Nationalist and Power-Seeking Leadership Preferences in Ethno-Territorial Conflicts: Theory, a Measurement Framework, and Applications to the Breakup of Yugoslavia

Abstract

Theoretically, variation in leadership preferences is often taken to be an important predictor of ethno-territorial conflict outcomes. Yet there is a significant gap when it comes to applying this theory. Case studies do not take a consistent approach to measuring leadership preferences, while statistical research tends to omit the variable altogether. This paper suggests a standardized approach to measuring leadership preferences along two dimensions – a dimension that captures the weight given to achieving ideal nationalist goals as against minimizing conflict costs and downside conflict risks, and a dimension that indicates how much intrinsic nationalist goals are valued relative to the goal of taking and maintaining political power. The resulting measurement template is then applied to seven potential ethno-territorial conflicts in Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. These cases indicate that leadership preferences may help to explain ethno-territorial conflict outcomes and, at the same time, are sometimes not well predicted by other important variables, such as the balance of power and the pre-conflict status quo.