The Impact of the Framework Agreement of Ohrid on the Conflict Structure and the Political System of the Republic of Macedonia (June 2005 - May 2009)

Contact Person: Merle Vetterlein, Dipl.Pol

Macedonia’s peaceful post-Yugoslav transition was unexpectedly disrupted by a small-scale civil war in 2001. The armed conflict between Albanian activists and Macedonian security forces attracted international attention to the former "oasis of peace". The international community succeeded in stopping the conflict by mediating the Ohrid Framework Agreement of Ohrid signed in August 2001. After the near-complete implementation of the agreement’s stipulations it is doubtful whether it represents a workable strategy of sustainable conflict transformation for Macedonia.

Macedonia’s complex conflict structure cannot be explained by treating the various factors in isolation. This project aims at going beyond the dominant paradigm of inter-ethnic conflict by investigating the interdependence of the dominant cleavages of the conflict structure to make the Macedonian conflict understandable.

After the near-complete implementation of the agreement’s stipulations it is doubtful whether it represents a workable strategy of sustainable conflict transformation for Macedonia. The PhD project analyses the terms of the agreement and its consequences for the stability of the Macedonian society and state, based on the theoretical approach to power-sharing-models for fragmented societies, particularly Arend Lijphart’s constitutional democracy. The project asks whether the different levels of the Ohrid power-sharing-model, that helped to integrate the citizens of the country at the group rather than the individual level, are capable of transforming the Macedonian conflict structure. The underlying key question is whether this classic power-sharing-agreement has achieved the aim of securing "the future of Macedonia’s democracy" and dissolving inter-ethnic tensions.

The PhD project has been sponsored by the German Foundation for Peace Research (2005-2007) and the IFSH (since 2007).