ABSTRACT
During the twentieth century the relationship between political systems, state borders and security has taken on a new form, particularly for people living in Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans. Just in the period from 1908 to 1993, borders in this region have changed at least nine times, leading to various conflicts and wars (Bianchini 1996: 188). In recent years, parallel with the process of integration, half of the wars going on in the world, including the Balkans, have been struggles for secession. Since 1992, when the Yugoslav wars of secession began, there have been 51 state-based conflicts 1 around the world (UN Human Development Report 2005; Human Security Report 2005). Ethnic, or often more generally stated ‘identity-based’, conflict is one common form of clashes. This term refers to conflicts in which the goals of at least one of the confronted parties are defined in ethnic identity terms, and in which supposedly the primary fault line of confrontation is one of ethnic distinction (Wolff 2006: 2). Today's literature has been linking ethnicity, language and religion (as a part of people's identity) to intra and interstate dispute behaviour suggesting that cultural traits and identity influence greatly dispute patterns in various ways (Connor 1994; Horowitz 1995; Huntington 1996; Cederman 2001a, 2001b; Comor 2001; Hardin 1995; Hechter 1987; Wendt 1992, 1994).
