Yugoslavia and Successor States

The dissolution of Yugoslavia after 1990 has so far resulted in seven successor states (Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Hercegovina, Serbia, Kosova/Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia) that stand in the focus of this chapter, although it explains also the extremely federalized and decentralized political system and structure of Communist Yugoslavia as a precondition for the independence of at least three of the successor states (Slovenia, Kosova/Kosovo, North Macedonia), as defining near to all of their current borders and as—in many cases—perpetuated at sub-national political administrative levels. It goes even back to the first Yugoslavian state of the inter-war period as the political-territorial effectuation of the Yugoslavian national idea, which was, however, conceived divergently by all participants and resulted in centralism arousing dissatisfaction with all except Serbs. The individual successor states are in detail presented according to national identity, political system, sub-national administrative-territorial structure with an emphasis on the regional level as well as to historical-cultural regional identities that are often vigorous, but rarely reflected by the administrative-territorial system.