Nationalism in Croatian Transition to Democracy: Between Structural Conditionality and the Impact of Legacy of History and Political Culture

Nationalism has marked the democratic transition of many post-communistsocieties, including Croatia. It showed its liberal character by fostering democraticchange and achieving national independence, but it also manifested itselfas exclusive ethnocentrism, which considerably slowed down the democratizationprocess and imposed itself as its main characteristic. The author challengesthe view that ethnocentrism as inherent characteristic of the so-calledEastern (ethnic) nations, which are consequently undemocratic and prone toethnic conflicts, while the liberal character is attributed as inherent to nationalismof Western (civic) nations. Besides the explanation of various aspects ofnationalism in Croatia, the author draws attention to its primary structural andcontextual conditionality, particularly highlighting the framework of political unfreedom and limited modernization during the communist period and specificconditions of democratic transition characterized by process of nation-stateestablishment and the war of independence. Here nationalism appears as anexpression of patriotism and political identification, but also as a response tosocial, political and value discontinuity and particularly as reaction to externalaggression. The author denies its inherency, since it is not some “innate” culturaltrait, but a social phenomenon that is dominantly caused by the social andpolitical context. Nationalism in the period of democratic transition in Croatia,despite its undoubtedly ethnocentric manifestations, in essence still was liberal.After the war and renewed processes of democratization there was a significantdecline of ethnocentrism and strengthening of liberal features of nationalism.