Erase to Exist : Nation-building and the Rule of Law in the Republic of Slovenia: the case study of the 'Izbrisani'

Sammanfattning

This thesis examines the erasure of the Izbrisani - 25 671 people removed from Slovenian population registers on 26th February 1992 - as a case study of nation-building and state foundation in newly independent Slovenia. Through a qualitative documentary analysis of legal rulings, political speeches and media archives, the thesis investigates how this administrative act of exclusion revealed the Slovenian national identity in the post-communist period. The analysis follows the chronological evolution of the affair from the 1992 erasure through the Slovenian Constitutional Court rulings of 1999 and 2003, the decisive 2004 referendum, the crucial European Court of Human Rights condemnation in 2012 and Slovenia's public apology in 2022. The theoretical framework relies on Benedict Anderson's concept of ‘imagined communities’, Walker Connor's and Thomas Hylland Eriksen's works on states, ethnonationalism and ethnic homogeneity, Giorgio Agamben's notions of ‘homo sacer’ and the state of exception, and Hannah Arendt's concept of the ‘banality of Evil’. The thesis argues that the erasure functioned as a deliberate move of nation-building by the negative, through exclusion, as Slovenia defined the boundaries of its national community at the expense of rule of law. The affair exposed deep tensions between democratic aspirations and nationalist reflexes but also between state legality and community identity. The long-lasting resolution of the dispute required supranational intervention, revealing both the fragility of national democratic institutions and the slow capacity of Slovenian society for collective acknowledgement.