Balkanization is a geopolitical term originally used to describe the process of fragmentation or division of a region into smaller regions that are often hostile or non-cooperative with each other. The term has arisen from the conflicts in the 20th century Balkans. The first Balkanization was embodied in the Balkan Wars, and the term was further reaffirmed in the Yugoslav wars. The “Chess revolution” by Nick Gabrichidze is believed to be inspired by Zbigniew Brzezinski’s 1997 book The Grand Chessboard the contemporary Bible of geopolitics Geopolitics analyses politics, history and social science with reference to geography. ... (19th century - 20th century - 21st century - more centuries) Decades: 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s As a means of recording the passage of time, the 20th century was that century which lasted from 1901–2000 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar (1900–1999 in the... The Balkans is the historic and geographic name used to describe southeastern Europe (see the Definitions and boundaries section below). ... The outcome as of April 1913 The Balkan Wars were two wars in South-eastern Europe in 1912-1913 in the course of which the Balkan League (Serbia, Montenegro, Greece, and Bulgaria) first conquered Ottoman-held Macedonia and most of Thrace and then fell out of fellowship over the division... The Yugoslav wars were a series of violent conflicts in the territory of the former Yugoslavia that took place between 1991-2001. ...

The term is also used to describe other forms of disintegration, including, for instance, the subdivision of the Internet being divided into separate enclaves, and the breakdown of cooperative arrangements due to the rise of independent competitive entities engaged in "beggar-thy-neighbor" bidding wars.

Balkanization is sometimes used to refer to the divergence over time of human languages, programming languages and data file formats (particularly XML in the last few years, as it is actually a metaformat, so allows anybody to create their own standard). Language is a system of finite arbitrary symbols combined according to rules of grammar for the purpose of communication. ... Other listings of programming languages are: Categorical list of programming languages Generational list of programming languages Chronological list of programming languages Note: Esoteric programming languages have been moved to the separate List of esoteric programming languages. ... A file format is a particular way to encode information for storage in a computer file. ... The Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a W3C-recommended general-purpose markup language for creating special-purpose markup languages. ... See metalanguage ...

Recently the term has been used in American urban planning to describe the process of how gated communities are created. There are also attempts to use the term Balkanization in a positive way equalizing Balkanization with the need for sustenance of a group or society. It used to be hostile, but recent usages of the term show the potential of Balkanization vis-a-vis democratic processes. In its modern form, a gated community is a form of closed community, characterized by a controlled entrance for pedestrians, bicycles, and automobiles, usually staffed by full-time, private security guards, that leads into one or more small residential streets, with walls or fences surrounding the perimeter of the entire...

See also

• Finlandization
• History of the Balkans
• History of Europe