Peculiarities of ethnic communities’ territorial settlement as a factor of ethnopolitical conflict propensity in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1990–1992

Abstract

The article addresses the territorial and demographic aspect of the ethnopolitical processes in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the early 1990s. The initial stage of nation-building and ethnopolitical conflict is analyzed on the basis of Miroslav Hroch and Rogers Brubaker approaches synthesis and is backed by the last reliable Yugoslavia census data. The author assumes that studying of the Bosnian ethnopolitical conflict initial stage through the prism of the territorial and demographic aspect allows one to get a clearer and more consistent idea of its causes, actors and logic behind them. For these purposes the ethnic/national composition of the Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Yugoslavia was systematized. Based on its results, the author managed to identify potential ethnopolitical conflict areas that could be of significant importance in the perspective of Muslim (later — Bosniak) nation-building. Taking into account the internal and external contexts of political processes in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Yugoslavia, the author presented the main conditions, scenarios and risks of the ethnopolitical situation development since 1990. The influence of the territorial and demographic aspect was considered further and revealed the potential and actual ethnopolitical conflict areas overlapping on the example of Serbian and Croatian ethnopolitical projects in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The analyzed case allows the author to consider the approach promising with its possible implementation in the framework of ethnopolitical conflicts monitoring and early warning.