have generally drawn attention to political strategies connected to poor economic conditions, emphasizing how people get involved in certain dynamics for mere survival. This invites a further reflection on the role of political parties—not simply representatives of the groups, but proxies towards collective rights (more emphasized by the older generation) and individual benefits (more emphasized by the younger generation). The different meanings and functions attributed to ethnonationality by parents and children also highlighted their different perceptions over the very nature of the state and its identity more in general. The double narrative ‘this is our state/this is also our state’ was always surfacing in the old generations’ arguments, however it was always absent in the younger generation’s arguments. In addition to that, parents’ constant focus on the group dimension and issues related to groups’ representation in the state bodies revealed a major disagreement over the very nature of the state, thus ‘justifying’ the dichotomy ‘us and them’. Their children, more oriented towards the individual dimension and focused on other factors different from groups’ struggles and status’ upgrading, drew attention to the multi national nature of their state, and the consequent need for building cohesion—hampered, as they said, by political and economic issues exploited by the (ethnic) political class. Lastly, the younger generation’s tendency in adopting social behaviours very similar to those of their parents’ generation, meaning sticking with the in-groups without challenging the existing divisions, emerged to be once again very differently explained and framed compared to the older generation. The young adults have largely and generally grown up in monoethnic social contexts, where both the family and school environments were not ethnically mixed. As they acknowledged, this precluded them the possibility of making inter-ethnic friendships, which do remain

174 

A. Piacentini

mostly confined to the in-group. As they also explained, this ‘spontaneous’ tendency in complying without challenging social divisions drawn along ethnic lines, was the outcome of normalized divisions and consequent social norms of behaviour. This younger generation’s awareness explains how and why an interruption with their parents’ generation occurred: their being emotionally and physically detached from national struggles, coupled with their acknowledgment of the multiethnic nature of the state, the hindering force of social divisions, the dangers stemming from segregated school environments, and the consequent need of bridging closer the two communities, is what informs their modality of framing and signifying ethnonationality. Their origins of belonging, therefore, continue to matter defining their identities, yet in their eyes these should not make any difference. Concluding, we can say that the parents’ way of framing and using ethnonationality, grounded in the collective dimension and more politically and ideologically connoted, has not been transmitted to their children, thus accounting for a partial inter-generational interruption concerning the ethnonationality’s meanings and functions. As a consequence, we cannot properly talk about inter-generational continuity. There is, instead, an inter-generational behavioural  similarity deriving from the little-changed surrounding context: a macro-environment sharply divided across ethnonational lines could not but produce and sustain divisions drawn upon the same—hence generating that apparent and superficial continuity across two different generations.

Continuity in Bosnia Herzegovina In the case of the Bosnian families, we can retrace a certain level of inter-­ generational continuity for what concerns the meanings and functioning of one’s own ethnonationality, as well as a high degree of similarity in the ways people interact with and within their plural realities. The two generations happened to be aligned with the ‘old conception’ of ethnonationality, according to which ethno-cultural origins should remain confined to the private sphere of life and not interfere with social and political relations. Therefore, the family scenario seems one of ‘reverted

6  The Story of Ethnonationality 

175

alignment’ however combined with possible utilitarian and occasional uses of one’s own ethnonational background. Both generations acknowledged how the heavy politicization of collective identities has created divisions that, once institutionalized, made ethnonationality the pillar of the state and society alike. They both recognized how difficult it may be for ordinary citizens to act and think out of the dominant framework. Indeed, the Yugoslav and post-Yugoslav generations demonstrated how, in their small social circles, they try their best to retain and preserve good and close relations with anyone—regardless of ethnonational origins. However, given their society works by different rules, sometimes people ‘have to’ adjust themselves. As they explained, the state, its institutions, and actors, have a powerful coercive potential ‘pushing’ people in participating into a system they despise. Both nationalist parties’ supporters and those who get involved  into clientelistic networks  have  largely been depicted as poor people, politically manipulated and left with no alternative. The need to survive in a deeply divided state functioning according to the ethnopolitics’ rules has been identified as the major reason why people might adapt and interact through particualristic channels with the system, reproducing the status quo. Ideology was not mentioned. This does not mean the ideological potential of nationalism has no appeal: it surely has, but it is the instrumental mobilization of ethnonationality, not ideology, which at the end of the day helps people to survive. However, as in the Macedonian case, the micro reality in which people live had a role in favouring this inter-generational continuity. Although the demographics of the city of Sarajevo has changed in the last two decades, its inhabitants—or at least many of them—still believe in the positive heritage of the city and in its cosmopolitan character, so are trying to retain good relations and contacts with anyone. Consequently, people of both generations have developed ‘alternative and non-aligned forms of identification’ aimed at stressing the plural character of their country and city, and so of their identities. Civic and non-ethnic forms of identification may be the outcome of ethnically mixed origins but also of political views against nationalism and its collectivization. Next to the ‘Bosnian Herzegovinian’ identity has emerged the ‘Sarajevan’ one. As

176 

A. Piacentini

mentioned earlier in the chapter, both the two kinds of identification express attachment and identification with a plural entity—be that either BiH or Sarajevo, taking a distance from ethnic collectivization, while at the same time including and encompassing any ethnonational group (Piacentini 2020). These two modalities of self-identification sought to highlight the (once more than nowadays) cosmopolitan and plural character of BiH and Sarajevo but, above all, that cosmopolitan character some of the Yugoslav parents and their post-Yugoslav offspring have identified as a value that needs to be preserved from nationalist contamination and homogenization. Declaring to be a ‘Bosnian Herzegovinian’ or a ‘Sarajevan’, indeed, was a way to escape ethnic collectivization and make clear their anti-nationalist and anti-elite political positions. Another element that allowed for inter-generational continuity was the parents’ attitude towards Yugoslavia. The strong belief that ‘that society’ was a perfect example of how a plural society should function has been transmitted to their children through the telling of stories and positive experiences; also, those blamed for having destroyed that positive life climate have been the political elites, never ordinary people or ethnic groups—in turn transmitting to their children the idea that individuals, regardless of their ethno-cultural backgrounds, can live together sharing the same spaces. The emerging inter-generational continuity was thus encompassing both the social behavioural sphere and the sphere of political opinions and attitudes. Accordingly, both the generations highlighted their deep disappointment towards the political class, blamed for creating and deepening the divide—social and political—between the communities. In the case of both generations, socio-political phenomena were explained in terms of bad governance coupled with economic deficiencies, never in terms of group antagonism and competition. In fact, the dichotomy ‘us and them’ was by both generations’ members used to distinguish between people and political elite, normal citizens, and nationalist leaders. As with their parents, all the young adults recognized that the ‘problem’ was more politico-institutional than inherently social. To conclude: in the Bosnian case ethnonational belonging emerged to have two different meanings according to the level of analysis considered—not to the generation sampled: we can identify the first as ‘social-­ contextual’ while  the second one as ‘politico-institutional’.

6  The Story of Ethnonationality 

177

Ethnonationality’s meanings and functions have generally been described for the negative consequences they produce, rather than as forms of attachment and pride; this does not mean the people interviewed did not express any sort of ethnonational sentiment—they did but, as seen, in some cases it was too difficult, if not impossible, to define ‘which the group of belonging was’, so stressing the fluidity and the multiplicity of identities and form of identifications. On the contrary, from a politico-­institutional perspective, people are sharply defined according to their backgrounds and origins, which in turn clearly define their institutionally crystallized identities. Hence, as their words illustrated, when micro and macro enter into contact, and the individual dimension come across the collective one, the possibility of instrumental uses of ethnonationality aimed at safeguarding one’s own survival becomes plausible, a key able to open doors in a captured  country, allowing access to the politico-­institutional level, finally helping to survive the ethnopolitical scaffolding.

Notes 1. No Man’s Land is a movie directed by Danis Tanović, and it won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 2001. 2. See W. Mishler and R. Rose, 2002. ‘Learning and re-learning regime support: the dynamics of post-Communist regimes’. European Journal of Political Research, 41: 5, pp. 5–36.

References Conversi, D. 1999. Nationalism, Boundaries and Violence. Millennium: Journal of International Studies 28 (3): 535–584. Đilas, M. 1957. The New Class. An Analysis of the Communist System. London: Thames and Hudson. Huddy, L. 2001. From Social to Political Identity: A Critical Examination of Social Identity Theory. Political Psychology 22 (1): 127–156. Malešević, S. 2004. The Sociology of Ethnicity. London: Sage Publications. Mishler, W., and R.  Rose. 1997. Trust, Distrust and Skepticism: Popular Evaluations of Civil and Political Institutions in Post-Communist Societies. The Journal of Politics 59 (2): 418–451.

178 

A. Piacentini

———. 2002. Learning and Re-Learning Regime Support: The Dynamics of Post-Communist Regimes. European Journal of Political Research 41 (5): 5–36. Piacentini, A. 2019. State’s Ownership and “State-Sharing”. The Role of Collective Identities and the Socio-Political Cleavage Between Ethnic Macedonians and Ethnic Albanians in the Republic of Macedonia. Nationalities Paper 47 (3): 461–476. ———. 2020. “Nonaligned Citizens”: Ethnic Power-Sharing and Nonethnic Identities in Bosnia Herzegovina. The Case of Sarajevo'. Nationalities Papers, 48:1, pp. 1–14. Wimmer, A. 2004. Nationalist Exclusion and Ethnic Conflict. Shadows of Modernity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2008a. Elementary Strategies of Ethnic Boundary Making. Ethnic and Racial Studies 30 (6): 1025–1055. ———. 2008b. The Making and Unmaking of Ethnic Boundaries: A Multilevel Process Theory. American Journal of Sociology 113 (4): 970–1022.

7 Conclusion: What Can We Learn?

We have finally arrived at the end of this book, whose arguments have focused and encompassed two countries, four generations, and almost one hundred individuals. Throughout the previous six chapters, we have explored how the concept of ethnonationality has evolved over time, who and what concurred to shape its meanings and functions, and why. We looked at the Yugoslav system and its institutional and constitutional complexity, yet never forgetting and underestimating how much, and how quickly, economic issues and disparities could alter the equilibrium. We then jumped into the new world, where everything seems to be the opposite of what it used to be. We ventured into the lives of two generations living in the same family, and we saw through their eyes and experienced through their words both the Yugoslav decades and the tragedies of war, both the end of an era and the consolidation of another one. This generational time travel helped us to understand the connections between past and present, individuals and collectivities, structural changes and generational responses. It allowed us to identify generational trends and possible inter-generational dis-continuities and dis-similarities connected to the way individuals frame, signify, and use their origins of belonging, shedding light on how, why, and when, ethnonationality’s © The Author(s) 2020 A. Piacentini, Ethnonationality’s Evolution in Bosnia Herzegovina and Macedonia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39189-8_7

179

180 

A. Piacentini

semantics and pragmatic are negotiated and tailored. Yet at this point I am aware one cannot help but wonder what we can learn from these generations? What is the evolution of ethnonationality in BiH and Macedonia teaching us? And what is the conclusion’s relevance beyond the case studies?

Reflecting About With the territorial and political reorganization of the post-Yugoslav space, the inhabitants of the former Yugoslav republics found themselves citizens of new states, yet in ethno-cultural terms sometimes closer to others, the ethnic kin-states. Contrary to the Western European tradition, where nationality and citizenship are considered synonymous, in multinational former-Socialist states ethnonationality is sometimes different and sometimes in addition to citizenship, definitely not a question of place of residence. This was even clearer in our cases under analysis, Bosnia Herzegovina and Macedonia, where ever since the Yugoslav decades a civic understanding of the nations within the single republics was never built, and the development of a supra-ethnic ‘Bosnian Herzegovinian’ nation or, similarly, a ‘Macedonian’ nation comprehensive of ethnic Macedonians, Albanians, and other groups, has never been encouraged. The absence of supra-ethnic identities did not constitute a problem—or at least it did not until the 1980s, when that very lack became the pivotal point around which the groups’ political mobilization would gravitate. Ethnonationality became a political weapon, and the more it got imbued in economic, political, and institutional issues, the more it symbolized different positions in the power hierarchy, fostering rivalries and sharpening antagonisms. After the SFRY dissolution, and despite international and domestic attempts1 in promoting ‘civic and non-ethnic’ ideas of both the multinational states and their inhabitants— where citizens, rather than ethnonational groups, are at its core—supra-­ ethnic feelings of belonging and attachment have difficulty prevailed over the ethnonational ones. Additionally, in the new world, ethnonationality has become much more than an identity component, serving functions which fuel and nurture its multidimensional salience.

7  Conclusion: What Can We Learn? 

181

On the one side, the ethnonational parties and leaders ruling over the post-Yugoslav political landscape did, and do, employ several strategies to gain popular trust and support while, at the same time, nurturing ethnonational divisions so as to keep their positions of power. Politics indeed pervades any of life’s aspects, and ethnic groups and ethnic party memberships have become crucial for obtaining and enjoying rights and benefits redistributed along ethnic rather than citizenship criteria. With these premises, thinking and acting out of the dominant framework, hence depoliticizing and de-emphasizing the public and political importance of ethnonationality is, from an ordinary citizen’s perspective, seriously hard. Yet as it has been repeated many times throughout this work, individuals do play a role. On the other side, in fact, although highly responsible for deepening the divide, proposing and at times imposing ethnonationality’s new meanings and especially functions, the political elites of BiH and Macedonia cannot be blamed as the sole guilty actors: as seen, it is about a set of historical circumstances, political events and choices, institutional designs and incentives—and the consent of the masses. People have learnt how to behave in their societies—societies in which ethnonationality may literally ‘save your life’, and societies they all contribute to shape. What seems to feature more significantly in ethnonationality’s evolutionary process is the practical functions it has progressively assumed. Its evolution seems characterized by the various overlaps and juxtapositions of practical and psychological functions and meanings; not only it is able to protect individuals and collectivities by offering them an identity shelter in the chaotic plural reality, but it also offers practical help in the chaotic politicization of backgrounds and particularization of state–masses relations. It is both a social filter and a proxy for entering the political-institutional world. What ethnonationality’s dimension will be prioritized, and what functions it will serve— hence, what the bases and conditions of its negotiation are—depends on both structural and subjective factors. Overall however, it seems that, at the present moment, in both Macedonia and Bosnia Herzegovina, the use of ethnonationality as a social filter and politico-institutional proxy is generally more convenient than its deconstruction, depoliticization, and deinstitutionalization—and this is the case for the majority of both the political elites and the citizens. But in the same way that people and elites

182 

A. Piacentini

have learned how to use ethnonationality, we might hypothesize they will also learn how not to use it anymore—and this will happen when it will no longer be convenient. The point is, thus, time.2 This brings us back to the very beginning of this work, the reasons why this whole journey began, and why we explored the micro-impact of macro-changes and how macro and micro interact together, influencing each other. Because it is these interactions, taking place right now, at this very moment, in the banality of everyday life, and that are becoming normal ways of interacting, that in ten or twenty years’ time will serve as the basis for understanding what happens next. While these conclusions cannot be fully generalized beyond our case studies, the arguments tackled throughout the book do however shed light on dynamics, issues, and concerns characterizing many other societies. The analysis of ethnonationality’s evolutions is far from anachronistic: on the contrary, it is more current than ever. The social and political developments featuring our era, beyond former Yugoslavia, increasingly rotate around a nativist conception of the nation, generally informed by its ethnic component. Additionally, structural shocks, not too dis-similar from those experienced by Yugoslavia and its federal units, have hit the European continent in the last few years, again provoking very similar changes and dynamics to those we observed in the federal units—not at the least ethnonational antagonisms stemming from economic malaise, and the surge of ethnonationalist parties advocating for closure and separation. These unfortunate similarities between late 1980s Yugoslavia and present-day Europe clearly oblige us to reflect across and beyond—across the democratic continuum, and beyond the Yugosphere and its post-­ Socialist divided societies.

Reflecting Across What this journey into ethnonationality’s evolution has shown us is largely related to legitimacy and functioning of ethnopolitics and related regimes, and from both the elites and the masses’ perspective. The two generations’ words revealed how and why, moved by what interests,

7  Conclusion: What Can We Learn? 

183

pursuing what goals, and constrained or limited by what factors, individuals do meditate and make choices—eventually shaping the reality they live in; and, in respect to ethnonationality, how they concur to tailor its meanings and functions. It seems the concept has progressively assumed meanings but especially functions strictly related to the notion of ‘survival’—which is used in both its individual and collective scopes and encompasses both the politico-institutional and the social dimensions. Yet these ‘survival’ functions and its instrumental mobilization are neither a prerogative of former Yugoslav states nor of consociations and divided societies. Let us have a look at present-day Europe. The economic recession of 2008, and the refugee crisis of 2015, represented two unprecedented shocks hitting the European continent and its consolidated democracies; these structural changes have generated an environment permeated by insecurity and anxiety which, unfortunately, has represented the most fertile ground for right-wing populism and ethnonationalism to rise and gain popular consent, legitimizing and justifying even among the most consolidated democracies a tendency to ‘come back to the national dimension at the expense of supra-national commitment’ (see Piacentini 2020a). The micro-impact of these macrochanges is thus reflected in social closure, exclusivism, xenophobia, and nationalism, conservativism, electoral preferences progressively moving towards the right, as well as episodes of religious or ethnic based violence. All this is not so different from what happened in and to the Yugoslav Federation and its federal units from the 1980s onwards. Also today Europe is witnessing a redefinition of the relational modalities between elites and the masses—now more than ever built upon a nativist and primordialist conception of the nation. In an era of socio-economic and cultural-identity uncertainties and anxieties, both the political classes and the individuals have realized that mark the boundaries of the in-group, stick together with one’s own, and use ethnonationality as an instrument to obtain and enjoy resources and benefits—especially in situations of scarcity—are the most appropriate ‘protective shields’ against possible dangers and contaminations. These trends oblige us to intensify our researches in a more comparative perspective and, by extension, they also put us before the need to

184 

A. Piacentini

rethink our understanding of the consociational model. Power-sharing mechanisms are criticized because they crystallize, institutionalize, and politicize ethnonational identities, hampering the civic understanding of belonging to prevail over the ethnonational one—yet a number of dynamics gravitating around ethnonationality’s exclusivist conception seems to be transversal to consociational and non-consociational settings. For instance, the fact that consolidated democracies all over Europe3 are showcasing dynamics similar to those we might encounter in consociational situations—such as state-capture, lack of rule of law, the tendency towards illiberalism and authoritarianism, ethnonationalism and so on (see Bieber 2018)—mark the urge for studies deepening ethnonationality’s meanings and functions across the democratic continuum, among and between both consociational and non-consociational societies. But they also oblige us to take into account the complexity behind certain phenomena, facing the fact that top-down approaches are inevitably partial and macro-centred explanations do  inevitably cut out individuals’ agency. As this book has attempted to show, a multidimensional analysis adopting a relational approach might be a good starting point to investigate what social, political, and economic conditions, as well as relational dynamics between rulers and ruled, allow pre-modern ideas to re-surge in all their violence, re-awakening sentiments and feelings triggering and fuelling antagonisms between, instead of cooperation across, the various groups. We shall thus explore ethnonationality’s semantic and pragmatic evolution across different states, and along the democratic continuum, in and beyond consociations, so as to have a better picture of—as Krastev (2017: 43) puts it—that ‘clash of solidarities [that] plays out not only within societies but also among nation states’.

Reflecting Beyond Next to this renewed importance of ethnonationality—both as a social filter and an instrumental proxy, there is also a slowly growing tendency of detachment from it, grounded on the need to create or foster supra-­ ethnic/national feelings, to replace the attention on the notion of citizenship. In relation to our case studies, first signs of a possible positive change

7  Conclusion: What Can We Learn? 

185

in this direction have begun to emerge in the past few years. In 2013 the JMBG4 protests in Bosnia Herzegovina were followed by a massive mobilization of the citizenry and civil society (see Milan 2020). In 2014, ­protests broke out first in the city of Tuzla, then in Sarajevo, and other major urban centres. The citizens, united together regardless of ethnicity and religion, were protesting against their corrupt and ethnonationalist elite, asking for their government’s accountability, showing their desire of taking back their rights and breaking up the ethnic bubbles stifling them. Citizens’ plenums were organized to discuss, in an attempt of direct democracy, the problems of their cities, country, and people. Something similar occurred also in Macedonia. In 2015, due to a deep political crisis culminating with a wiretapping scandal, the Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski (leader of VMRO-DPMNE), was forced to resign. The ‘Colourful Revolution’ began in April 2016, consisting in massive daily protests against the government, held mainly but not only in Skopje. During the December 2016 elections, SDSM, the ethnic Macedonian party in opposition for the last decade, defeated its political antagonist by opening up also to the ethnic Albanian community. While SDSM is now in power together with the ethnic Albanian party DUI, it is also attempting to become a possible political alternative by building and consolidating its new image as a ‘civic multiethnic party’. Political parties with a civic orientation are performing better also in Bosnia Herzegovina. Naša Stranka (NS) and Demokratska Fronta (DF) gained increased popular support in the October 2018 elections: for the first time, NS entered the state parliament and extended its electoral reach outside Sarajevo.5 DF won over the Croat nationalist party HDZ, and its leader Željko Komšić once again became the Croat member of the tripartite Bosnian presidency. Although, as I have argued elsewhere (Piacentini 2019a), in the economically dysfunctional and ethnically polarized realities of Bosnia Herzegovina and Macedonia, politics largely remains an instrument for accessing wages, welfare, and job positions, where benefit-seeking voters largely opt ‘for the devil they know rather than the devil they do not’,6 it is worth saying once again that time is a key factor. As the inter-­ generational perspective here adopted allowed us to notice, the fact that (many of those belonging to) the younger generations of both countries

186 

A. Piacentini

seem to be bearers of an individually based conception of ethnonationality freed from ideological/antagonist issues, might imply their modalities of signifying ethnonationality will sooner or later be reflected also in their modalities of using it, at both social and politico-institutional levels. In virtue of the growing political disaffection and scepticism rooted in the disdain for the ethnic collectivism promoted by the political elite, the younger generations might nurture and spread another way of doing politics; they might find good enough reasons to rail against the status quo, breaking the invisible boundaries of ethnic belonging (Piacentini 2018), and lay the bases for societies that, although multiethnic, will not make ethnonationality their founding pillar. Something similar had already happened back in the 1940s, when Tito conferred on Socialist Yugoslavia an ideological rather than an ethnonational identity and promoted supra-ethnic feelings of belonging by implementing different strategies—however always recognizing and protecting the equality of all the ethnonational groups and identities. Once again, these dynamics go beyond our case studies and the Yugosphere. Regardless of their ethnonationalities, citizens are getting louder and more visible all over the globe. They are focusing on topics, issues, and problems of cross-ethnic relevance—such as corruption, social and economic injustices, growing illiberalism and authoritarianism; and many of them, together with the civil society organizations, are working to raise the citizens’ awareness while promoting actions beyond and across origins and belongings. As of October 2019, Lebanon is living its ‘social revolution’7 as its citizens, across sectarian lines, have taken to the streets of Beirut asking for democracy and the government’s accountability. They are protesting against economic malaise and corruption, demanding that the Lebanese cabinet resign. The same is happening in Chile,8 where citizens are demanding a more democratic, equal, and fair society. As this book shows, in fact, it is not a matter of ethnonationality: rather, ethnonationality does matter but does not make any difference between people, generations, or countries, nor does it predetermine the individuals’ behaviour. So that, banally speaking, ‘people are all the same’: same problems, concerns, and hopes across countries and institutional settings; beyond ethno-cultural, linguistic, or religious differences.

7  Conclusion: What Can We Learn? 

187

Citizens of consolidated and unconsolidated democracies, citizens of divided and ‘united’ societies, are today equally asking for the same things as they are plagued by the same problems and difficulties. If we are, thus, to put this book’s arguments together with the socio-political trends going on at a global level, we can say that (i) individuals’ ethnonationality of belonging does not predetermine behaviours or modalities of signifying and using it in the larger society; but (ii) until this present moment and due to a multitude of subjective and structural reasons, using ethnonationality as a social filter, and above all as an instrumental proxy to obtain either individual or collective resources and rights, has paid for more than its deconstruction. At the same time, we cannot but notice a growing tendency to untie ethnonationality from political and ideological issues, as well as citizens’ unity before social injustices, disparities, and the unaccountability of their often corrupted governments. These citizens, united across and beyond ethnic, cultural, or religious specificities, might bring about important structural changes in the direction of ethnonationality’s depoliticization,  citizens’ inclusion, and human  rights. While never forgetting their own roots, these non-aligned citizens (see Piacentini 2020b) might thus (re)forge emancipatory political identities untied from ethnonational backgrounds, (re)conferring a unifying role to the notion of citizenship.

Notes 1. In BiH the international community attempted to set in motion mechanisms of multiple identities’ creation, trying to create a civic Bosnian Herzegovinian identity by reinforcing/building common values and symbols (among others, examples are the creation of a State anthem and flag and the abolition of para-state symbols). In Macedonia, although the OFA avoided ethno-territorial partitions and tried to promote a civic understanding of the country, the rhetoric according to which Macedonia is the nation-state of ethnic Macedonians is still present, hampering its civic understanding. 2. See R. Rose. W. Mishler, and N. Munro. 2008, ‘Time matters: adapting to transformation’, Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics, 24: 1, pp. 90–114.

188 

A. Piacentini

3. See Cianetti, Dawson, Hanley, 2018. ‘Rethinking “democratic backsliding” in Central and Eastern Europe—looking beyond Hungary and Poland’, East European Politics, 34: 3, pp. 243–256; A. Dimitrova, 2018. ‘The uncertain road to sustainable democracy: elite coalitions, citizens protests and the prospects of democracy in Central and Eastern Europe’, East European Politics, 34: 3, pp. 257–275; E. Knott, 2018, ‘Perpetually “partly free”: lessons from post-soviet hybrid regimes on backsliding in Central and Eastern Europe’, East European Politics, 34: 3, pp. 355–376. 4. E. Dedović, ‘Bosnia’s baby revolution: is the protest movement coming of age?’, Open Democracy, 26 June 2013 (accessed 7 July 2019). https://www. opendemocracy.net/en/bosnias-baby-revolution-is-protest-movementcoming-of-age/. 5. Bosnia Herzegovina, 7 October 2018 elections results (accessed 6 February 2019). http://www.izbori.ba/rezultati_izbora?resId=25&lan gId=4#/1/1/0/0/702. 6. J.  Hronesova, Bosnia: voting for the devil you know’, LSE Research on South Eastern Europe (accessed 6 February 2019). http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/ lsee/2014/10/13/bosnia-voting-for-the-devil-you-know/. 7. L. Kathib, 2019. ‘Lebanon is experiencing a social revolution’, Al Jazeera 26 October 2019 (accessed 26 October 2019). https://www.aljazeera. com/indepth/opinion/lebanon-experiencing-social-revolution191020065959490.html?utm_source=website&utm_medium= article_page&utm_campaign=read_more_links. 8. ‘Chile protests: One million join peaceful march for reform’, BBC 26 October 2019 (accessed 26 October 2019). https://www.bbc.com/news/ world-latin-america-50191746.

References Bieber, F. 2018. The Rise of Authoritarianism in the Western Balkans. Palgrave Macmillan. Cianetti, L., J.  Dawson, and S.  Hanley. 2018. Rethinking “Democratic Backsliding” in Central and Eastern Europe –Looking Beyond Hungary and Poland. East European Politics 34 (3): 243–256. Dedović, E. 2013. Bosnia’s Baby Revolution: Is the Protest Movement Coming of Age? Open Democracy, June 26. https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/bosnias-baby-revolution-is-protest-movement-coming-of-age/. Accessed 7 July 2019.

7  Conclusion: What Can We Learn? 

189

Dimitrova, A. 2018. The Uncertain Road to Sustainable Democracy: Elite Coalitions, Citizens Protests and the Prospects of Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe. East European Politics 34 (3): 257–275. Hronesova, J. Bosnia: Voting for the Devil You Know. LSE Research on South Eastern Europe. http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsee/2014/10/13/bosnia-voting-forthe-devil-you-know/. Accessed 6 February 2019. Kathib, L. 2019. Lebanon Is Experiencing a Social Revolution. Al Jazeera, October 26. https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/lebanon-experiencing-social-revolution-191020065959490.html?utm_source=website&utm_ medium=article_page&utm_campaign=read_more_links. Accessed 26 October 2019. Knott, E. 2018. Perpetually “Partly Free”: Lessons from Post-Soviet Hybrid Regimes on Backsliding in Central and Eastern Europe. East European Politics 34 (3): 355–376. Krastev, I. 2017. After Europe. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Milan, C. 2020. Social Mobilization Beyond Ethnicity. Civic Activisms and Grassroots Movements in Bosnia and Herzegovina. London: Routledge. Piacentini, A. 2018. The Weight of Ethnic Collectivism: Youth, Identifications, and Boundaries in Post‐conflict Bosnia Herzegovina. Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism 18 (3): 262–280. Piacentini, A. 2019a. “Trying to Fit In”: Multiethnic Parties, Ethno-­Clientelism, and Power-Sharing in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Macedonia. Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 25 (3): 273–291. Piacentini, A. 2019b. Chile Protests: One Million Join Peaceful March for Reform. BBC, October 26. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-50191746. Accessed 26 October 2019. Piacentini, A. 2020a. Save the People! Elite-People Relations and the Surge of Nationalism and Right-Wing Populism Across Europe. European Yearbook of Minority Issues – 2019. Piacentini, A. 2020b. “Nonaligned Citizens”: Ethnic Power-Sharing and Nonethnic Identities in Bosnia Herzegovina. The Case of Sarajevo. Nationalities Papers 48 (1): 1–14. Rose, R., W.  Mishler, and N.  Munro. 2008. Time Matters: Adapting to Transformation. Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics 24 (1): 90–114.

Index1

A

B

Ahmeti, Ali, 62, 100 Aligned/non-aligned, 63, 129, 144, 145, 159, 164–166, 169–172, 174, 175, 187 Alignment/non-alignment, 5, 158, 159, 162–165, 169–171 Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD, Savez nezavisnih socijaldemokrata) formerly Stranka nezavisnih socijaldemokrata-Party of Independent Social Democrats, 63 Alliances, 6, 11–13, 37, 58, 64, 66, 73–78, 130, 153 See also Networks Antagonism, 36, 66, 97, 104, 105, 107, 176, 180, 182, 184

Behaviour, 1, 4–6, 11, 18, 21, 22, 41–43, 65, 78, 79, 91, 96, 99, 100, 105, 113, 142, 144, 153, 154, 158, 160, 165, 166, 168–174, 187 Benefit, 3, 48n3, 58, 77, 91–116, 131, 132, 139, 158, 166, 167, 173, 181, 183 Bosnia, 1, 2, 9, 15–18, 20, 21, 23, 34, 36, 40, 42–44, 46, 56, 57, 59, 60, 65, 69, 73–75, 78, 80n4, 81n17, 122, 123, 125–131, 133, 138, 157, 159, 169

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s) 2020 A. Piacentini, Ethnonationality’s Evolution in Bosnia Herzegovina and Macedonia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39189-8

191

192 Index

Bosnia Herzegovina (BiH), vii, 1, 3, 6, 7, 9, 10, 12, 15–17, 22, 23, 31, 33, 34, 36–40, 42, 44, 46, 48, 49n7, 49n11, 57–61, 63–65, 67, 68, 72, 73, 75, 78, 80n11, 81n17, 116, 122–125, 127, 129, 130, 133–137, 151, 153, 154, 157, 158, 163, 164, 170, 174–177, 180, 181, 185, 187n1 Brotherhood and Unity (Bratstvo i Jedinstvo), 14, 15, 32, 33, 66, 69, 93, 95–97, 105, 156

Constitution/al, 31, 36, 37, 39–41, 44–46, 59 constitutional nationalism (Hayden), 44, 57 design, 46 framework, 7–10 nationalism, 37, 57 Cosmopolitan(ism), 121–145, 164, 175, 176 Croatian Democratic Union for Bosnia Herzegovina (HDZ BiH, Hrvatska demokratska zajednica Bosne i Hercegovine), 63

C

Children, 14, 19, 20, 71, 72, 82n29, 92, 113–115, 121, 124, 127, 141, 142, 144, 169, 171–174, 176 Citizens, 9, 16, 22, 36, 39, 40, 55, 60, 64, 65, 72, 77, 96, 110, 123, 124, 126, 140, 142, 153, 154, 160, 162, 163, 175, 176, 180, 181, 185–187, 188n3 Citizenship, 1–23, 33, 45, 47, 48, 55, 57, 60, 61, 78, 103, 122, 124, 133, 180, 181, 184, 187 Clientelism, 17, 75, 77, 83n35, 102, 103, 110, 112, 131, 138, 166 ethno-clientelism, 64, 102–104, 110–113, 131, 138–141, 162, 166 Colourful Revolution, 109, 117n29 Consociation, 9, 12, 59–61, 184 Consociationalism, 10 See also Power-sharing

D

Dayton Peace Agreement (DPA), 48, 50n27, 59, 62, 63, 68, 70, 80n4, 129, 143 Decision-making, 37 Democratic Front (DF, Demokratska Fronta), 63, 185 Democratic Union for Integration (DUI, Bashkimi Demokratik për Integrim), 62, 67, 100, 101, 104, 109, 110, 112, 185 Dis-continuities/continuity, 4, 16, 19–23, 77, 91, 116, 123, 136, 152, 167, 171, 172, 174–177 Dodik, Milorad, 63, 80n11, 137 E

Economic conditions, 13, 29, 46, 58, 73–75, 79, 162, 173, 184 malaise, 13, 79 Economy, 21, 36–38, 110, 124

 Index 

Election, 12, 13, 41–43, 58, 62, 63, 81n13, 110–112, 130, 131, 139, 154, 185 Elite, 6, 11, 15, 20, 36, 38, 40–44, 58, 61–73, 75, 79, 101, 110, 132, 137, 138, 153, 154, 158, 176, 181–183, 185, 186, 188n3 Employment, see Job (Ethnic) Albanians, 7, 17, 33, 39–42, 44, 45, 47, 49n6, 50n26, 57, 59, 62, 67, 69, 92, 94–100, 103, 104, 106–109, 113–115, 155–157, 161–163, 185 Ethnic belonging, 11, 46, 186 Ethnic clientelism/ethno-clientelism, 102–105, 113, 138–141, 162, 166 Ethnic identity, 5, 9, 14, 21, 22 supra-ethnic identity, 34, 48, 60, 78, 180 Ethnicity, 6, 9–11, 15, 17, 33, 41, 43, 47, 58, 61, 65, 71, 73, 75, 77, 97, 114, 141, 152, 166, 185 (Ethnic) Macedonians, 7, 17, 33, 39–42, 44–47, 55, 61, 62, 67, 72, 78, 92, 94–98, 100, 103, 104, 106–109, 113, 114, 155–157, 161, 162, 180, 185, 187n1 Ethnocracy, 11, 12, 128 Ethnonational identity, 2, 8, 9, 32, 56, 71, 72, 78, 137, 138, 184, 186 Ethnonationalism, 1, 5, 10–13, 15, 38, 42, 45, 127, 134, 136–138, 141, 155, 166, 167, 183, 184

193

Ethnonationality, 1–23, 29, 38, 40, 47, 48, 55–61, 65, 66, 69, 71–74, 77, 91, 92, 94–105, 110, 112–116, 121, 123–126, 128, 130–133, 135, 136, 141–145, 151–177, 179–184, 186, 187 Ethnopolitics/ethnic politics, 6, 11, 17, 21, 22, 37, 42, 56, 70–72, 74, 78–79, 108–110, 128, 130, 141, 154, 155, 158, 170, 172, 175, 182 Evolution, 3, 5, 6, 10, 18, 66, 92, 105, 126, 128, 151, 156, 167, 180–182, 184 F

Family scenario, 174 socialization, 152 unit, 4, 18–20, 113, 152, 168 Federation of Bosnia Herzegovina (FBiH), 59, 71, 80n3, 80n4, 82n29, 127 Functions, 2, 5, 7, 11, 16–18, 21, 22, 40, 47, 58, 60, 61, 65, 69, 73, 74, 92, 99, 100, 102–105, 112, 123, 130–132, 135, 136, 139, 141, 144, 151, 154, 158, 168, 171–174, 176, 177, 179–181, 183, 184 G

Generation, 1, 66, 92–93, 121, 152, 179 Georgievski, Ljupčo, 62, 72 Gligorov, Kiro, 42

194 Index

Greece, vii, 45, 50n22 Gruevski, Nikola, 62, 109, 118n50, 185 I

Identification, 2, 3, 8, 17, 33–35, 57, 59, 73, 122, 123, 136, 164, 165, 170, 175–177 self-identification, 2, 33, 132, 136, 164, 176 Identity civic, 9 ethnic, 5, 9, 14, 21, 22 ethnonational, 2, 8, 9, 32, 56, 71, 72, 78, 137, 138, 184, 186 Institution, 3, 5, 8–12, 19, 21, 36–38, 40, 44, 49n8, 61, 65, 72–73, 77, 80n3, 81n17, 99, 101–104, 109–111, 117n29, 123, 131, 139, 141, 154, 156, 158, 163, 164, 167, 175 Instrumental, 105, 131, 132, 170, 172, 175, 177, 183, 184, 187 Inter-ethnic, 1, 34, 41, 43, 47, 59, 63, 67, 69, 95, 97–99, 101, 102, 106–108, 125–126, 129, 135, 136, 142, 160, 167, 173 Inter-generational, 4, 5, 16, 18, 20–23, 105, 116, 123, 136, 144, 152, 171, 172, 174–176, 179, 185 Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization–Democratic Party for Macedonian National Unity (VMRO-DPMNE, Vnatrešna Makedonska

Revolucionerna Organizacija – Demoktraska Partija za Makedonsko Narodno Edinstvo), 42, 50n27, 61, 62, 72, 101, 117n29, 185 Izetbegović, Alija, 42, 50n21 Izetbegović, Bakir, 137 J

Job, 56, 64, 67, 68, 76–78, 93, 101–103, 110–112, 117n29, 131, 138–140, 144, 185 Jugoslovenstvo, 32–33 See also Yugoslavism K

Karadžić, Radovan, 42, 44, 59, 63, 126 Kardelj, 30, 36 Kosovo, 31, 37, 41, 45, 47, 49n11, 57, 76, 92, 116n14 Kosovo Liberation Army (UÇK, Ushtria Çlirimtare e Kosovës), 47, 50n26, 62 L

Language, 7, 31, 35, 40, 41, 49n7, 50n23, 56, 62, 67, 69–72, 79–80n2, 81n21, 82n29, 96, 110 League of Communist of Yugoslavia (LCY), 33, 38, 41, 43, 66 Loyalty, 6, 8, 13, 18, 41, 57, 77, 102, 126–128, 153

 Index 

195

M

O

Macedonia, vii, 2, 31, 56, 92, 121, 151, 180 Mala Rečica, 45, 69 Marković, Ante, 42 Master Citizen Number (JMBG, Jedinstveni matični broj građana), 185 Meanings, 2, 5, 7, 11, 15–17, 21–23, 32, 33, 40, 47, 58, 61, 65, 69, 73, 92, 95, 99, 103–105, 111, 112, 123, 130–132, 135, 136, 141, 151, 152, 156, 158, 164, 168, 169, 171–174, 176, 177, 179, 181, 183, 184 Media, 2, 13, 15, 16, 18, 58, 66–69, 73, 78, 101, 110, 111, 128, 129, 137, 143, 154, 166 Milošević, Slobodan, 13, 38, 41, 44, 66, 68, 69, 100

Ohrid Framework Agreement (OFA), 10, 47, 59, 63, 70, 79–80n2, 95, 97–100, 103, 156, 187n1 Old(er) generation, 22, 108, 110, 111, 123, 124, 128, 130, 131, 162, 164, 165, 169, 171, 173 Opportunities, 47, 56, 93, 94, 131, 138, 166 Our Party (NS, Naša Stranka), 64, 185

N

Nationality, 15, 31, 39–41, 96, 97, 152, 180 National Liberation Army (NLA), see Kosovo Liberation Army (UÇK, Ushtria Çlirimtare e Kosovës) Networks, 6, 12–13, 73–78, 111, 113, 130, 137, 139, 153 See also Alliances 1992-95 war, 68 Non-Aligned Movement, 30, 32, 48n4 Nostalgia/nostalgic, 124, 125, 144

P

Parents, 1, 6, 14, 19, 20, 93, 94, 96–100, 102–104, 106, 108, 110–115, 121, 125, 129–132, 134, 138, 141–144, 159–162, 164, 167–174, 176 Parents’ generation, 20, 91–93, 97, 100, 101, 113, 115, 123–125, 141, 142, 144, 159–161, 171, 173, 174 Party of Democratic Action (SDA, Stranka Demokratske Akcije), 42, 50n21, 63, 138 Plenum, 185 Post-1974, 9, 22, 40 Post-OFA, 103 Post-Yugoslav generation, 4, 105, 132, 165–167, 170, 171, 175 Post-Yugoslavia, 14–16, 78 Power-sharing, 12, 15, 37, 40, 43, 58–61, 99, 154, 170

196 Index

Priština, 45, 69 Proxy, 58, 65, 75, 113, 132, 139, 141, 181, 184, 187 R

Religion, 7, 15, 31, 39, 41, 46, 49n8, 71–73, 136, 141, 185 Religious institutions, 13, 15, 18, 41, 58, 72–74 Republika Srpska (RS), 44, 59, 63, 80n3, 80n4, 80n11, 122, 126, 127, 130, 133

Socialism, 15, 29, 30, 32, 37, 166 Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY), 2, 4, 9, 11, 15, 17, 21, 22, 29–48, 55, 56, 60, 67, 69, 74, 75, 92, 97, 105, 122, 124, 180 Status, 3, 4, 31–32, 41, 47, 59, 62, 76, 91–116, 131, 137, 140, 155–158, 160, 162, 163, 165, 170, 172, 173, 175, 186 Survival, 8, 33, 46, 112, 121–145, 161, 165, 170, 173, 177, 183 T

S

Sarajevo, 1, 2, 19, 20, 22, 46, 64, 68, 71, 92, 121–145, 160, 161, 164, 166–168, 170, 175, 176, 185 School system, 13, 18, 58, 69–72, 78, 105, 106, 108, 110, 137, 154 divided school, 70 Similarities/dis-similarities, 4, 16, 19, 20, 22, 23, 43, 91, 105, 116, 123, 136, 152, 165, 167, 169, 171–174, 179, 182 Skopje, 2, 19, 22, 45, 82n32, 91–116, 134, 135, 157, 160, 161, 164, 166, 168–171, 185 Social Democratic Party of BiH (SDP, Socijaldemokratska Partija BiH), 63, 81n13 Social Democratic Union of Macedonia (SDSM, Socijaldemokratski sojuz na Makedonija), 42, 50n27, 61, 62, 100, 101, 109, 111, 185

Tito, Josip Broz, 2, 8, 14, 29, 30, 33, 36–40, 48n4, 55, 56, 100, 144, 186 Trajkovski, Boris, 47 Tuđman, Franjo, 13, 42, 44, 134 2001 conflict, 50n26, 62, 99, 100, 114, 156, 161 U

Unemployment, 17, 46, 75–77, 138, 154 W

Wiretapping scandal, 62, 67, 104, 109 See also Bombs Y

Young adults, 1, 6, 19, 20, 105, 108–111, 115, 132–137, 139, 140, 142–144, 165–170, 173, 176

 Index 

Young(er) generation, 20, 22, 23, 105, 108, 110, 112–115, 134, 136, 143, 144, 166–170, 172–174, 185, 186 Yugonostalgia, 93, 162–163 See also Nostalgia/nostalgic Yugoslav decade era, 4, 18, 20, 160 generation, 2–4, 91–93, 95, 99, 103, 113, 123–126, 128, 132–134, 141, 144, 159–160

197

system, 3, 14, 21, 30, 39, 69, 71, 73, 91, 93, 94, 96, 113, 125, 141, 153, 163, 179 Yugoslavia, 1, 2, 4, 5, 8, 14–17, 20, 29–31, 33–38, 41, 47, 48n4, 55–79, 92–95, 98, 100, 113, 115, 122–127, 129, 130, 144, 145, 155, 156, 162–164, 166, 171, 172, 176, 182, 186 Yugoslavism, 33 See also Jugoslovenstvo