ABSTRACT
The real problems and issues facing Yugoslavia, and Serbia in particular, were the end of communism and the transition to democracy and a market economy, as in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, and negotiating a constitutional design for a multinational state that provided security and human rights to ethnic minorities. Most Yugoslav leaders declined to consider seriously widely known models for territorially mixed, multinational, federal, democratic states such as India, Malaysia, and Tanzania. Instead they promoted a nationalist discourse and actions with high risk of armed conflicts.
