Chapter 5 Does Scholarly Literature on the Breakup of Yugoslavia Travel Well? Nebojša Vladisavljević The breakup of Yugoslavia was a monumental event, or a series of events, with origins in the mix of long-term historical and proximate causes and with domestic and international, as well as political, economic and other dimensions. 1 Socialist Yugoslavia unravelled over several years, initially through elite conlict and non- violent popular protests and, later, amidst violent confrontation and civil war. Not only did the breakup have considerable implications for the social, economic and political life in its successor states and the political makeup of the wider region, but it also shaped the international political stage that was emerging from the Cold War. Unsurprisingly, a huge body of literature has emerged in an attempt to capture and explain various aspects of the events and their implications. Much of the literature on the breakup of Yugoslavia aims at wide readership and involves journalistic, introductory and other casual accounts. Some involve nationalist and highly partisan views that aim to allocate blame to their – and their friends’ – rivals in the conlict. This chapter focuses exclusively on the scholarly literature and does not aim to provide its comprehensive review (but see Dragović-Soso 2008, Jović 2001, Ramet 2005). Rather, it discusses the merits and drawbacks of selected sophisticated examples of different scholarly approaches to the study of Yugoslavia’s disintegration and suggests alternative avenues for future research. Despite a considerable empirical contribution of these studies to the scholarly literature, a strong lavour of parochialism in the ield remains. The lack of conceptual and theoretical focus and of comparative perspective prevents scholars from using insights from the most sophisticated and recent theoretical work in social science to improve their empirical research and from producing knowledge that ‘travels well’ – knowledge that is relevant for understanding comparable phenomena elsewhere and easily accessible not only to scholars interested in this region, but also to comparativists and theoretically-oriented social scientists. The chapter also briely touches upon the potential contribution to the study of Yugoslavia’s breakup of recent theoretical advances in comparative politics. The irst section of the chapter discusses differences between the most sophisticated 1 The research reported in this chapter was supported by the project ‘Political Identity of Serbia in the Regional and Global Context’, funded by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development of the Republic of Serbia (no. 179076), and by the Open Society Foundations’ Academic Fellowship Program.