In the 1990s, amid political upheaval and civil war, the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia dissolved into five successor states. The subsequent independence of Montenegro and Kosovo brought the total number to seven. Balkan scholar and diplomat to the region Mieczys aw P. Boduszy ski examines four of those states--Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia, and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia--and traces their divergent paths toward democracy and Euro-Atlantic integration over the past two decades.

Boduszy ski argues that regime change in the Yugoslav successor states was powerfully...