摘要：Unlike most of the present researches of ethnic distance in Croatia, authors' starting point is a general assumption on existing connection between models of interethnic relations and local level of sociality. The first part of this paper represents theoretical framework analysis that focuses on two theoretical concepts: concept of social integration and concept of identity. Problems of social integration in Croatia need to be viewed in the context of late modernization that raises issues of interplay between local, national and supranational. Introductory part, thus, discusses problems of social integration in perspective of two contrary but equally relevant theoretical approaches: Touren's theory of social movement and S. Eisenstadt's neo-structuralism. Both approaches emphasize in their own way the growing influence of social elites on relation structuring in societies of late modernization. The second concept analyzed in the paper is ethnicity. Overview of theoretical approaches to defining ethnicity demonstrates its multidimensional nature, both in theory and appearance. Ethnicity has, at the same time, pre-modern and modern aspects; it can contribute to domination but it also has emancipational potentials; it is an expression of structural group characteristics, however, it operates as extremely dynamic category. Ethnicity appears in enormous number of different shapes which leads several authors to doubting identity of this phenomenon. Exactly this diversity of ethnicity represents the main framework of interpretation used by the authors in explanation of different models of ethnic distance established in the present research. Questionnaires have been used in research, in May 2005, on the territory of three Croatian regions: Istria, Lika and Gorski kotar. Research has sustained the hypothesis on models of ethnic distance. Connecting theoretical framework established in the first part of the paper with results of empirical research, the authors in conclusion point out to the main social actors that direct processes of construction and reconstruction in local communities.
