Constitutional Ethno-Nationalism after Fifteen Years

Abstract

During the first phase of the crisis in the former Yugoslavia and at a moment when it was felt that the conflicts in the territory of that state would have tragic consequences, though there was still hope that some of the worst consequences could be avoided, I presented a paper, at a conference organised at the University of Kent, Canterbury, entitled ‘Ethnic nationalism and the Constitutions: the apotheosis of the nation state’.¹ It later transpired that I had been dealing independently with a phenomenon which had also been observed by the American scholar Robert Hayden. We had both concentrated, more or less, on the written phases of the post-communist nation-building process and the revival of the nation state after the collective rule of the Communist Party.