ABSTRACT
Serious political alternatives emerged in 1990. The Communist Party was challenged for the first time and struggled to shape new rules for the changed political context. There were three clear options: one was the renewal of the communist system and the regime’s preservation of power; the second was ethnic politics and the third was economic reform followed by political reform, as advocated by the Federal Government. Ante Markovic, Federal Prime Minister, repeatedly stressed the need for this kind of reform, thus trying to avoid the involvement of ethnic politics in discussions. Presumably he hoped that economic reforms would have such results that ethnic politics would become less important. The first two options were already present in the other parts of Yugoslavia and the leaders in Bosnia-Herzegovina had to decide which option to adopt.
