マケドニア共和国の民族問題

―マケドニア危機の背景には民族間の経済的不平等化が存在していたのか？―

抄録

The Republic of Macedonia has a complex ethnic structure. The majority group consists of Macedonians with about two-thirds of national population. Among ethnic minorities, Albanians overwhelmingly dominate over other minority groups, with a share of about a quarter of the population. Although ethnic conflicts had not arisen on the surface since the independence, ethnic relation undoubtedly was a sensitive issue in Macedonian society.
In early 2001, the Macedonian Crisis took place. After the armed conflict extending over half a year, an agreement for disarmament was settled between the government and Albanian guerillas in August. In accordance with the agreement, constitutional amendments were approved in the parliament in November. The crisis was over. However, this does not mean that an ethnic problem has been solved in Macedonia. It is considered that various factors that led to the Macedonian Crisis still exist in Macedonian society. One of them is economic inequality between ethnic groups. Although such economic inequality was not a direct cause of the crisis, it must be associated with escalating ethnic conflicts.
The purpose of this paper is to characterize Macedonia's ethnic problem, with focus on economic inequality between ethnic groups. This is done by investigating two hypotheses: (A) Distinct economic inequality exists between ethnic groups; and (B) Economic inequality between ethnic groups has widened since the independence. Three variables were chosen to assess these hypotheses: i) per capita income (social product), ii) unemployment rate, and iii) educational attainment. Although it is not an economic variable, education was chosen because it represents the level of human capital that is strongly associated with individual lifetime incomes.
The results generally support hypothesis (A) but reject hypothesis (B) . Distinct ethnic disparity was found for all three variables throughout a period of study. However, the widening of ethnic inequality was found only for education. The educational level of Albanians, on average, has declined markedly after the independence. On the contrary, a gap in unemployment rate between Macedonians and Albanians has narrowed in late 1990s. Also, the widening of ethnic inequality in per capita income was not observed during the period 1986-1995.
There are two remarks regarding these results. First, the fall in the education level of Albanians may be attributed to their own decisions. Throughout the period of transition, unemployment rates were consistently high, reaching above 30%. The rates were especially high for young adults, reaching more than 50%. Under such circumstances, it may be a rational decision to start working in the informal sector and accumulate business experiences that would be more effective than pursuing formal education in order to establish their careers in an emerging market economy. This attitude is considered to be stronger for Albanians because working in the informal sector has been common in Albanian society since the Yugoslav era. Second, hypothesis (B) for per capita income was generally rejected; however, when the year 1989 was used as a reference year under socialist regime, it could not be rejected. This implies that if Albanians viewed 1989 as a representative year before the independence, they would likely feel that their living standards declined both in absolute and relative terms compared with those of Macedonians during the period of transition.