First Published in 1996

What series on Contemporary Issues in European Politics could leave out the conflict in the former Yugoslavia? The Balkan tragedy has dominated the reporting of European news more consistently than any other single development since the end of the Cold War.

In proportion to its implications for peace and stability in Europe, the violent disintegration of the Yugoslav has also produced a strong body of scholarly investigations into the origins of its continuing abominations. The South Slav Conflict is unique among these by virtue of its thoroughly interdisciplinary approach to the causes and consequences of the war.

The book’s great strength begins with its forthright assertion that no serious attempt to explain the current cycle of genocide and revenge among Serbs, Croats, and Bosnians can avoid the inherent complexity of the factors that transformed Yugoslavia from one of the most pluralist of European communist states into a theater of human misery.