ABSTRACT
The former Yugoslavia furnishes the clearest examples of the application of autonomy and self-governance for the purpose of retaining the territorial unity of the state. As was noted in the introduction, the EU Carrington Peace conference on Yugoslavia attempted to use autonomy to buy off Serbia’s territorial ambitions with respect to areas inhabited by ethnic Serbs located outside of the Republic of Serbia. Croatia, in particular, was pressed hard to offer full autonomy in relation to the Krajina area. Bosnia and Herzegovina was kept together through the Dayton accords, but only under the condition of very wide-ranging self-governance for its constituent units. Kosovo was placed under an internationalized, progressively more wide-ranging regime of self-governance. The Macedonia settlement, negotiated under significant international pressure, established what was called enhanced local self-governance, or autonomy by another name. Finally, Serbia and Montenegro, the latter being a reluctant bride, were pressed into a State Union of two self-governing entities, at least for a standstill period of three years.
