Regional Political Geographies

The Balkans underwent one of the most extensive processes of state fragmentation in modern Europe with the breakup of Yugoslavia. Between 1991 and 1992, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Macedonia declared independence, followed by the peaceful separation of Montenegro from Serbia in 2006. The Bosnian War of 1992-95 ended with the Dayton Agreement, which created a single Bosnian state composed of two main entities, the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Republika Srpska, joined by a complex power-sharing government. Macedonia's decades-long naming dispute with Greece, which objected to the use of a name it associated with its own northern region, was resolved by the 2018 Prespa Agreement, under which the country adopted the name North Macedonia. Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008 and is recognized by roughly a hundred states, but not by Serbia, Russia, China, or five European Union members, leaving its international status unresolved.