Previously published as a special issue of Ethnopolitics, the leading contributors of this volume analyze various dimensions of the internationalized state-building process in Bosnia and Herzegovina since 1995.

This collection of original essays breaks new ground by examining the dynamics of ethnic politics at the local level, rather than following in the footsteps of many previous studies which focus on the macropolitical level of states and nations.

In this volume, some of the world’s leading scholars involved in researching the fields of ethnopolitics, nationalism and ideas of nation and state have come together to produce a work that is both original and accessible. It explores the rich, but sadly neglected tradition of thought on non-territorial cultural autonomy as exemplified by the work of Karl Renner and Otto Bauer and the European Nationalities Congress of the 1920s.

There are two popular myths concerning the relationship between communism and nationalism. The first is that nationalism and communism are wholly antagonistic and mutually exclusive. The second is the assertion that in communist Eastern Europe nationalism was oppressed before 1989, to emerge triumphant after the Berlin Wall came down. Reality was different. Certainly from 1945 onwards, communist parties presented themselves as heirs to national traditions and guardians of national interests. The communist states of Central and Eastern Europe constructed "socialist patriotism," a form of...