What Yugoslavia means: progress, nationalism, and health

Theories of modernization have assumed that the creation of nation-states involved the breakdown of parochial ethnic boundaries and increasing secularism, all of which resulted in a demographic transition from high to low fertility and mortality. Recent experiences suggests, however, that in some circumstances nation-states may be highly unstable as ethnic minorities assert their rights to self-determination. Under such conditions, converging patterns of mortality may begin to diverge as growing inequalities appear between newly independent region of once unified states. The recent history of Yugoslavia is described to provide an example of how this process might occur and what the results might be.