8. Conclusion Three types of general conclusions can be made. First, addressing the type of the conflict, the Macedonian conflict with the Albanians comes closest to the “classic” conflict about the extent of minority rights, addressing questions such as granting political participation/autonomy, defining a set of rights in the sphere of education, mother language use, and so on. The fact that the Albanians kept putting forward the Yugoslav-rhetoric postulate of becoming a “constituent nation” does not change the very nature of the problem. The Kosovo conflict is, on the contrary, not a conflict about the extent of minority rights, but rather a conflict of who – Albanians or Serbs – should be the majority. The Albanians are the majority in Kosovo taken alone, whereas Serbs are the majority, if Kosovo is taken together with Serbia. The conflicts in Croatia and BiH can be regarded as conflicts over the subject and scope of the right to selfdetermination. Second, addressing the nature of the ethno-mobilization process, the present survey suggests that it was a top-down process driven by the emancipated political elites of the republics or its parts (BiH). None of the initially presented models can claim exclusivity as an explanation. It can be said to have been a “constructionist” process initially, especially with regard to its economic dimension. It turned into an “instrumentalist” process which, after some time (the shift of the cognitive frames), also activated a “primordial” process which since then has been running parallel with the “instrumentalist” process. An exception from this is likely to be made for Macedonia, where the ethno-mobilization of Macedonians had predominantly “constructionist” traits. 229 The establishment of a “point of no return” is the final question to be addressed here. Rejecting historical determinism in any form, it must be stated that ethno-mobilization ultimately leading to a violent ethnic conflict was extremely difficult to reverse by political means after Tuđman and the HDZ came into power in the elections in April/May 1990. In this sense the seizure of power by this political faction can be regarded as a point of no return with regard to Croatia. There are also good reasons to argue that the same point of no return (the elections in Croatia) applies to the conflict in BiH, even if the cognitive frame had not yet changed there. On the basis of the present survey, it may be regarded as proven that manifold strong pressure was exerted from Croatia and Serbia. In fact, this pressure was not the only, but definitely a major factor triggering ethnomobilization in BiH. Given for example the “letter of intention” of President Izetbegović conditioning BiH’s staying in Yugoslavia on Serbia and Croatia staying too 230 , one my claim that without the Serbo-Croatian antagonism affecting the Bosnian population disastrously, the stability of this country could have been preserved. The collision course of these two (Serbia and Croatia) was a long history in which economic factors should not be underestimated. This collision course was definitely set with the result of the Croatian elections and by this event – this is 229 This is, what can be deduced from the comments of Ilievski who is arguing that “Macedonian ethno-nationalism wasn’t only ‘not dominant as, for example, Croatian was in Croatia’, but it was mobilized predominantly in the struggle for international recognition of the state, in lobbying for the ‘name dispute’ with Greece and the struggle for rights of the Macedonian minority in Bulgaria, Greece and Albania.”, Ilievski, 34. On the other hand, the ethno-mobilization of Albanians in Macedonia does not seem to differ much from the general scheme. 230 See the reference in the Footnote 213. 44
the crucial point – the crisis frame was activated at the heart of Yugoslavia for the first time after World War II. It remains, however, an open question, whether the collision within the crisis frame could have been avoided by a radical action from outside, for example by denying the prospects for recognition to Tuđman-ruled Croatia or ultimately by deploying international armed forces equipped with a robust UN-Security Council mandate. 45
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