Blind Alleys in Ethnic Essentialist Explanations of the Downfall of the Former Yugoslavia

Abstract

In this paper certain attractive explanations, present in sociological and other scholarship, on the dismemberment of Yugoslavia are considered through a review of unpublished survey and census data on the former Yugoslavia immediately preceding its break-up. Particularly one influential, but biased explanation of the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia articulated in the works of the sociologist Stjepan Meštrović merit further attention in the depiction of bias towards the Yugoslav break-up. The paper refutes that there was a fundamental incompatibility based on authoritarianism of any nationality, on emotional instability of any nationality, of ethnic stratification, of ethnic distance among the basic groups, which may explain the break-up. These explanations fall within ethnic essentialism, down-playing historicity and structure within ethnic groups, and the manipulability of concepts of ethnicity. I propose that the break-up can be explained by a set of structural and processual factors of a political and cultural nature, where one can conclude that the former Yugoslavia served as a nation-building institution, but for numerous nationalities.