This book offers an unprecedented account of the Serb Democratic Party's origins and its political machinations that culminated in Europe's bloodiest conflict since World War II. Within the first two years of its existence, the nationalist movement led by the infamous genocide convict Radovan Karadzic, radically transformed Bosnian society. It politically homogenized Serbs of Bosnia-Herzegovina, mobilized them for the Bosnian War, and violently carved out a new geopolitical unit, known today as Republika Srpska. Through innovative and in-depth analysis of the Party's discourse that makes use of the recent literature on affective cognition, the book argues that the movement's production of existential fears, nationalist pride, and animosities towards non-Serbs were crucial for creating Serbs as a palpable group primed for violence. By exposing this nationalist agency, the book challenges a commonplace image of ethnic conflicts as clashes of long-standing ethnic nations.
"The book is highly innovative in the way it brings together discourse analysis, insights from cognitive science and psychology and carefully researched empirical data to produce an account of how the SDS, led by Radovan Karadzic, was able to attract the bulk of Serb votes ... . This is an essential book for anyone interested in the Bosnian war, but also important for anyone studying the dynamics of ethnic conflict, nation formation and the idea of nation as discourse." (Sarah Correia, LSE Review of Books, blogs.lse.ac.uk, December, 2017)