Ethnic Cleansing: Politics, Policy, Violence

The book analyzes ethnic cleansing which aims to examine both whether ethnic cleansing is a viable tool in examining mass murder and empirically research the content of the ethnic cleansing campaign pursued by the Serbian political and military leadership in the former Yugoslavia. It offers a new approach to understanding why unlike in other similar multiethnic Central and East-European socialist states ethnic cleansing appeared to be a viable policy option in former Yugoslavia to pursue.
It also forwards a new framework for the analysis of ethnic cleansing as policy in the function of the (nation) state-building effort on the part of Serb elites and identifies, classifies and explains actions that fall under the policy and practice of ethnic cleansing and their interrelationship. Finally, it researches the local/communal context and attempts to shed additional light on the relationship between the state-apparatus and community/society at large in the operation of ethnic cleansing in former Yugoslavia.
It concludes that both policy and effects of ethnic cleansing should in post-conflict societies impede recovery of the society in question, as the entire communities remain hostages of politics, ideology and groups who perpetrate ethnic cleansing.