Michal Mochtak – författare

This book studies war narratives and their role in the political arenas of post-conflict societies, with a focus on the former Yugoslavia.

How do politicians in postwar societies talk about the past war? How do they discursively represent vulnerable social groups created by the conflict? Does the nature of this representation depend on the politicians’ ideology, personal characteristics, or their record of combat service? The book answers these questions by pairing natural language processing tools and large corpora of parliamentary debates collected in three southeast European post-conflict societies (Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, and Serbia). Using the latest advances in computer science, the book explores patterns in the war discourse of the political elites of these countries and discusses how politicians talk about war in terms of common narratives and shared frameworks. Mapping over 20 years of parliamentary debates, the book presents a new perspective on the role of the legacies of war in public space and develops theoretical arguments about reconciliation in post-conflict societies. The wars of the 1990s and the breakup of Yugoslavia have created three totally different settings for remembering the past conflicts in these countries, despite their common history. It is a story of victorious battles (Croatia), past grievances (Bosnia-Herzegovina), and denial (Serbia), showing the different flavors of past wars in various national contexts that are symptomatic of many post-conflict societies in different parts of the world.

This book will be of much interest to students of war and conflict studies, southeastern European politics, discourse analysis, and international relations.

This book studies war narratives and their role in the political arenas of post-conflict societies, with a focus on the former Yugoslavia.

How do politicians in postwar societies talk about the past war? How do they discursively represent vulnerable social groups created by the conflict? Does the nature of this representation depend on the politicians’ ideology, personal characteristics, or their record of combat service? The book answers these questions by pairing natural language processing tools and large corpora of parliamentary debates collected in three southeast European post-conflict societies (Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, and Serbia). Using the latest advances in computer science, the book explores patterns in the war discourse of the political elites of these countries and discusses how politicians talk about war in terms of common narratives and shared frameworks. Mapping over 20 years of parliamentary debates, the book presents a new perspective on the role of the legacies of war in public space and develops theoretical arguments about reconciliation in post-conflict societies. The wars of the 1990s and the breakup of Yugoslavia have created three totally different settings for remembering the past conflicts in these countries, despite their common history. It is a story of victorious battles (Croatia), past grievances (Bosnia-Herzegovina), and denial (Serbia), showing the different flavors of past wars in various national contexts that are symptomatic of many post-conflict societies in different parts of the world.

This book will be of much interest to students of war and conflict studies, southeastern European politics, discourse analysis, and international relations.

Since the end of the Cold War there have been a number of cases where the democratization process has been turbulent, or even violent. Addressing electoral violence, its evolution and impact in the Western Balkans, this book explores the conflict logic of election and tries to understand its basic patterns. Two decades of electoral competition in the region are analysed to identify an interesting evolution of electoral violence in terms of forms, actors, motivations and dynamics.

By identifying the potential drivers of electoral violence and explaining the escalation and stimulus of violence-related events, the author combines a theoretical approach with original data to emphasise the variability of the phenomenon and its evolution in the region.

The book will appeal to students and scholars of post-communist Europe and democratisation processes and the Western Balkans in particular. It should also be of interest to political advisors and those involved in developing or implementing democratisation programmes.