In contrast to the other Yugoslav republics, whose efforts to secede from Yugoslavia provoked campaigns of nationalist violence and ethnic cleansing in the early 1990s, the Republic of Macedonia was peacefully established as a sovereign and independent state on September 8, 1991, by a vote of the citizens of Macedonia. Since then Macedonia has faced many serious challenges on both the domestic and international fronts. Conflict with the Albanian minority and the dispute with Greece over the name Macedonia combined to pose significant threats to much-needed foreign investment and economic growth. Moreover, while overseeing the demanding transition to a free-market economy, a succession of Macedonian governments were bedeviled by corruption and forced to combat organized crime.

More importantly, however, the Macedonian government has been faced with the challenge of maintaining peaceful relations between the country’s Orthodox Christian Macedonian majority and a Muslim Albanian minority that constitutes approximately one-fourth of the population. A key issue that has proven difficult to resolve has been balancing Macedonian nationals’ commitment to the preservation of a Macedonian state with Albanians’ demands for the full rights of citizenship.

According to the original preamble of the 1991 constitution, the Republic of Macedonia was established as “a national state of the Macedonian people in which full equality as citizens and permanent coexistence with the Macedonian people is provided for Albanians, Turks, Vlachs, Romanies [Roma], and other nationalities.” As a result of long-standing Albanian grievances over their status as second-class citizens in the republic and the Albanian insurgency in the northwest of the country that followed the NATO defeat of Slobodan Milošević’s Serbia in the Kosovo conflict, in 2001 the preamble of the Macedonian constitution was recast to reflect a more pluralist perspective, referring to “the citizens of the Republic of Macedonia, the Macedonian people, as well as citizens living within its borders who are part of the Albanian people, the Turkish people, the Vlach [Aromani] people, the Serbian people, the Romany people, the Bosniak people.”

Kiro Gligorov, a well-respected veteran of many years of service in the Yugoslav federal government, deftly guided the republic through its difficult early years as its first president. A member of the moderate Social Democratic Union of Macedonia (SDSM), which consisted of former communists and social democrats, he was seriously wounded in an assassination attempt in 1995. After having turned over the reigns of power to an acting president for six weeks, he resumed his duties and served as president until 1999. That year power shifted to the right, and Boris Trajkovski—of the more nationalist Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization–Democratic Party for Macedonian National Unity (VMRO-DPMNE)—came to power. In 2004 the presidency shifted to the SDSM, to Branko Crvenkovski, then in 2009 back to the VMRO-DPMNE in the person of Gjorge Ivanov. Historically, the Albanian minority has voted as a bloc for ethnic Albanian parties, and all governments since independence have been coalitions that included an Albanian party.

In early parliamentary elections in June 2011, the VMRO-DPMNE-led coalition finished first with 39 percent of the vote but, having captured 56 seats, fell short of an outright majority. Nonetheless, Nikola Gruevski renewed his governing coalition with the ethnic-Albanian Democratic Union for Integration (BDI), which took more than 10 percent of the vote and 15 seats. By garnering nearly 33 percent of the vote, the SDSM increased its representation considerably to 42 seats. Two other ethnic-Albanian parties also made their mark: the Democratic Party of Albanians (PDSh), with almost 6 percent of the vote and 8 seats, and the newly formed National Democratic Revival (RK), with about 3 percent and 2 seats. This proved to be a period of extensive political turmoil, which included a prolonged boycott of the parliament by the SDSM.

Under the EU-mediated agreement that was reached on March 1, 2013, the SDSM returned to the parliament and agreed to participate in the local elections in return for discussions about possible parliamentary elections later in the year and the formation of a special parliamentary committee to investigate the events of December 24, 2012. On that day SDSM MPs had tried to literally block the adoption of the state budget by surrounding the speaker of the parliament’s desk. After they were forcibly removed from the legislature, the ruling VMRO-DPMNE passed the budget by a vote of 64–4, and the SDSM began its boycott of the parliament.

In response to SDSM demands, changes were made to the election code, and an agreement was reached to clean up the voter register. Those changes set the stage for elections in April 2014, in which Ivanov was reelected president and the VMRO-DPMNE maintained control of the parliament by capturing 42.2 percent of the vote and 61 of the body’s 123 seats. The SDSM-led coalition won 24.9 percent of the vote and 34 seats; the BDI finished third with 13.5 percent and 19 seats. International observers acknowledged the efficient administration of the elections but criticized what they saw as the lack of separation between state and ruling party. Most SDSM MPs, claiming that fraud had been committed by the government and the ruling parties, again chose not to take up their seats in the parliament. Nevertheless, in June, Gruevski’s new government—made up of the VMRO-DPMNE, its smaller ethnic-Macedonian partner parties, and the BDI—received a vote of confidence in the parliament.

In early 2015 the opposition alleged that Gruevski and his intelligence chief had initiated the wiretapping of some 670,000 conversations on about 20,000 telephones from 2007 to 2013. The opposition also began releasing snippets of the recorded conversations that it said had been leaked by civil servants. The recordings painted a picture of a VMRO-DPMNE awash in corruption. In the process, a firestorm of political turmoil overwhelmed the country and forced Gruevski’s resignation in January 2016 as part of an EU-brokered deal that set the stage for early elections to be held in April. Emil Dimitriev took over as caretaker prime minister. After being postponed twice, the elections were held in December 2016.

In the event, the VMRO-DPMNE appeared to have beaten the SDSM by just over 300 votes in the country’s sixth district. Had that result stood, the VMRO-DPMNE would have held 51 seats in the 120-seat parliament (to 49 for the SDSM) and been positioned to form a coalition government. However, voting irregularities in the village of Tearce meant that its 714 registered voters had to return to the polls on December 25, which raised the possibility that if enough of them voted for the SDSM, the seat count would even out at 50 for each of the two parties. In the event, however, the SDSM still came up short and the VMRO-DPMNE was poised to remain in power. The VMRO-DPMNE, however, was unable to successfully court the coalition partner it needed to continue to govern.

A power vacuum ensued, which appeared to be filled in March 2017 when the SDSM leader Zoran Zaev won the support of ethnic Albanian parties by promising to support legislation that would extend existing constitutional language rights to make Albanian the country’s second official language. (An amendment to the constitution in response to the Ohrid Framework Agreement had made Albanian an official language in communities where Albanian speakers made up at least 20 percent of the population.) President Ivanov initially blocked the formation of the new coalition government but eventually relented to foreign pressure and allowed the new government to be confirmed in office in late May with Zaev as its prime minister. Nevertheless, ethnic tensions remained high. When Talat Xhaferi, an ethnic Albanian, was chosen speaker of the parliament in late April, some 200 Macedonian nationalists invaded parliament and violently attacked lawmakers.

In January 2018 Zaev made good on his promise and introduced a bill to extend Albanian as an official language throughout the country. With the VMRO-DPMNE boycotting the voting, the bill passed with 69 votes in favour. When Ivanov refused to sign the law, parliament voted on it a second time, in March, and passed it again, this time with 64 votes in favour. Although the Macedonian constitution prohibited a president from vetoing legislation that had been approved in two separate votes, Ivanov still refused to sign the legislation, claiming that the proper parliamentary procedure had not been employed in its passage and that the law would “deepen inter-ethnic tensions and represents a threat for the inter-ethnic life.”

In 1999, during the Kosovo conflict, more than 350,000 Kosovar Albanian refugees had fled to Macedonia, with significant consequences for the republic. Living standards in Macedonia plummeted, exports declined, and unemployment, already at more than 30 percent before the conflict, rose dramatically—to as high as 40–50 percent, according to some estimates. Another serious threat to the country’s political stability was posed by an armed conflict that erupted between an ethnic Albanian military group and Macedonian security forces in 2001. This conflict was brought to an end in August 2001 by the signing of the Ohrid Framework Agreement, which contained the government’s promises to make Albanian an official language, to increase autonomy for areas with large Albanian populations, and to raise the number of Albanians serving in the army and police as well as in the government. The Macedonian economy gradually recovered—with slow but steady GDP growth and minimal inflation—until 2009, when it began to struggle in response to the global financial downturn. In the early 2010s the economy again rebounded slowly.

In August 2015 Macedonia became the latest flash point in the migrant crisis that gripped Europe as an increasing number of people fled war and turmoil in the Middle East and Africa. The daily stream of migrants and refugees entering Macedonia swelled from 300–400 in May 2015 to 2,000–3,000 in August, which prompted the Macedonian government to declare a state of emergency on August 21. Human rights groups castigated Macedonia when its police and military used batons, tear gas, and stun grenades the following day in an effort to halt the mass of migrants who attempted to rush into Macedonia across its border with Greece.

By far the greatest challenge for the Republic of Macedonia was Greece’s effort to prevent its neighbour from gaining international recognition under its constitutional name, along with blocking Macedonia’s participation in international organizations. Greece’s attempt to monopolize the name Macedonia prevented the republic from gaining entry into a variety of international organizations and from enjoying the economic and political stability that membership in such organizations would provide. When the Republic of Macedonia declared its independence in 1991, Greece immediately objected to the name of the new republic, insisting that “Macedonia” had been used by Greeks since ancient times and that its “appropriation” by the Republic of Macedonia constituted a “falsification of history” and a revival of territorial claims on Greek Macedonia (Makedonía). The Macedonian republic argued in turn that Slavs had lived in the area for 14 centuries and had used the name Macedonia for hundreds of years.

Responding to the Republic of Macedonia’s attempt to gain recognition from the European Community (EC; later the European Union), an EC arbitration commission concluded not only that the newly independent country met all the criteria necessary for recognition but also that its use of the name Macedonia implied no claims on Greek territory—the contention of the Greek government. Nevertheless, Greece was able to prevent EC recognition of the republic. Only by acceding to a provisional designation as “the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia” did Macedonia gain admission to the United Nations in 1993.

In early 1994, seemingly turning up the pressure on the republic to relinquish its claims to the name Macedonia, Greece instituted an economic blockade that had dire consequences for Macedonia. In September 1995, with more and more countries inveighing for Greece and Macedonia to come to a settlement, the two signed an Interim Accord. The agreement called for Macedonia to remove the 16-ray Sun or Star of Verghina—a symbol of the ancient Macedonian royal family that Greece had claimed as a national symbol—from its flag and to renounce all territorial claims on Greek Macedonia in return for Greece’s termination of the embargo. Moreover, it was agreed that the “name issue” would be submitted to UN-sponsored mediation. In 2004 the Republic of Macedonia was recognized by the United States under its constitutional name. In 2008, however, Greece violated the Interim Accord by preventing Macedonia from being invited to become a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), again raising objections to the republic’s use of the name Macedonia. Nonetheless, UN-sponsored bilateral negotiations over the name continued.

Finally, in June 2018, Prime Minister Zaev and Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras announced that an agreement (thereafter known as the Prespa Agreement) had been reached under which Macedonia would be known both domestically and internationally as the Republic of North Macedonia (Macedonian: Severna Makedonija). The name change required both amendment of the Macedonian constitution and acceptance by the Greek parliament. The process toward those ends began in September with the Macedonian government holding a “consultative” referendum, which was not legally binding but by which lawmakers agreed to abide. The question posed was “Are you for NATO and EU membership with acceptance of the agreement with Greece?” The VMRO-DPMNE denounced the agreement and called on voters to boycott the referendum. Enough Macedonians stayed away from the polls that those who did participate—about 37 percent of eligible voters—were far short of the 50 percent turnout required to validate the vote, thus leaving legislators free to follow their conscience. However, more than 90 percent of those who voted in the referendum endorsed the agreement.

The three-stage process of amendment to the Macedonian constitution was initiated on October 19, when the parliament, by an 80–39 vote that reached the required two-thirds approval threshold, authorized the government to begin preparing draft constitutional amendments to be submitted to later votes. On December 3 the language of the draft amendments was approved by a 67–23 vote that satisfied the simple majority requirement of the 120-member parliament at this stage. This result set the stage for a vote on whether the amendments should be adopted, which would require a two-thirds majority for passage. Although the majority of VMRO-DPMNE MPs boycotted that vote, which occurred on January 11, 2019, the amendments required to change the country’s name won the consent of 81 MPs, just enough to secure passage. The final step in formal approval of the name change now rested with the Greek parliament. Opposition to the Prespa Agreement prompted the departure of the junior partner in Tsipras’s ruling coalition and compelled the Greek prime minister to seek a vote of confidence in his government. Having barely survived that challenge, he brought the agreement to a vote on January 25, and the Greek parliament approved it 153–146, laying the groundwork for Greece to formally remove its objection to Macedonian membership in NATO and thus paving the way for official adoption of Macedonia’s new name. In early February the Greek parliament approved the protocol for the accession to NATO of the Republic of North Macedonia, which officially became the country’s name on February 12, 2019.

North Macedonia’s aspiration to European Union membership received a major setback in October 2019, when France, supported by Denmark and the Netherlands, prevented the European Council from reaching an agreement that would have allowed North Macedonia and Albania to begin formal talks on their accession to the EU. In the wake of the council’s decision, a deeply disappointed Zaev called for early parliamentary elections that would allow his country’s people to weigh in on its political future. Under a 2015 agreement, general elections in the country were to be preceded by 100 days of caretaker government, instituted to remove doubts regarding potential ballot tampering or the application of political pressure by the party in power. In early January 2020, in advance of the election scheduled for April 12, Zaev resigned as prime minister.

As North Macedonia undertook efforts to halt the spread of the global coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 pandemic (the first cases of which had been reported in China in late 2019), the April elections had to be postponed. When the elections were able to be conducted, in July 2020, Zaev’s Social Democratic Party claimed 46 seats to barely outdistance VMRO-DPMNE, which took 44 seats, thus leaving both parties the opportunity to try to coax enough support from other players to form a ruling coalition. By the middle of August, the Social Democrats had renewed their partnership with the Democratic Union for Integration (DUI), the ethnic Albanian party with whom they had shared coalition rule until Zaev had called the snap election. Together, the two parties, along with a member from another ethnic Albanian party, possessed enough seats (62) in parliament to form a majority government. Once again, Zaev became prime minister.

Having successfully guided North Macedonia to membership in NATO in March 2020, Zaev looked forward to overcoming the final obstacles to the country’s accession to membership in the EU. To that end, in 2017 his government had signed a bilateral friendship accord with Bulgaria and established a commission composed of historians from both countries who were tasked with resolving disagreements over the “shared history” of the two countries. As the date for the start of EU accession talks approached, however, the Bulgarian government circulated a document titled “Explanatory Memorandum on the relationship of the Republic of Bulgaria with the Republic of North Macedonia in the context of the EU enlargement and Association and Stabilization Process,” in which it challenged North Macedonia to acknowledge its supposed Bulgarian historical roots and to identify its language as a form of Bulgarian. When that acknowledgment was not forthcoming, in mid-November 2020 Bulgaria used its veto to prevent the start of EU accession talks for North Macedonia.

In November 2021, following the Social Democrats’ poor showing in the October municipal elections, Zaev announced that he would resign as head of the party and step down as prime minister. Deputy Finance Minister Dimitar Kovačevski replaced Zaev as party leader in December and, on January 16, 2022, was sworn in as prime minister. Soon after taking office, Kovačevski met with Bulgaria’s new prime minister, Kiril Petkov, in Sofia in an attempt to reduce tensions between the two countries.