The question of population size is never absent from politics and can take a particularly acute form when different national, ethnic or religious groups are brought together in the same state. Numerical strength is the basis on which each group lays claim to political and administrative representation. Youssef Courbage here examines the case of Macedonia, one of the new states that resulted from the breakup of the former Yugoslavia. While awaiting publication of the detailed results of the November 2002 Census, the author undertakes an estimation of the population by ethnic groups, with particular focus on the Albanian minority. By combining several sources (censuses, election results, civil registration data) he estimates that in 2002 this group represented a quarter of the total population, a proportion slightly higher than that given by the 1994 Census, which has, however, been hotly disputed.
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Two censuses have been held in the former Socialist Republic of Macedonia since its separation and independence from Yugoslavia (1991). The first took place in 1994 and the second between 1 and 15 November 2002. The intercensal interval of only eight years is noteworthy for its shortness. Noteworthy too is the close international monitoring that accompanied these censuses. Repeating the experience of 1994, some fifty European observers travelled around the country for three weeks in order to verify the transparency of the census operations — a presence that could be thought excessive in view of the small size of the population, some two million inhabitants.
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Macedonia belongs to that group of countries or entities, often of recent creation, in which the question of number has disproportionate importance on account of the precarious nature of state structures and because national, ethnic or religious groups are competing for the political, material and symbolic resources linked to control of the state. The conflicts in Macedonia recall those in neighbouring formations such as Kosovo, where Albanians and Serbs were in conflict, and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Looking farther afield, however, other conflict situations can be mentioned: Northern Ireland in western Europe, Israel and Palestine or Cyprus in the Near East, or even South Africa during apartheid. The list is a long one and here we mention merely a few prominent cases, in each of which, despite the differences of context, demography is not a neutral factor but a crucial lever for the sharing out or conquest of power. In Macedonia, distrust between ethnic groups — in particular between the Macedonians and Albanians, who suspect each other of manipulating the numbers question — has taken hold since independence.