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State Ownership and “State-Sharing”: The Role of Collective Identities and the Sociopolitical Cleavage between Ethnic Macedonians and Ethnic Albanians in the Republic of North Macedonia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2019

Arianna Maria Piacentini
Arianna Maria Piacentini*
Affiliation:
CAS SEE, University of Rijeka, Croatia
*
*Corresponding author. Email: ari.piacentini@gmail.com
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Abstract

The article analyzes, from a historical and institutional perspective, the sociopolitical cleavages existing between ethnic Macedonians and ethnic Albanians in the Republic of North Macedonia. Although primarily ethnic, the division between the two groups is deeply connected to state ownership and the official status each group occupies and wishes to occupy in it. By scrutinizing both groups’ claims, standpoints, and dissatisfactions, the article asserts that the implementation of consociationalism in 2001, through the de facto institutionalization of ethnicity, has partly soothed both groups’ frustrations, using the pragmatic exploitation of the existing ethnic divide as a proxy for “state sharing” in addition to power sharing.

Keywords

Macedoniapower sharingcollective identitiesstate ownershipstate sharing
Type
Article
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 47 , Issue 3 , May 2019 , pp. 461 - 476
Copyright
© Association for the Study of Nationalities 2019 

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