Download the Skolay app
.png)
I'm always interested in talking about Balkan and European politics, international relations, and the broader possibilities for change and progress.
I believe genuinely in the possibility of progress, even in the most complex circumstances. If you too feel moved to ask not just "why?" but "how?" then we probably have some things to chat about.
.png)
.png)
Jasmin Mujanović illuminates the sources of contemporary Bosniak political identity, tracing the evolution of a religious community into a secular nation, and shedding light on the future of a nation at a crossroads. He explores the idea of Bosnia and Herzegovina as a ‘national homeland’, considers how narratives of genocide influence self-identity, and probes how demographic changes are putting pressure on the country’s political framework.
‘Mujanović’s book is part history, part polemic and part manifesto. As history it fills a niche and as polemic it brings the English-speaking reader up to date with events in Bosnia and Herzegovina. But it is as manifesto that Mujanović comes into his own. It is fine to bemoan that Dayton Bosnia is dysfunctional or to warn that the country is heading inexorably towards a breakdown of one sort or another—but then what is to be done? Few bother to answer that question. Mujanović argues for what he believes would be the best solution for Bosniaks, noting that his ideas would also be in the best interests of Bosnia’s Croats and Serbs. Whether anyone is listening of course remains to be seen.’
— Tim Judah, Correspondent, The Economist
Less than two decades after the Yugoslav Wars ended, the edifice of parliamentary government in the Western Balkans is crumbling. This collapse sets into sharp relief the unreformed authoritarian tendencies of the region’s entrenched elites, many of whom have held power since the early 1990s, and the hollowness of the West’s ‘democratisation’ agenda.
There is a widely held assumption that institutional collapse will precipitate a new bout of ethnic conflict, but Mujanović argues instead that the Balkans are on the cusp of a historic socio-political transformation. Drawing on a wide variety of sources, with a unique focus on local activist accounts, he argues that a period of genuine democratic transition is finally dawning, led by grassroots social movements, from Zagreb to Skopje. Rather than pursuing ethnic strife, these new Balkan revolutionaries are confronting the ‘ethnic entrepreneurs’ cemented in power by the West in its efforts to stabilise the region since the mid-1990s.
‘The most refreshingly original book about that region in years . . . unbeatable.’
— Kapil Komireddi, The Spectator Books of the Year, 2018
