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Yugoslavia's would-be system-builders failed three times over to build a workable system. The underlying problem was their failure to resolve the problem of legitimacy. In the 1980s, economic deterioration pushed people to despair and, under the pressure of Serbia's ambitious political establishment, the country broke up along ethnic fault lines. This volume, now in its fourth expanded edition, tells the story of socialist Yugoslavia's troubles and the challenges facing its successor states from May 1980 to 00/12.

The fourth edition of this critically acclaimed work includes a new chapter, a new epilogue, and revisions throughout the book. Sabrina Ramet, a veteran observer of the Yugoslav scene, traces the steady deterioration of Yugoslavia's political and social fabric in the years since 1980, arguing that, while the federal system and multiethnic fabric laid down fault lines, the final crisis was sown in the failure to resolve the legitimacy question, triggered by economic deterioration, and pushed forward toward war by Serbian politicians bent on power-either within a centralized Yugoslavia or within an "ethnically cleansed" Greater Serbia. With her detailed knowledge of the area and extensive fieldwork, Ramet paints a strikingly original picture of Yugoslavia's demise and the emergence of the Yugoslav successor states.