With the fall of communism and the breakup of Yugoslavia, the 
successor states have faced a historic challenge to create separate, 
modern democracies from the ashes of the former authoritarian state. 
Central to the Croatian experience has been the issue of nationalism 
and whether the Croatian state should be defined as a citizens' state 
(with members of all nationality groups treated as equal) or as a 
national state of the Croats (with a consequent privileging of Croatian 
culture and language, but also with a quota system for members of 
national minorities). Sabrina P. Ramet and Davorka Matić have 
gathered here a series of studies by important scholars to examine 
the development of Croatia in the aftermath of communism and the 
war that marred the transition.

    Sixteen scholars of the region discuss the values and institutions 
central to Croatia's transformation from communism and toward 
liberal democracy. They discuss economic change, political parties, 
and the uses of history since 1989. To understand the patterns in 
Croatia, they examine how civic values have been expressed, 
reinforced, and sometimes challenged through religion, education, 
and the media. The implications of nationalism in its various 
manifestations are treated thematically in all the analyses.

    This book is a companion volume to a similar study on Slovenia, 
edited by Sabrina P. Ramet and Danica Fink-Hafner and released in 
fall 2006. Together, these two works form an important case study in 
comparison and contrast between two countries in the same region 
going through the transition from communism to liberal democracy. 
Scholars and policy makers will find a wealth of material in these 
two volumes.

_________________________________________________________

SABRINA P. RAMET is a professor of political science at the 
Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in 
Trondheim, Norway, and a senior associate of the Centre for the 
Study of Civil War, PRIO, Oslo. She has served as visiting scholar 
at the Center for Eurasian, Russian, and Eastern European Studies, 
Georgetown University. Holding a Ph.D. from UCLA, she is the author 
of many books and articles. DAVORKA MATIĆ is head of the 
department of sociology at the Faculty of Humanities and Social 
Sciences, University of Zagreb, Croatia. She was president of the 
Croatian Sociological Association. She received her Ph.D. in 
sociology from the University of Zagreb in 1998 and is the author of 
one book and many articles.


Eugenia and Hugh M. Stewart '26 Series on Eastern Europe


What people are saying about this book

"Sabrina Ramet and Davorka Matić's Democratic Transition in 
Croatia is a fascinating collection of essays by both eminent 
specialists and promising younger scholars.  It will be required 
reading for all those interested in recent Croatian history, as well 
as in the question of democratic transition throughout the former-
Communist world."—Marko Attila Hoare, Senior Research 
Fellow, University of Kingston

"The book will satisfy the most demanding reader in terms of its 
quality and coverage and will provide a valuable tool for 
comparative studies for nationalism and democracy in emerging 
countries in general. . . . The sophisticated scholarly approach of 
the subject on a multidisciplinary basis sets this collective work 
apart from other studies of political change and nationalism in 
Croatia."—Norman Cigar, Marine Command & Staff College


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