This article, which builds on Buzan’s and the Copnehagen school’s security theorizing, explores the main security issues of a small and landlocked country of the Western Balkans, the Republic of North Macedonia. The internal demographic structure and the external bilateral contests, make this state an interesting case to analyze within the Balkan’s sub-regional security complex. The central argument raised here is that North Macedonia reflects an interplay of regional and internal security dynamics, expressed mainly through an overlap of societal and political security issues. Although in North Macedonia’s case, the societal security issues appear to be crucial, as national identity issues represent the main element around which circulate the greatest fears and insecurities of this country, the approach and way these issues seem to be handled reflect an intersection of the societal and political sector. Relying on main regional security complex theories, this article will construct and analyze the most significant security interactions taking place in North Macedonia and the sectors with most sources for securitization.

This article examines the influence of foreign policy on the inter-ethnic relationship in multi-ethnic states. Focused on external disputes, which revolve around issues of national identity, the article attempts to find out how foreign policy constraints and pressures may affect the unity of ethnically different groups. From the existing literature on international and national integration, the article derives arguments which relate foreign policy’s behavior toward external threats to inter-ethnic unity or division. International integration policies, as part of the official foreign policy, influence the unifying mentality of ethnically different people, helping to foment a national (state) identity, based on civic elements. External obstructions to such policies, however, risk to transform foreign policy into an object of contestation between ethnic groups, who, due to the presence of external disputes, no longer share the same vision over the state’s foreign policy. Using an exploratory approach, this article uses the case of Macedonia to provide greater understanding of the arguments above, and consequently presents the empirical findings collected from semi-structured interviews.