ABSTRACT
Communal conflicts point to the limits of the nation state logic. Conflicts overflow borders, communal identities are often "outward looking", creating cross-border loyalties, which transcend the nation state organisation of the world. External support can significantly increase the leverage of one or another community, thus creating abrupt changes in the communal balance of power in plural societies. The states in the highly fragmented Balkans and Eastern Mediterranean have always demonstrated "excess demand" for security and, unfortunately, always found suppliers, willing to "help" in the pursuit of their egoistic interests. Confessional identity can still be a mobilising factor in societies where religion is the strongest means of conveying the sense of belonging to a community. If the forms of communal identity are represented in a gradation between two poles, cultural and political, the scale will look in the following way: cultural identity – religion – ethnicity – nationality – political identity.
