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War broke out in Yugoslavia in the summer of 1991. Like the American war of 1861-65, this war could be interpreted as either a civil war or a war between states. And like the American Civil War , the Yugoslav war of 1991 was the ultimate manifestation of a constitutional crisis, a collapse of constitutional mechanisms for resolving political disputes that produced a showdown over the continued existence of the federal state. In another parallel to the American Civil War, the structure of the conflict was determined by a constitution some of the parties rejected, for the constitutional order that existed until the outbreak of the war had been a loose union of states (in Yugoslav terminology, republics), each of which possessed a fully organized government. Thus, despite the breakdown of the constitutional order of relationships between these republics, their constitutional status as separate polities afforded secessionists the opportunity to manipulate fully developed state structures in their quests for independence from the federation that had hitherto defined those states

Viewing the Yugoslav civil war as a constitutional crisis may seem naive in light of the longstanding tensions among the different national groups comprising the country, which had made Yugoslavia a tenuous, uncertain state since its inception in 1918 (Banac 1984; Djilas 1991). It is tempting to see the breakdown of federal Yugoslavia as the inevitable result of those national tensions, once the overarching structure of the one-party state, which had served to bind them together, was removed. Yet to stress only those nationalisms is to distort the reality of political, social and economic life in Yugoslavia in the critical years 1989-91. After seven decades of common existence, Yugoslavia contained many cross-cutting ties.

Markovic's government suffered a steady decline in influence and power throughout 1990 and into 1991. In part, this decline was due to the failure of Markovic's political party to capture many seats in any republic in the elections of 1990 (Rusinow 1991:8-9). Instead, the voters in Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina chose nationalist parties, while in Slovenia and Croatia, nationalist[ic] governments had been elected before Markovic had formed his party . However , even in the latter two republics , popular sentiment for secession from Yugoslavia was, at the time of the elections, uncertain.

Yet Markovic could not capitalize on his popularity throughout the country because federal elections were not permitted by Slovenia. Had such elections been held, it is possible that Yugoslavia would have seen an electoral pattern similar to that of India, with local nationalists victorious at the local (republican or state) level, but a federally oriented party winning at the center (Brass 1990:315-18). In the absence of federal elections , however , Markov ic was denied the possibility of obtaining a mandate for his policies or with which to challenge the aggressive nationalistic policies and anti-federal actions of the elected governments of Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia.



In any event, the prevention of federal elections was only one of the actions by the governments of these three republics that was aimed at destroying federal authority . This authority was first challenged , and effectively eliminated, by the unilateral action of the (then Socialist) Republic of Slovenia in September 1989, which passed amendments to its own constitution that claimed to render the federal constitution irrelevant to Slovenia. Following this act by Slovenia, the survival of the Yugoslav federation became impossible in constitutional terms and, for this reason, politically as well, which made the outbreak of internal war inevitable.