Milliyet ayrışmaları ve etnik çatışma: Komünizm sonrası Bulgaristan, Karadağ, ve Kuzey Makedonya'nın karşılaştırmalı analizi

Why do societal conflicts in some multiethnic countries escalate into collective violence while in other cases, the tensions exist but societal disputes are contained by formal or informal institutional mechanisms? Most theories focus on the nation-state model's exclusionary logic and different forms of institutional design. I argue that the peaceful or violent patterns of interethnic relations are contingent on the presence/absence of a nationhood cleavage within the majority ethnic group. Majority nationhood cleavage generates authoritarian imposition of ethnic policies in which other elites with a different vision of nationhood are either sidelined or silenced. and as such increases the likelihood of interethnic violence. Majority nationhood cohesion, on the other hand, facilitates cooperation among majority elites when designing ethnic institutions and hence paves the way for interethnic peace. I further argue that nationhood visions are forged politically by past state policies and their persistence in the present is endogenous to partisan competition and competitive politics. I develop these theoretical arguments building on outcome variation in three otherwise similar southeast European countries. Post-communist Bulgaria and Montenegro built enduringly peaceful interethnic relations despite dark shadows of an assimilationist past in the former and a militant federation partner and neighborhood in the latter. Post-communist North Macedonia, by contrast, has frequently experienced violent conflict despite a multiethnic past and a series of consociational arrangements tried until present.