Exit Yugoslavia: longing for mononational states or entrepreneurial manipulation?

Abstract

The study analyzed whether the dissolution of Yugoslavia and the establishment of succeeding mono-national states was the expression of “longing” of mass proportions on the part of the nationalities within respective federal units. Using the data from two pan-Yugoslav surveys from the period preceding the dissolution, results were obtained that indicated a very limited support for this hypothesis. More specifically, results indicated that support for emancipation was rather weak, among youth in 1986 and even among the adult population in 1990, although some significant mean differences between the federal units and between major nationalities within them were evident. Specifically, opinions favoring independence were detected among Kosovo Albanians and later among Slovenians in Slovenia. In addition, findings also indicated that those with higher socioeconomic status were not more inclined toward independence. Results thus pointed more towards the idea that the dissolution was indeed instigated by a small group of “political entrepreneurs” not captured by the survey data.

Keywords:

• dissolution
• national independence
• Yugoslavia
• Yugoslav identity
• collapse
• political entrepreneurship

Notes

As indicated by Goati (459–60), the first group, led by Slovenia, argued for decentralization and pluralization. The second group, led by Serbia, favored and argued for a centralist organization of society. According to the author, the formation of these two groups later led to the formation of another two opposing groups: federalist (under Serbian and Montenegrin leadership) and confederalist (led by Slovenia and Croatia). While the first group tried to preserve Yugoslavia as a strong federation, the second “preferred the transformation of its republics into independent states” (461). However, it should be noted that Goati argued that later developments indicated that “the true goal of federalist” was not the preservation of Yugoslavia, but its breakup along ethnic (not republican) lines (462–64).

As indicated by the author, this fragmented Yugoslavia politically and economically, which also prevented “fast and decisive responses to political and economic crises” (Jovic, Yugoslavia: A State That Withered Away 20). The role of Kardelj's ideology (and the 1974 constitution) is also central to Jovic's main argument – that the collapse of Yugoslavia cannot be properly understood “without including the perceptions of political elite … without an analysis of its ideological beliefs and of the mechanisms by which these beliefs were transformed into political action” (3). Consequently, he suggested that an important part of Yugoslavia's problems leading to its demise could be traced to the elites' loss of ideological consensus, “which was based primarily (but not exclusively) on Kardelj's interpretation of Marx” (3), that is, on the withering away of the state, as operationalized by a degrading of the competences of the federal state. According to the author, this led to a situation where the “ideological vision of objectives and shared interpretation of reality” (3) among elites became more and more blurred. A similar argument was also made by Crawford.

As indicated by Allcock, the majority of authors believe that the collapse of Yugoslavia was “a process driven from the top” (418).

For why this argument could not be supported empirically, see Gagnon's detailed review of various national surveys conducted in Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina (Gagnon 31–51, 87–177).

Because of the limitations of the data that were used, we were not able to analyze the perceptions, intentions, beliefs and so on of political actors. Our work should thus be read and used together with works that analyze the beliefs, goals and actions of the Yugoslav elites (see for e.g. Budding; Goati; Jovic, Yugoslavia: A State That Withered Away; Pavkovič). As suggested by Jovic (“The Disintegration of Yugoslavia”), this can contribute significantly to the field, since much of the misunderstanding of the Yugoslav collapse and conflict stems from the fact that researchers place too much emphasis on “objective factors” and pay too little attention to “the subjective in politics” (115).

We would like to emphasize that we are well aware of the fact that using socioeconomic status indicators as an indicator of elite status is problematic and that the data used cannot possibly capture stances of “political entrepreneurs.” Consequently, the sole purpose of the current study was to test whether the support for independence was invariant with the respondents' socioeconomic status.

Since the distribution for both longing measures was significantly non-normal, a Kruskall-Waliss test was used for mean analyses.

To address the potential for type I errors based on 36 pair-wise contrasts (comparing eight federal units), we adjusted the alpha level to .01 (.05/36 = .01). See Cohen and Cohen.

Since our data failed to meet the assumption of multivariate normality, we used a bootstrap procedure (see West, Finch, and Curran). In addition, since these analyses were based on manifest variables, we focused on path coefficients, as well as variance explained, and less on model fit (see Tabachnik and Fidell).