The Causes of a War: Ethnic Conflict in Macedonia in 2001
The political literature that in this last decade studies the experience of the twenty-two states that emerged after the break-up of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, come to useful general conclusions. One of them is that the choice of an inadequate strategy of building a state and building a nation in conditions of democracy can position the whole society on wrong tracks. Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan, long-time researchers of democracies in the world, create a useful scheme for the relations between the state, the nation (or nations) and democracy.
Democratic Consolidation of Divided Societies - The Macedonian Case -
Speaking of the countries from the so-called third wave of democracy, the attention of analysts is focused on the question of how far the formally established political structures of multi-party democracy produce efficient protection of human and citizens’ rights, the rule of Law, politically responsible elites, and so on. Regardless of the apparent differences and specifics, perhaps their common characteristic is that they are in the process of consolidation.