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Multiculturalism in Post-Ohrid Macedonia

The Ohrid Framework Agreement (OFA) was supposed to herald a new era of multicultural coexistence in Macedonia following a short-lived civil war. However, antipathies between the Albanian minority and Macedonian majority run as deep as ever, frequently erupting into rioting which threatens the fragile peace on which coexistence is forged. This state of affairs appears to affirm at least one commonly voiced criticism against the OFA, namely, that the pluralisation of public life it set in place would further fragment, rather than unite, Macedonia’s diverse citizenry. This article sheds light on the persistence of volatile ethnic relations in Macedonia despite more than a decade of multiethnic democracy. It argues explanations blaming the OFA are misplaced, and that the source of Macedonia’s fraying ethnic relations lies with each community’s ongoing struggle for recognition. Under this account, conflicts are the outcome not simply of each community’s incompatible wants around access to sovereign power, prized employment, and other distributable resources but unredeemed idealisations of how they would like to be respected and esteemed by others. The article contends that such struggles for recognition are bringing Macedonians and Albanians to interact in a manner that stimulates a sense of profound wrong-doing at the hands of the other, which, in turn, serves to fuel interethnic antagonisms and widen the social distance between each group.