State Collapse in Southeastern Europe: New Perspectives on Yugoslavia's Disintegration is a multidisciplinary approach exploring the historical antecedents and the dynamic process of Yugoslavia's violent dissolution, drawing upon the most recently available resources. The volume, a compilation by distinguished scholars, examines issues broadening our understanding of the Yugoslav case, and also sheds light on how to deal with future episodes of state fragility and failure. The book updates, enhances, and when necessary revises explanations that have already been offered for Yugoslavia's collapse. Moreover, fifteen years after the Yugoslav crisis, the volume fills in the "blank spots" in the historical record. This careful reevaluation of Yugoslav dissolution provides needed assistance to policy makers who are routinely faced with the challenge of forging or rebuilding coherent, stable, and democratic state institutions in deeply divided societies. After an introductory chapter, an overview of the scholarly literature on Yugoslavia's disintegration, the volume is divided into three parts: the first is focused on "The Historical Legacy," including the first, interwar, Yugoslav state, and the effects of the two world wars; the second, "The Socialist Legacy," examines the reopening of the "national question," the legacy of the 1971 Croatian spring and the role of intellectual elites; and the third part, "The Breakdown of the 1980s," analyzes the failure of "Yugoslavism" and the socialist federation's descent into violence. The volume concludes with a comparative survey of the factors that account for the collapse of the three federal socialist states at the outset of the 1990s: Yugoslavia, the USSR, and Czechoslovakia.
Lenard J. Cohen is Professor of International Studies at Simon Fraser University, and is currently directing the Centre for International Studies, a research, conference and public outreach unit within the School of International Studies. His research and teaching have focused on issues relating to political democratization, state-building and nation-building, and the challenges facing post-conflict environments and failing states. His earlier research concentrated on problems relating to political transition and the dissolution of state structures in Southeastern Europe. His is the author of numerous articles on the former subject and matters relating to security, economic integration, terrorism, and foreign policy. Jasna Dragovic-Soso is Assistant Professor of International Relations at Goldsmiths College, University of London, where she teaches courses on international relations, nationalism, ethnic conflict and international intervention. She received her Ph.D. from the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva and, until 2004, she was a research fellow at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London on a three-year advanced researcher grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation. She is the author of Saviours of the Nation: Serbia's Intellectual Opposition and the Revival of Nationalism (Hurst & Co. and McGill-Queen's University Press, 2002) and articles in academic journals and edited volumes on intellectuals, nationalism and international intervention in the former Yugoslavia. Her current research is focused on international intervention and problems of democratization and regime change in Serbia and Croatia in the 1990s.
