ABSTRACT
After the Second World War the number of armed conflicts and wars in the world has continually increased and this tendency has aggravated since the end of the 1980s. The case of former Yugoslavia accentuates the international political explosiveness of violent ethnic conflicts after the decline of central authorities and at the same time demonstrates the dissension and the helplessness of the international community. Ethnicity gains implications through political, social or economic conditions and circumstances which transform cultural affinities into politically and socially acting groups. Several phenomena demonstrate the dimensions of ethnic conflicts within states and in international politics. Unstable multi-national states face the problem of intra-ethnic conflicts threatening to spill over into intergovernmental relations. Dealing with ethnic conflict in the context, a concept of conflict theory in politics will be applied which refers to a sociological understanding of the term conflict.
