Product Description
This successor volume to the author's "Serbia under Milosevic" (Hurst, 1999) sets the Kosovo question within the wider framework of Serbian politics in the 1990s. It concentrates on how the radicalisation of the conflict over Kosovo was linked to the increasing weakness of the Milosevic regime in post-Dayton Serbia and how it contributed to its ultimate downfall. It examines not only how the international community was drawn progressively deeper into the conflict between Serbs and Kosovars, but also the course of the war and its impact on public and political life in Serbia. Why was the Serbian opposition unable to bring about a change of government in spite of the many sources of instability then affecting the country? Robert Thomas examines the opposition alternatives to Milosevic in terms of the differences between party and non-party actors, and between political organizations in the provinces and those in Belgrade, and shows how the over-confidence of Milosevic and the Serbian political elite, combined with a reconfiguration and strengthening of the opposition, set the scene for the victory of Vojslav Kostunica and the opposition coalition in the elections of September 2000. He evaluates the nature and quality of democratic change following the revolution of 5 October 2000, and discusses events in Kosovo during its period under international rule. He concludes with an analysis of the wider consequences of the Kosovo war, especially its effects on political life in Bosnia, Montenegro, and Macedonia.
