Abstract: Since the dissolution of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, authoritarian regimes with federal institutions have been seen as places prone to separatist conflict. However, numerous claims to national sovereignty and independence by Soviet or Yugoslav republics hardly fit into the dominant paradigm, which links the dissolution of these federations to ethno-nationalist actors. Building on the classical model of transitions from authoritarian rules, and extending it to federal states, we show that different government agendas, related to political and economic reforms across multiple levels of the state, can lead to a federal conflict. In this way, the conflict over political freedoms and the economic model can transform into claims to sovereignty and independence, without secessionist or ethno-nationalist motives. Empirically, this paper analyses the sequence in which the 23 member republics of the three former communist federations declared independence. While the first republic-level governments to declare independence were dominated by ethno-nationalists, the conflict over reforms played an important role in a second, possibly decisive stage of the dissolution of the communist federations.
Bio: Daniel Bochsler is an Associate Professor in Nationalism Studies and at the Political Science Department at Central European University, and a full Professor of Political Science at the University of Belgrade. He received his PhD in Political Science from the University of Geneva. His research deals with political institutions and social diversity, particularly with ethnic diversity, mostly in democracies in Central and Eastern Europe, or worldwide. His publications deal with political parties, elections, federalism, direct democracy, regime change and separatism, mostly related to ethnic diversity and/or social minorities.
He has been an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Copenhagen, an Assistant Professor at the University of Zurich, a post-doctoral researcher at the Central European University, and he has been for research stays at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, at the European University Instiute in Fiesole, at the University of Barcelona, at the Universities of Tartu, Belgrade, at the University of California at Irvine and at the Central European University in Budapest. He is aliated as a Privatdozent with the University of Zurich, at the Centre for Democracy Studies Aarau (ZDA).