Abstract
International concerns about the continued ethnicization of Bosnian social and political life are both validated and challenged by the December 2005 public opinion study. Ordinary Bosnians are willing to consider cross-ethnic friendships and cooperation. The gap between ethnic elites and entrepreneurs and their constituents is evident still in Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH). The optimistic note of this study is sounded by the fact that half of respondents in BiH want more friends from different nationalities. The differences between the three ethnic groups are not dramatic. However, 41 percent of respondents stated that all or most of their friends were from their own nationality. Analysis of the responses by geographic location and by explanations related to modernization, ethnic competition and war experiences, indicated that all proved useful in understanding the distributions. The geographic distributions indicated the primacy of the urban—rural factor for questions on current friendship networks and preferences for friends in other ethnic groups.
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