The Irregular Pendulum of Democracy: Populism, Clientelism and Corruption in Post-Yugoslav Successor States 3031256085, 9783031256080

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NEW PERSPECTIVES ON SOUTH-EAST EUROPE

The Irregular Pendulum of Democracy Populism, Clientelism and Corruption in Post-Yugoslav Successor States Dimitri A. Sotiropoulos

New Perspectives on South-East Europe

Series Editors Kevin Featherstone, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK Spyros Economides, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK Vassilis Monastiriotis, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK

South-East Europe presents a compelling agenda: a region that has challenged European identities, values and interests like no other at formative periods of modern history, and is now undergoing a set a complex transitions. It is a region made up of new and old European Union member states, as well as aspiring ones; early ‘democratising’ states and new post-communist regimes; states undergoing liberalising economic reforms, partially inspired by external forces, whilst coping with their own embedded nationalisms; and states obliged to respond to new and recurring issues of security, identity, well-being, social integration, faith and secularisation. This series examines issues of inheritance and adaptation. The disciplinary reach incorporates politics and international relations, modern history, economics and political economy and sociology. It links the study of South East-Europe across a number of social sciences to European issues of democratisation and economic reform in the posttransition age. It addresses ideas as well as institutions; policies as well as processes. It will include studies of the domestic and foreign policies of single states, relations between states and peoples in the region, and between the region and beyond. The EU is an obvious reference point for current research on South-East Europe, but this series also highlights the importance of South-East Europe in its eastern context; the Caucuses; the Black Sea and the Middle East.

Dimitri A. Sotiropoulos

The Irregular Pendulum of Democracy Populism, Clientelism and Corruption in Post-Yugoslav Successor States

Dimitri A. Sotiropoulos Political Science and Public Administration National and Kapodistrian University of Athens Athens, Greece

ISSN 2662-5857 ISSN 2662-5865 (electronic) New Perspectives on South-East Europe ISBN 978-3-031-25608-0 ISBN 978-3-031-25609-7 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25609-7 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Posnov/Getty Image This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

I dedicate this book to my two daughters, Eirini Sotiropoulou and Dimitra-Eftychia Sotiropoulou.

Preface

This book is a story and interpretation of long-term failure of democratization, the renewal of democratization and dashed hopes for full development of liberal democracy in comparative perspective. The book is the result of a long-term interest of mine in democracies lying at the periphery of Europe. My earlier work was related to the consolidation of democracy and the organization of the state in South European countries, namely Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain, in the last quarter of the twentieth century. Since then, I have developed an interest in the critical antecedents of democratization and the reversal of democratization. In this book, by “critical antecedents”, I mean the state-society relations existing in the period immediately preceding the backsliding of democracy. I understand state-society relations as structural variables providing a context for the strategies and choices of political elites. My theoretical argument is that state-society relations are factors mediating between, on the one hand, political elites pursuing their own strategies to win and retain power and, on the other hand, long-term historical legacies and socio-economic structural pre-conditions having an impact on how democracy works or fails to work. To put it otherwise, in this book, I try to understand how the impact of such legacies and pre-conditions is mediated by different varieties of state-society relations. I would like to argue that with regard to democratization (or the lack thereof) relevant state-society relations are populism,

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clientelism and corruption. I take them be a context within which political actors, i.e., governing elites, use and misuse political institutions. In order to substantiate this argument, I look at the flow and ebb of unconsolidated democracies. The post-Yugoslav successor states swing today between democratization and semi-authoritarianism in an irregular pendulum-like movement, as the title of the book suggests. West Balkan national cases offer an opportunity to discuss democracy while it is still in a fluid state, prior to full democratic consolidation. The political regimes in a state of flux, which I have studied for the period 1991–2022 (with an emphasis on the period after 2010), are contemporary Serbia, Montenegro and North Macedonia. In the process of research for this book, I have done field research in Belgrade, Podgorica and Skopje, cities which I have visited six times in total over the last seven years. I have obtained semi-structured interviews with 47 interviewees who are activists, journalists, experts, politicians and academics. I have refrained from disclosing their first and last names in this text, as I am afraid that in their countries the irregular pendulum of democracy has not yet swung to the democratic end of its course. I want to protect their anonymity and I only reveal at the end of their book their professional identity and the place and time of our meetings. They know who they are; I thank them very much. Athens, Greece

Dimitri A. Sotiropoulos

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the personnel of academic libraries which helped me during the course of writing this manuscript, namely the personnel of Widener Library at Harvard University and Firestone Library at Princeton University. I also thank the personnel of research centres which offered me an inspiring environment to work during my sabbatical leave from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens in 2018–2019. These were the Center for European Studies (CES) at Harvard University and the Seeger Center of Hellenic Studies at Princeton University, as well as the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University where I taught courses related to the topics of this book for two academic semesters. I owe special thanks to Elaine Papoulias (Director of CES, Harvard) and Dimitri H. Gondicas (Director of Seeger Center, Princeton) who hosted me as a research fellow at their institutions. My empirical field research was primarily supported by the research funds of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and its “Master’s Degree in South European Studies” Program, hosted in my department, the Department of Political Science and Public Administration. The faculty and staff of my department were very supportive during the period of my sabbatical leave (2018–2019). My research and stay in the USA would have been impossible without support provided by the following institutions: Onassis Foundation USA (New York), Latsis Foundation (Athens), Foundation for Education and European Culture (IPEP,

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Athens), the Bank of Greece, the Hellenic Bankers Association (Athens), the Fourlis Group of Companies (Athens) and Aegean Airlines. Various people have read smaller or larger parts of this book. Regarding the larger framework, the comments and criticisms of Peter A. Hall, Nancy Bermeo and George Tsebelis were very important to me. I have benefited from discussions with P. Nikiforos Diamandouros, Kevin Featherstone and Asteris Huliaras on my research project. Regarding the details and arguments in the case studies and comparisons which I make in this book, I want to thank Dusan Bogdanovi´c, Olivera Komar, Nenad Markovi´c, Elena Mihajlova, Milena Milosevi´c, Jovan Teokarevi´c, Nikolaos Tzifakis, Sonja Seizowa, Costas Stratilatis and Ivan Zivoti´c. I thank them all for trying to help me avoid mistakes, the sole responsibility for which, of course, remains with me. Over the last several years, my partner, Sofia, offered me constant encouragement. At Palgrave Macmillan, I would like to thank Ambra Finotello, Lynnie Sharon, Liviyaa Sree and their team for their great support.

About This Book

The main research question of this book is why and how contemporary democracies backslide, even if they have started on and have progressed along the road to further democratization. What are the deeper causes of reversal of democratization and why—even if the reversal stops—is it so hard for democratization to go back on track? The main point of the book is that the backsliding of democracy should be interpreted in a wider perspective of pendulum-like movements to and from democracy, i.e., to and from the political regime usually understood as contemporary liberal democracy. This a perspective couched by a metaphor, namely the irregular pendulum of democracy. The metaphor implies that in the early twenty first century democratic regimes may swing between a democratic end (fully developed liberal democracy) and a non-democratic end (competitive authoritarianism). It is not, of course, a typical pendulum, as it does not follow any predictable frequency. It is easier to analyse such movements of the pendulum when democracy is not consolidated yet, as democratic institutions and processes are not stable enough. For this reason, the book studies the swing of unconsolidated democracy away from the democratic end in 1991–2022 (with an emphasis on the period after 2010) in the cases of Serbia and the ineffective swing back towards liberal democracy in the cases of North Macedonia and Montenegro. Since the beginning of this century and particularly in the 2010s, all three countries have started sliding towards a competitive authoritarian regime. Recently, the

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latter two gradually embarked on the road to democratic recovery. They have had little success so far, as their governing elites were constrained by populism, clientelism and corruption. These are three different types of state-society relations which—in combination with elite strategies and choices—keep the pendulum from travelling all the way to the democratic end. This is a comparative politics study of the above issues on the basis of field research in three democratizing post-Yugoslav successor states. Research for the book is based on 47 personal interviews in the three countries mentioned above and official reports, including reports of international organizations, such as the EU and the OSCE, government documents and articles of the press and electronic media. The collected data is analysed through the theoretical approach of historical institutionalism and more concretely Peter A. Hall’s “systematic process analysis”.

Contents

1

1

Introduction

2

Populism, Clientelism and Corruption and the International Crisis of Democracy

43

The Pendulum of Democracy in Post-Yugoslav Successor States: Causes of the Backsliding of Democracy

71

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4

5 6 7 8 9

Economy, Culture and the Party System: Preconditions for State-Society Relations Eroding Democracy

105

Populism as a Type of State-Society Relation Eroding Democracy

133

Political Clientelism as a Type of State-Society Relation Eroding Democracy

167

Political Corruption as a Type of State-Society Relation Eroding Democracy

197

How Elected Governments Make Democracies Backslide: The Case of Serbia

237

How Elected Governments Make Democracies Backslide: The Case of Montenegro

273

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CONTENTS

10

How Elected Governments Make Democracies Backslide: The Case of North Macedonia

311

Prolonging or Halting Democratic Erosion in Serbia, Montenegro and North Macedonia: A Comparison

355

Conclusions

371

11 12

List of Interviews and Online Exchanges / Online Meetings

391

Index

395

About the Author

Dimitri A. Sotiropoulos is Professor of Political Science in the Department of Political Science and Public Administration of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Senior Research Fellow at the ELIAMEP research foundation (Athens) and Research Associate of the Hellenic Observatory of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). He has studied law, sociology and political science at the Law School of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (LLB), the LSE (M.Sc.) and Yale University (M.A., M.Phil. and Ph.D., awarded with distinction, 1991). In 2003, he was Senior Research Fellow at the Hellenic Observatory (LSE), in 2009–2010 Visiting Fellow in South East European Studies at the Centre for European Studies, St. Antony’s College, Oxford, and in autumn 2015, Visiting Professor at the “Sciences Po”, Paris. In 2018–2019, he was Visiting Professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy (Tufts University) and Visiting Fellow at Harvard’s Center of European Studies and Princeton’s Center for Hellenic Studies. He serves on the editorial board of the academic journals South European Society and Politics, Mediterranean Politics, Southeast European and Black Sea Studies. His publications are on contemporary Greek, South European and Balkan politics and public policies, focusing on democratization, public administration, civil society and the

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welfare state. He has published eight books, seven edited volumes and numerous articles published in international journals. He has taught courses on South East European politics and on democratization over the last twenty-five years.

Abbreviations

ACA BTI CCI CDU CGO CPI CRNVO CSOs DF DG DJB DOS DPA DPP DPS DS DSS DUI EBRD EC EP EU EUI FH

Anti-corruption Agency Bertelsmann Transformation Index Croatian Civic Initiative (in Montenegro) Christian Democratic Union (in Germany) Center for Civic Education (in Montenegro) Corruption Perception Index Center for the Development of Non-Governmental Organizations (in Montenegro) Civil Society Associations Democratic Front (in Montenegro) Directorate General Dosta je Bilo - Enough is Enough (political party in Serbia) Democratic Opposition of Serbia Democratic Party of Albanians (in North Macedonia) Democratic People’s Party (in Montenegro) Democratic Party of Socialists (in Montenegro) Democratic Party (in Serbia) Democratic Party of Serbia Democratic Union of Integration (political party in North Macedonia) European Bank for Reconstruction and Development European Communities European Parliament European Union Economist Intelligence Unit Freedom House xvii

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ABBREVIATIONS

FRY FYROM GERB GROM HJC HPC ICIJ ICTY IFI IMF JC KRIK LDP MANS MP NADA NATO NDR NGOs NLA ODIHR OFAC OSCE PM RGC RTCG SAA SAO SDSM SEC SEE SFRY SL SNP SNS SOEs SPAS SPC SPO

Federal Republic of Yugoslavia Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria Citizen Option for Macedonia Higher Judicial Council Higher Prosecutorial Council International Consortium of Investigative Journalists International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia International Financial Institutions International Monetary Fund Judicial Council Crime and Corruption Reporting Network (in Serbia) Liberal Democratic Party (in North Macedonia, also in Serbia) Network for the Affirmation of the Non-Governmental Sector (in Montenegro) Member of Parliament National Democratic Alternative (political party in Serbia) North Atlantic Treaty Organization National Democratic Revival (political party in North Macedonia) Non-Governmental Organizations National Liberation Army (in Kosovo) Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (in OSCE) Office of Foreign Assets Control (in the USA) Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe Prime Minister Regional Cooperation Council Radio and Television of Montenegro (public broadcaster) Stabilization and Association Agreement State Audit Office Social Democratic Alliance of Macedonia State Electoral Commission South Eastern Europe Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia Serb List (party coalition in Montenegro) Socialist People’s Party (in Montenegro) Serbian Progressive Party State-Owned Enterprises Serbian Patriotic Alliance State Prosecutorial Council Special Prosecutor’s Office

ABBREVIATIONS

SRS TI URA UZPS V-Dem VMRO-DPMNE

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Serbian Radical Party Transparency International United Reform Action (political party in Montenegro) United for the Victory of Serbia (party coalition in Serbia) Varieties of Democracy International Macedonian Revolutionary OrganizationDemocratic Party for Macedonian National Unity

List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 Fig. 1.2

The book’s argument: The causes of backsliding of democracy in unconsolidated democracies Freedom House scores, 2009–2018 (Source Freedom House. The higher the score, the less democratic a country is thought to be)

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13

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List of Tables

Table 1.1 Table 1.2

Table 3.1 Table 3.2 Table 3.3 Table 3.4 Table 4.1 Table 4.2 Table 4.3 Table 4.4 Table 4.5 Table 4.6

Levels of voice and accountability, world bank governance indicators, 2010–2020 Levels of political participation in East Central and Southeastern Europe, Bertelsmann Transformation Index (BTI), 2008–2022 Trust in the judiciary and in government’s abiding by the law in post-Yugoslav successor states, 2015 A comparative snapshot of the ethnic composition of three post-Yugoslav successor states A comparative snapshot of the similarities among three post-Yugoslav successor states Trust in political institutions in Serbia, Montenegro and North Macedonia, 2018 Economic growth and public debt in Southeastern Europe, 2009–2019 Gross National Income per capita (Atlas method, current US $) in Southeastern Europe (World Bank data) Labour Market Data on Three Post-Yugoslav Successor States, age group 15–64, % (2015) in EU Perspective Unemployment rate in the Southeastern Europe during and after the economic crisis, 2009–2019 Income inequality and poverty in the three post-Yugoslav successor states in comparative perspective Evolution of income inequality in Serbia and North Macedonia, S80/S20, 2013–2016 in EU perspective

14

15 73 79 83 99 110 112 113 113 115 115

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LIST OF TABLES

Table 4.7

Table 4.8 Table 4.9 Table 5.1 Table 5.2 Table 5.3 Table 5.4 Table 6.1 Table 6.2

Table 6.3

Table 6.4 Table 7.1

Table 7.2

Table 7.3

Table 7.4 Table 10.1 Table 11.1

Table 11.2

Evolution of poverty ratio at national poverty lines (% of Population) in Serbia and North Macedonia, 2012–2015 Support for democracy in the Western Balkans (% share of survey respondents, 2006 and 2016) Dominant parties in the party systems of North Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia in 2006–2022 Results of the 2014 presidential elections in North Macedonia Results of the 2014 parliamentary elections in North Macedonia Results of the 2012, 2014, 2016, 2020 and 2022 parliamentary elections in Serbia Results of the 2017 and 2022 presidential elections in Serbia Public sector employment in post-Yugoslav successor states, 2008–2009 and 2016 “If you are employed, is it a private or a public sector employment?” (% share of respondents, region-wide opinion survey) Perceptions of factors affecting a successful professional career in the public sector. “To what extent do you agree or not agree with the following statements?” “In your opinion, which two assets are most important for finding a job today?” Extent of Change in Perceived Corruption (CPI) in Southeastern Europe in Comparative Perspective, 2009 and 2015 (Transparency International) Extent of Perceived Corruption (CPI) in Three Post-Yugoslav Successor States, 2009–2021 (Transparency International) Control of Corruption in Southeastern Europe in Comparative Perspective (World Bank’s Worldwide Governance Indicators) Perceptions of Extent of Corruption in Various Political Institutions in Western Balkan Countries, 2019 Results of the 2020 Parliamentary elections in North Macedonia Distribution of Seats in Parliament: The Winner of Parliamentary Elections and the Second Largest Party in Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia Populism, clientelism and corruption in the three cases under study in 2006–2016

116 121 125 140 141 148 150 168

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182 185

201

201

202 202 330

363 366

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

While democracy is backsliding in many places around the world today, it is perhaps more useful to understand democratic erosion as one phase of a longer-term, pendulum-like movement of democracy than a downward slide or spiral. The more useful image is that of a pendulum swinging between liberal democracy, marked by all its familiar problems, and semiauthoritarianism. In the early twenty-first century, semi-authoritarianism appeared in a soft and usually non-violent variety, namely competitive authoritarianism (Levitsky & Way, 2010). It is a type of political regime in which the field of political competition is heavily and constantly tilted in favour of the incumbent. Consolidated democracies such as Hungary and Poland have started backsliding from the liberal democratic end of the pendulum and may already be approaching the semi-authoritarian end (Antal, 2019; Körösényi et al., 2019; Milaˇci´c, 2022; Taras & Castle, 2018). The grave economic crisis in the Eurozone in the 2010s had negative spillover effects on democracy in South European countries, such as Greece, Portugal and to an extent Italy and Spain (Morlino & Sottilotta, 2019; Parker & Tsarouhas, 2018). In South European democracies, major areas of public policy-making temporarily slipped from the hands of elected governments and were to an extent assumed by foreign creditors, but democratic political regimes did not slide towards semi-authoritarianism. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 D. A. Sotiropoulos, The Irregular Pendulum of Democracy, New Perspectives on South-East Europe, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25609-7_1

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D. A. SOTIROPOULOS

On the other hand, unconsolidated democracies, such as the postcommunist Southeast European ones, made an incomplete transition to democracy in 1989–1991, became hybrid or semi-authoritarian regimes in the 1990s, and moved further towards democratization in the 2000s, before experiencing a reversal of democratization. Particularly since the early 2010s, democratization in some of the post-Yugoslav successor states reversed its course and started approaching the semi-authoritarian end of the pendulum of democracy. Unconsolidated democracies started resembling competitive authoritarian regimes in the early 2010s, as the cases discussed in this book, namely Serbia, Montenegro and North Macedonia, show. In contrast to what older and younger, important analysts of Southeast European politics argue (Bieber, 2018a, 2020; Castaldo, 2020; Kapidži´c, 2022), I suggest that these cases never turned into typical competitive authoritarian regimes. In the late 2010s, two of them—North Macedonia and Montenegro—started on the road to democratic recovery, but failed to fulfil promises for democracy; by contrast, Serbia remained in a limbo between competitive authoritarianism and unconsolidated democracy. Based on a limited but arguably illuminating set of cases, I claim in this book that it is more helpful to understand the international crisis of democracy not as a passing or periodic phenomenon which results from economic crises, but as a pendulum movement to and from democracy. The victories of populist political parties and candidates in elections which took place between 2012 and 2022 in Hungary, Poland, Austria, Italy and the USA, the good electoral performance of such parties in national elections in Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland and Greece as well as the very good performance of populists in the European Parliament elections of 2019 have raised questions about the fate of democracy today. There is increased concern in the mass media and academic literature about the challenges which populist parties and leaders pose to democracy. In parallel, efforts to evaluate democracy and determine whether it is on the decline have multiplied, although opinions on the subject diverge a lot (e.g., Foa & Munk, 2016; Lindberg, 2018; Mounk, 2018; Norris, 2017). Participants in the debate directly or indirectly acknowledge that democracy cannot be viewed as a mere procedure to periodically elect governing elites. When the post-2008 global economic crisis was accompanied by harsh austerity measures taken by small circles of

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INTRODUCTION

3

decision-makers, there was social reaction: the need to hold elected officials accountable and to participate more in policy-making became a usual theme of protest movements around the world. The traditional, minimal understanding of democracy as a procedure to periodically elect those who govern (Schumpeter, 1976) and to let them govern unencumbered until the next round of elections is becoming more and more insufficient in today’s world, when democracy leaves a lot to be desired. Meanwhile, another current of the academic literature has focused on the illiberal turn of democracy or the backsliding or back-pedalling of democracy or the disruption of democracy (Applebaum, 2020; Bermeo, 2016; Bohle & Greskovits, 2009; Krastev, 2014; Levitsky & Ziblatt, 2018; Runciman, 2018; Snyder, 2018; Tilly, 2003, 2007; Zakaria, 1997). There are valuable recent arguments that populism is primarily responsible for the backsliding of democracy (Mudde, 2007; Mueller, 2016). Some analysts of backsliding have focused on key indicators of the behaviour of authoritarian leaders who, after being elected, engineer a slide towards authoritarianism (Levitsky & Ziblatt, 2018, 23–24, 65–67). Other analysts have discussed the variable ways through which democracies backslide, mostly through initiatives of governing elites (Bermeo, 2016). The focus of such approaches lies on mechanisms or strategies which elites employ to adjust liberal democracy to their aim, namely, to prolong their stay in power. However, beyond such perceptive analyses of mechanisms and strategies, it is worth examining the underlying context and causes of democracy’s backsliding. In other words, could the study of the means (mechanisms, strategies) through which some elected leaders make democracies backslide be put in a larger context of state-society relations? Could the critical antecedents of populism, clientelism and corruption help us better understand the trends negatively affecting various democracies today?

1.1

The Book’s Main Research Question

This book’s main research question is: under what conditions do contemporary democracies backslide, particularly when this is least expected, i.e., when they have embarked on the road to further democratization, and why does the reversal of backsliding prove hard to accomplish? Even though a worldwide trend in the backsliding of democracy may be evident (Bertelsmann Transformation Index, 2022; Freedom House,

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D. A. SOTIROPOULOS

2021), some progress towards further democratization—albeit stalled— is currently notable in Montenegro and North Macedonia, but not in Serbia. These are the cases which I compare and contrast in this book for the period 1991–2022, with an emphasis in the years after 2010. I argue that it is useful to describe the relevant shifts as movements of a pendulum to and from democracy and to seek an explanation using case study analysis. In political theory, there is the old idea of cyclical movement among different political regimes. The movement is couched by Plato’s terms “Aristocracy, Timocracy, Oligarchy, Democracy, and Tyranny” and dwells on how one of these regimes may degenerate into another (e.g., democracy into tyranny). In contemporary political analysis, there are similar conceptions of voting behaviour and public policy shifts within today’s democracies. The concept of a pendulum of democracy has been used to analyse democratic regimes organized along the Westminster model and similar models (Hendriks, 2010). The idea of a pendulum’s movement has also been applied to shifts of economic inequality between “democracy” and “plutocracy” (Smart, 2003) and on economic policy shifts between statism and neoliberalism (Vernon, 2012). One may think of inter-block electoral volatility and of swing voters along similar pendulumlike lines. Economists have employed comparable analytical schemes when writing about cycles of national and world economy. However, my analysis here does not refer to either voting behaviour or policy shifts or to a type of democracy, i.e., the Westminster model, in which two competitors, supported by their own electoral bases, alternate in power. The pendulum which I have in mind is a reference to the periodic movement to and from higher or lower levels of democracy, interspersed by periods of no movement, when democracy stagnates. One could couch the same idea as a movement along the range from “practices of political inclusion” to practices of “political exclusion” (Fishman, 2019) and back. This book’s explanation of pendulum shifts is multifold. It focuses not only on mechanisms and strategies which governing elites employ to provoke the backsliding of democracy, but also on the antecedents of democratic backsliding as well as the obstacles encountered in the reversal of backsliding. Backsliding is an interesting phenomenon, but the re-embarkation on a trajectory of democratization has also already been observed in several cases. Even though

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INTRODUCTION

5

democracy is in retreat… Surprising improvements in individual countries—including Malaysia, Armenia, Ethiopia, Angola, and Ecuador—show that democracy has enduring appeal as a means of holding leaders accountable and creating the conditions for a better life. (Freedom House, 2019, 1)

The book focuses on a “how” question and on an “why” question. More concretely, it poses the questions: through which strategies or mechanisms and under what structures of state-society relations does the government-driven backsliding of democracy occur? How does it come about? And under what conditions may the backsliding of democracy be overcome and democracy be revived? The answer which I suggest is the following: populism, clientelism and corruption, or combinations thereof, understood as varieties of statesociety relations, are the causes which facilitate democracy’s backsliding. These types of state-society relations, which usually, but not necessarily, co-exist, constitute a missing link. This is the link between, on the one hand, historical legacies of socio-economic, cultural and political party system preconditions to be found further behind, in the background of events; and on the other hand, the strategies or mechanisms which political actors, such as elected governments, employ to make democracy backslide to their own benefit. The strategies of governing elites can be contained when there is a united opposition, capable of using political opportunities in order to put an end to democracy’s backsliding and to reinvigorate democratic life. However, such reinvigoration is not at all secure, even if semiauthoritarian elites are defeated in the polls. The reversal of backsliding, too, may fall prey to the structural constraints of populism, clientelism and corruption, the antecedents of elite action. But why does this book test this hypothesis in the unusual, so to speak, cases of three post-Yugoslav democracies? The reason lies in the fluid nature of the cases. It is probably easier to observe the aforementioned shifts of the pendulum of democracy and to suggest relevant explanations in cases of unconsolidated democratic regimes than in cases of stably consolidated democracies. Compared to the latter regimes, the former ones have not yet stabilized, because their slide towards autocracy—in this case competitive authoritarianism (Bieber, 2020)—can happen more easily, i.e., with fewer impediments. The move towards the other end,

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D. A. SOTIROPOULOS

i.e., towards restoring democracy, is far from self-evident today. Yet, it is noticeable in North Macedonia and Montenegro, but not in Serbia. In short, the movement of the pendulum of democracy is more palpable in unconsolidated democracies. In contrast to an ideal pendulum, this irregular one stops and its movement is reversed, when democracy backslides. What follows is the story of recent shifts and turns of democratization in three frail, unconsolidated democracies verging on, but not reaching, competitive authoritarianism, namely Serbia, Montenegro and North Macedonia.

1.2

The Shifts and Turns of Democratization

Today, three decades after the “third wave” of democratization (Huntington, 1991) reached its peak in 1989–1991 with the more or less simultaneous transition to democracy in almost all East European countries, some of the new democracies seem to have become stagnant or have started back-pedalling. Outside of Europe, even long-established democracies appear to be sliding towards non-democratic paths. Debates about grave problems threatening democracy have been sparked by the election of explicitly anti-liberal leaders and parties to power on both sides of the Atlantic (Bermeo, 2019; Mounk, 2018). The limits to democracy and the weaknesses of democratic institutions have become visible in several ways: first, in the problematic way in which governments and international actors managed the economic crisis of the 2010s in the weakest economies of Europe’s periphery; second, in the deepening of income and wealth inequalities in young and old liberal democracies (Piketty, 2014); third, in the ascent to government, through national elections, of populist/nationalist political parties and leaders who tamper with their country’s constitution, electoral systems and the media, among other democratic institutions; and fourth, in the manner in which governments imposed restrictions on living conditions and working environments after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. However, already since the 1990s the comparative study of transition to and consolidation of democracy has shown that democratization is not a linear process. Rather, it must be understood as an open-ended process, which is debated within and among political elites and mass publics. It is a process driven by multiple institutional pressures, choices of elites (Linz & Stepan, 1996; Whitehead, 2002) and mobilization of protest

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INTRODUCTION

7

groups (Bunce, 2000, 2003). Further on, even when the consolidation of democracy is achieved, the performance of a democracy can be very uneven. Thus, research has shifted from problems of democratic consolidation to the study of democratic persistence and the quality of democracy (Buelhman et al., 2007; Diamond & Morlino, 2005; Lindberg, 2011; Roberts, 2009). If the high or low level of democracy’s quality can be measured along several dimensions (Diamond & Morlino, 2004), then presumably the backsliding of democracy could be documented by studying decreases in the levels of freedom, rule of law, accountability, responsiveness, equality, participation and competition. Indeed, there is increasing concern about a ten-year long “decline in global freedom” (Freedom House, 2016, for the period since 2006), “democratic recession” (Diamond, 2015), longer-term declining trends in citizens’ attachment to democracy (Foa & Munck, 2017a, 2017b), “reversal of democratic trend” (Brunkert et al., 2019) and even a “third wave of autocratization” (Luerhmann & Lindberg, 2019).

1.3

The Book’s Argument

The backsliding of democracy is not exclusively owed to large scale, external processes such as globalization, which are not under the control of domestic actors. Democracy’s backsliding is not exclusively the result of strategies and machinations of essentially anti-democratic elites either, even though such elites may have been left unbound by political institutions that were initially designed to safeguard democracy. The main argument of this book is that the backsliding of democracy is understood as a long-term process which governing elites actively pursue. Elites are facilitated by existing mixes of state-society relations, such as populism, clientelism and corruption. In order to substantiate this argument, I analyse three post-Yugoslav successor states, Serbia, Montenegro and North Macedonia. The three types of state-society relations are “critical antecedents” (Slater & Simmons, 2010). Such antecedents are crucial causal factors, lying in between (1) external conditions (e.g., globalization) and past arrangements domestic to a society (e.g., authoritarian legacies), on the one hand, and (2) human agency, on the other (Fig. 1.1). One could argue that these antecedents are in turn dependent on past state-society arrangements, dating back to the previous centuries, for example to the

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Preconditions

Critical antecedents

Direct causes

Mixes of populism

Strategies of

clientelism and corruption

governing elites

Unregulated capitalism

Predominant party systems

Legacies of authoritarian culture Fig. 1.1 The book’s argument: The causes of backsliding of democracy in unconsolidated democracies

four century-long occupation of Balkan lands by the Ottoman Empire (fifteenth–nineteenth century). However, I argue that there is no risk of such infinite regress while looking for prior causes, since in the three selected cases of postcommunist societies there is an obvious cut-off point: the transition to democracy in 1989–1991 and the ensuing disintegration of former Yugoslavia. After that turning point, populism (mostly clad as nationalism) as well as clientelism and corruption were typical characteristics of the post-communist, semi-authoritarian regimes which emerged in the post-Yugoslav space in the 1990s. Democracy in North Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia emerged out of former Yugoslavia amidst an unregulated transition to the market economy and war, ethnic conflict and disputes over national sovereignty. These have been challenges common to most Western Balkan countries since 1991 (Bideleux & Jeffries, 2007; Boduszynski, 2010; Cali´c, 2019, 297–322; Cohen & Lampe, 2011; Crampton, 2002; Glenny, 1996; Hayden, 2013; Mazower, 2000; Meka & Bianchini, 2020; Milaˇci´c, 2022; Sotiropoulos, 2022; Woodward, 1995). The three aforementioned types of state-society relations are factors internal to political regimes. To illuminate democracy’s backsliding, I will primarily focus on them rather than on factors external to a political regime’s performance, such as, pressures by economic globalization. The latter may be a force eroding democracy, if combined with other constraints (Rodrik, 2012). But attributing democracy’s erosion to globalization would be a blanket-like explanation, when we should be looking for more concrete, complementary, domestic causes of the phenomenon.

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In fact, democratic erosion involves human agency evolving within a certain context of state-society relations in a concrete space and time. On the other hand, by themselves, such state-society relations do not suffice to sidetrack democracy. Populism, clientelism and corruption may help put democracy on the wrong track, but the derailment of democracy cannot take place without human agency. Depending on their own ideological profile, the conjuncture and structure of political party competition, individual and collective actors, such as political leaders, elites and party organizations, may give democracy a strong push to go downhill, or they may refrain from doing so. I am obviously making an indirect reference to Weber’s “Switchman Metaphor” (Weber, 1946, 280) and Marx’s dictum that “men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past” (Marx, 1852, 5). Elected governments may be pictured as switchmen in contemporary democratic regimes in which backsliding has been simmering under the fire of populism, clientelism and corruption. In post-Yugoslav successor states today, these three types of state-society relations were not invented by incumbent governing parties or governing coalitions. Populism, clientelism and corruption have been typical ways through which governing elites have related to segments of society for a long time, before and after the transition from state socialism. To a certain extent, different mixes of populism, clientelism and corruption are taken for granted by those who govern and those who are governed, for instance, voters, leaders of interest groups and business persons. The types of state-society relations form a context of possibilities open to governing elites who want to prolong their stay in power. It is true that whether a democracy’s life will be terminated or not is primarily a choice of elites (Bunce, 2000), since “democracies do not die in the hands of ordinary people” (Bermeo, 2003, 255). But elites act and interact with ordinary people and can read or mis-read their preferences. If, for a long time, (e.g., since transition from state socialism) populism, clientelism and corruption are tolerated as routine ways through which people, including representatives of interest groups and business entrepreneurs, relate to the state, chances are that elites will employ them to prolong their stay in power. In other words, populism, clientelism and corruption are not passing fads or temporary installations around which political life is played out.

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Rather, all three in different mixes constitute a recognizable setting, within which politics usually evolves in the three countries under study in this book. Other researchers may possibly argue the same for other countries with populist, clientelist and/or corruption-based relations between state and society. In more abstract terms, in the cases under study, populism, clientelism and corruption structure the space and time in which politics evolve. Metaphorically speaking, different mixes of the three types of state-society relations make up a quasi-permanent theatrical backdrop in which the production of politics takes place. The scenery sets the stage for selecting from and using items out of a repertoire of governing strategies. For instance, elected governments of North Macedonia (until the government change of 2017), Montenegro (since 1991 and until the government change of 2020) and Serbia (since the government change of 2012) have had at their disposal a repertoire of various anti-democratic strategies. These were strategies which governing elites had inherited from the past (the period of state socialism and the first post-transition period) and which they have adapted to the present. Governments have employed such strategies in various mixes and degrees of intensity, short of causing a complete breakdown of democracy and imposing an authoritarian regime. Notably, in 2017 in North Macedonia and in 2020 in Montenegro, other elected governments, which took power over from their predecessors, also operated within the same context of state-society relations. Even though these relatively recent successors to earlier, essentially antidemocratic governments had won elections on promises to reverse the backsliding of democracy, to an extent they too used similar repertoires of strategies to govern, as argued in the last two chapters of this book. They would not or could not let free of the structural constraints of populism, clientelism and corruption. Government turnover was necessary to stem the backsliding of democracy, but it proved insufficient to push the pendulum of democracy to the democratic end.

1.4

Strategies of Governing Elites

As I will be showing in this book, relevant strategies of governing elites include substantively anti-democratic actions which go beyond the usual electoral gerrymandering, pressure on voters, or outright electoral fraud. The latter are common and easily noticeable strategies, but there are other, sometimes more subtle ones, as the following list indicates:

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strengthening the core executive and overshadowing the parliament; controlling state and private mass media; exerting heavy pressure on or fully dominating the courts and regulatory authorities; and monitoring, if not disciplining, dissenting civic associations (see the book’s Chapter 5 on populism); colonizing the public administration and state-owned enterprises with governing party supporters (Chapter 6 on clientelism); weaving networks of corruption between government officials and handpicked businessmen; pursuing policy capture in favour of selected business interests, while also making businessmen dependent on state regulations, loans and tenders for public procurement (Chapter 7 on corruption). Applying an explanatory schema of state-society relations to the study of post-Yugoslav successor states entails a two-stage argument, summarized as follows: First, state-society relations may have historically evolved in specific ways which could be, but are not necessarily, damaging to democracy. For instance, in post-war Northern and Central Europe, social corporatism as a type of state-society relations was not at all damaging to democracy (Schmitter, 1974). In the cases of the three countries under study, a useful way to capture state-society relations is to understand them through the lens of the concepts of populism, clientelism and corruption. These statesociety relations existed before the rise of governments intent on making democracies backslide in order to stay in power. Steps taken at the time point of the birth of the three regimes, namely the crafting of post-socialist political regimes amidst wars and ethnic conflict which accompanied the dissolution of former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, have shaped the manner in which elites governed. The same historical experiences have shaped diffuse expectations among the local populations about what to expect of governing elites in the post-Yugoslav political regimes. Such expectations were informed by and contributed to state-society relations different from to the ones encountered in post-war Western democracies, namely pluralism or social corporatism. In the post-Yugoslav states, traditions of governing through populism, clientelism and corruption have been passed down from older to younger political elites. It is telling that leaders of the three countries under study, such as Serbia’s Vuˇci´c, Montenegro’s Ðukanovi´c and North Macedionia’s Gruevski were between 29 and 42 old when they first rose to power as prime ministers.

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Second, roughly in the late 2000s and early 2010s, political actors such as prime ministers and their governments’ ministers took advantage of pre-established traditions of state-society relations and accordingly changed the profile of their parties and governments. They adapted their profile to the different time periods and social environments, replete with populism, clientelism and corruption, in which their predecessors had exercised power in the early post-communist period of the 1990s and early 2000s. Along the way, however, these political leaders and the elites they led embarked on a course which wounded the already very frail democratic regimes they had inherited from their predecessors in power. This is borne out by comparative evidence presented in the section that follows.

1.5 Comparative Evidence of Democracy’s Backsliding in Eastern and Southeastern Europe Comparative evidence of backsliding is available, first, through quantitative exercises, performed by international democracy-assessment organizations. Freedom House (FH) gives scores to how democracy performs in terms of a multitude of indicators. Here, the most general, composite FH indicator is presented (Fig. 1.2). Its values range from 1 (top score, country most democratic) to 7 (lowest score, country least democratic). On this counting, if democracy declines over time, scores tend to increase. Indeed, in the late 2010s FH reports underlined a backsliding of democracy across the world (Freedom House, 2017, 2019, 2021), while the corresponding reports of the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) reflected the same trend until 2016–2017 (EIU, 2018). Figure 1.2 shows the evolution of levels of the Freedom House Index for the three countries under study in comparison with Hungary and Poland, two East European countries on which a lot of the academic discussion on democratic backsliding has focused (e.g., Agh, 2016; Ekiert, 2017; Cianetti et al., 2018; Levitsky & Ziblatt, 2018, 20–21, 79, 88–89, 188–189). While, as Fig. 1.2. indicates, the decline of democracy is more dramatic in Poland and Hungary, there has been a similar trend in North Macedonia (up to 2016–2017) and a less strong upward trend in Montenegro and Serbia. Of course, we must consider that the three Post-Yugoslav states started from a much lower level of democracy (higher FH scores). At lower

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Fig. 1.2 Freedom House scores, 2009–2018 (Source Freedom House. The higher the score, the less democratic a country is thought to be)

levels of democratic performance, one expects that a reversal of democratization may occur more easily than at higher levels of performance. At higher levels of performance, for instance in long-consolidated Western democracies, democratic institutions and processes are probably more stable despite their problematic aspects and deficiencies (e.g., a curtailment of social rights under economic crisis). In short, the irregular pendulum of democracy is better illustrated by cases of lower-performing or unconsolidated democracies. Moreover, it must be noted that the scores shown in Fig. 1.2 are indicative. They offer a macroscopic view, as they are assigned by outside experts, informed domestic analysts and academics. The assigned scores are not meant to be precise estimations of levels of freedom, let alone democracy in general. Nevertheless, they do show a general trend, i.e., a trend towards less freedom in the states included in Fig. 1.2. Similar conclusions may be drawn from Table 1.1, which shows the evolution of levels of the World Bank’s voice and accountability indicators. The World Bank assigns to countries scores ranging between −2.5 (worst case, least democratic country in terms of opportunities of citizens to voice their concerns and hold rulers accountable) and +2.5 (best case, most democratic country).

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Table 1.1 Levels of voice and accountability, world bank governance indicators, 2010–2020

Governance (−2.5 to + 2.5) Montenegro 2010 2015 2020 North Macedonia 2010 2015 2020 Serbia 2010 2015 2020

Percentile rank

0.19 0.14 0.04

55.5 50.7 48.8

0.11 −0.18 0.06

53.1 40.9 50.2

0.29 0.23 −0.12

55.9 55.2 40.6

Source World Bank Governance Indicators’ data. Voice and Accountability, http://info.worldbank.org/governance/wgi/ Home/Reports, last accessed on 26 July 2022. The closer the score to −2.5, the less democratic a country is thought to be, specifically in terms of voice and accountability

As Table 1.1 shows, there has been a decline of voice and accountability in all three countries but there was some reversal of the decline in North Macedonia between 2015 and 2020, i.e., after the fall of Gruevski from power in 2017. Further evidence is presented in Table 1.2 which contains scores on political participation assigned to all East and Southeast European Countries under the Bertelsmann Stiftung’s Bertelsmann Transformation Index (BTI) at four time points in 2008–2022. After the transition from state socialism, the quality of democracy overall was lower in Southeastern Europe than in Eastern Europe (Brusis, 2009). The table shows that democratic political participation declined in Poland after 2016, while in Hungary as well as in two of the three post-Yugoslav successor states under study, Serbia and Montenegro, democratic participation declined over time for a longer time period. In the case of North Macedonia, there was the aforesaid improvement after 2016. However, backsliding can be reversed (as per the irregular pendulum of democracy). Higher scores in freedom, voice and accountability and political participation may be achieved. In contrast to worldwide trends of worsening democratic performance and to the stagnation or backsliding

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Table 1.2 Levels of political participation in East Central and Southeastern Europe, Bertelsmann Transformation Index (BTI), 2008–2022

Non-EU countries Albania Bosnia-Herzegovina North Macedonia Kosovo Montenegro Serbia EU member states Croatia Bulgaria Romania Czech Republic Hungary Poland Slovakia Slovenia

2008

2014

2016

2022

8.3 8.5 8.8 8.3 8.5 8.8

7.0 7.5 7.3 7.3 8.0 8.3

7.2 7.0 6.2 7.2 7.8 8.5

7.8 6.0 8.0 8.0 7.0 6.5

9.5 9.3 9.3 10.0 10.0 9.5 10.0 9.8

8.8 8.5 8.3 10.0 8.8 9.8 9.8 9.8

8.8 8.5 8.3 9.8 7.5 10.0 9.8 9.5

8.5 7.5 8.3 9.8 6.3 7.8 9.8 8.8

Source BTI database of the Bertelsmann Stiftung, https://bti-project.org/en/reports/regional-dashbo ard/ESE?&cb=00000, last accessed on 26 July 2022. Scale from 1.0 to 10.0; the higher the value, the better the level of political participation

of democracy in Serbia and Montenegro, the case of North Macedonia, included in the case studies of this book, is illustrative (Chapter 10). Furthermore, in terms of the “Varieties of Democracy’s” assessment (V-Dem Institute, 2019), in 2019 North Macedonia, despite its enduring problems, had a regime of electoral democracy, whereas Serbia and Montenegro, despite their progress as candidate Member States of the European Union (EU), remained electoral autocracies. Such shifts in scores reflected continuities in democracy’s downward trends in Serbia and Montenegro (before the government change in 2020 in the latter country). In the two countries, the long-established rule of autocratic or semi-autocratic rulers continued. In the words of the FH report: “President Aleksandar Vuˇci´c of Serbia and President Milo Ðukanovi´c of Montenegro continued to consolidate state power around themselves and their cliques, subverting basic standards of good governance and exceeding their assigned constitutional roles” (Freedom House, 2019).

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An Example of Reversal of the Pendulum’s Movement How and when did the pendulum of democracy turn back, i.e., towards the democratic end, in North Macedonia, even though today the democratic performance of that country remains very debatable? In brief, the semi-authoritarian rule of Nikola Gruevski (who rose to power in 2006) was interrupted and broke down in 2015–2017. In 2015 he and his government faced allegations of wiretapping and surveillance, based on thousands of records released by the opposition. Gruevski’s party was the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization—Democratic Party for Macedonian National Unity (abbreviated as VMRO-DPMNE). The main opposition party was the Social Democratic Union of Macedonia (SDSM). The two parties came shoulder to shoulder in the parliamentary elections of 2016. Meanwhile, as in the past, international organizations which monitor elections, such as the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) noted problems with media freedom, unreliable voter rolls and voter intimidation. A paralysis of the political system, which had started in North Macedonia in 2015, continued into 2016 and the first quarter of 2017. When in April 2017 the opposition party (the SDSM) formed a coalition with minority Albanian parties and gathered enough votes in parliament to elect an Albanian Speaker in parliament, pro-government supporters stormed the parliament and injured the opposition leader and Members of Parliament (MPs). Eventually, under pressure from foreign actors (the USA, the EU), the SDSM and its Albanian coalition partners formed a government in May 2017. The new government obtained the confidence of parliament and slowly proceeded to gradually restore the proper functioning of democratic institutions. In June 2018 it also signed a bilateral treaty with Greece solving a 27-year long over the use of the terms “Macedonia” and “Macedonian”. Thus, the country adopted the name North Macedonia and embarked on its way to join the EU and NATO (a prospect which had until then been an impossibility for many reasons, including the dispute with Greece). In 2020, the SDSM, the party which had led the mobilization to overthrow the Gruevski regime, won the parliamentary elections. The shift away from that regime was not temporary, although clientelism and corruption remained the “working environment” for the successors of Gruevski (Chapter 10).

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As the above example shows, shifts in democracy’s performance are not necessarily one-way. A reversal of backsliding can take place. In this sense, the metaphor of the irregular pendulum of democracy may help understand the dynamics of the situation, which of course requires an explanation beyond the mere description of movements to and from higher or lower levels of democracy. To sum up this section, we observe that compared to Hungary and Poland, the three post-Yugoslav successor states started from a low level of democratic performance which became even lower over time. Analysts of current affairs in Western Balkan politics have characterized the lack of further democratization in the region as an indication of “stabilitocracy” (Bieber, 2018b, 2020; Kmezi´c & Bieber, 2017; Pavlovi´c, 2016, 2017). It is a characterization which underlines that democratization in the Western Balkans is an externally conditioned process. The main point of this approach is that the prevalence of stabilitocracy instead of democracy in the Western Balkans is a result of a choice made by the international community and more concretely the EU. The choice is to sacrifice further democratization for stability in the region, both within each state, so as to avoid inter-ethnic conflict, and also between states which were at war in the 1990s. However, “stabilitocracy” may be a misnomer. By emphasizing the stability of an unconsolidated democratic regime, the term does not exactly convey the trend of democracy’s backsliding. The evidence shown above reveals that West Balkan democracies started from relatively low levels of democratic performance which declined further in the 2010s. The declining trend is more evident in the cases of Montenegro and Serbia than in that of North Macedonia which experienced a restart of democratization after 2017.

1.6

A Theoretical Framework: Macroscopic Analysis and Cases Studies of Politics

In the previous section, we noted a contrast between the declining scores of democracy’s quality in the Western Balkans in comparative perspective and North Macedonia’s re-embarkation on a course of democratization. The contrast highlights the differences between quantitative, macroscopic or cross-national assessments and qualitative, case study analyses of democratization.

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The approaches of international research institutions or projects, such as the FH, EIU, World Bank, V-DEM and BTI, are macroscopic in the sense that they offer a very useful bird’s-eye-view of the backsliding of democracy. They are obviously prone to painting the phenomena under study with thick brush strokes. A useful complementary approach to democracy’s backsliding is to focus on the context of democracy’s backsliding by looking at specific cases. After all, a single answer to questions of backsliding may not be valid for all contemporary democracies, as they vary a lot (Przeworski, 2019). Indeed, democracies bear the marks of their birth and the historical paths which they have followed. Furthermore, domestic and international developments are particular to some but not all backsliding democracies. Yet, this context-specific reservation about the external validity, i.e., the potential to generalize any answer on the question of backsliding, may be curbed by focusing one’s analysis at a few similar case studies. Instead of lining up different independent variables (e.g., economic development or length of time which has lapsed since the year of transition from authoritarian rule) and measuring how they impact upon a dependent variable, one could take a different, more interpretative approach which emphasizes the interaction of independent variables in a specific context. This interaction is not analysed here in statistical terms, as would be the case in a statistical model. Interaction is analysed by focusing on how such independent variables are interpreted by actors in a specific space and time and how actors act upon this context. After all, we cannot plausibly assume that independent variables work out in an identical manner; nor are they interpreted in the same way by involved individual and collective actors (e.g., elected officials, governing elites and party organizations), regardless of time and space. Time and space condition the manner in which independent variables interact, operate and affect outcomes (Hall, 2016). In other words, it is possible to form generalizable hypotheses by looking at selected cases in greater depth than what a statistical model and the statistical interaction of independent variables would allow. Further on, it is possible to reach conclusions on how the context of time and space conditions how actors understand and act upon constraints and opportunities. The latter include the recent political history of a country, its socio-economic context (e.g., major private interests, ethnic divisions), its political system and party system configuration and its political culture.

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Assumptions About Politics, Society, Time, and Space In view of the above, this book starts from the theoretical premise that historical legacies shape institutions. The pathways which institutions follow depend on choices made at the initial time point of their conception (Hall & Taylor, 1996; Steinmo et al., 1992; Thelen, 1999). The book, however, does not assume that everything is pre-determined by historical legacies. Rather, it attempts to map how powerful actors such as political and business elites bend democratic political and administrative institutions. They put institutions to use suited to their own political and business aims, for instance by misusing democratic institutions (Chapter 2). This is obviously a wider point not limited to the cases of the ailing post-Yugoslav democracies studied in this book. Elites attempt to control, if not bend, institutions across the world. Indeed, starting from different analytical frameworks, analysts have underlined the problems of today’s liberal democracies and have criticized the functioning of democratic institutions in general (Crouch, 2004; Della Porta, 2013). In this book politics, on the other hand, is understood as the quest to obtain and hold power; but this quest is not a momentary endeavour. Rather, it is a process structured in space and time, as Peter A. Hall would put it (Hall, 2016). The behaviour of individual and collective actors, such as political leaders, governing elites, political parties and organized economic, ethnic and other interests, is understood as an outcome of the actors’ adaptation to the changing features of the context in which they interact. In other words, individual and collective choices to act (or refrain from acting) are understood as reactions to and actions upon social, economic and political structures. Political actors confronted such structures in post-Yugoslav successor states in the 1990s and in the first two decades of the twenty-first century. The actors’ behaviour did not leave the structures unaffected but modified or even restructured the institutional setting and socio-political relations under study. A relevant theoretical assumption underlying the above is the following: under the circumstances they encounter, actors choose a path of action which balances their own material or ideological interest with what is realistically feasible to accomplish. In macro-sociological terms, the above assumption means that longterm relations between state and society have conditioned the behaviour

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of individual and collective actors, including movements, parties and other organizations (Hall, 2016). In micro-sociological terms, the above assumption means that individuals, such as party leaders, business entrepreneurs or civic activists, are not merely seen as individuals planning and participating in interactions only to maximize benefits (a rational-choice approach). Rather, they are perceived as actors who partake in social networks and are influenced by and also influence organizational structures. Actors engage in common practices and share meanings in a manner which cannot be understood out of historical context (a historical institutionalist approach). For example, in this book, the practices and meanings of actors are interpreted in and through the context of the populist, clientelist or corrupt patterns of state-society relations which have been established in the post-Yugoslav space since the end of the twentieth century. This approach presents to the researcher the possibility of unearthing the complex ways in which different types of causes interact, producing outcomes to be explained within time and space. As Peter A. Hall argues, the benefit would be to learn “how politics is structured in each locality, attentive to how institutional practices, cognitive frameworks and network relations interact” (Hall, 2016, 37–38). By “institutional practices”, Hall means regularly repeated routines which after a certain point in time are considered rules to be observed; by “cognitive frameworks”, he means normative ideas prescribing or approving of a certain course of action, and cognitive ideas, useful to understand how the surrounding socio-political and economic reality is structured; and by “network relations”, Hall understands formal organizations and informal networks which also structure social action (Hall, 2016, 35–36).

1.7 Theoretical Approaches to the Backsliding of Democracy If we adopt this analytical perspective, the question that arises is which among a wide variety of the aforesaid practices, frameworks and relations that evolve in close interaction are pertinent for the chosen topic of scientific investigation. If the trend to be investigated is the backsliding of democracy, then there may be at least four different approaches, which are briefly discussed below.

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One option is to focus on practices of disenfranchisement and political exclusion manifested in depriving selected categories of citizens of political rights, as Tilly has done (Tilly, 2007). In brief, according to Tilly the reversal of democratization becomes possible when shrinking networks of trust combine with the re-institutionalization of inequality and exclusion from participation to bring about “de-democratization” (Tilly, 2007). Bermeo, on the other hand, writes about processes of “state-led debilitation or even elimination of the political institutions sustaining an existing democracy”, which she calls “democratic backsliding” (Bermeo, 2016). She justifiably argues that long-term, explicitly anti-democratic regimes of the kind experienced in developed and developing societies in the twentieth century have dwindled. Bermeo analyses the practices through which governing elites make democracies backslide, such as promissory coups, executive aggrandizement, electoral fraud and gerrymandering in the twenty-first century (Bermeo, 2016). In brief, according to her analysis, backsliding occurs through brief coups followed by a promise to return to democracy; by manipulation of electoral systems and infringement of regulations on elections; or by further enhancing the powers of the executive over the rest of the branches of government. In their research, Foa and Mounk (2016) have collected and analysed panel data on normative ideas related to democracies of the West. They have studied the extent to which Western publics today, in the early twenty-first century, prefer democracy over alternative political regimes, compared to the last decades of the previous century; and whether they trust (or do not trust) democratic institutions, such as parliaments and (elected) governments. The two authors argue that today a gradual process of deconsolidation is in place. More recently, in an analysis of how democracies are destroyed from within, Levitsky and Ziblatt (2018) have constructed a test of democracy’s slide towards authoritarianism. The test, applied in their book to ten different cases of ailing democracies in the Western Hemisphere, consists of sets of indicators. These are questions assessing the extent to which the behaviour of elected leaders reveals rejection of rules of the democratic game, denial of their opponents’ legitimacy, toleration of violence and curtailment of liberties. While all four of the above valuable approaches capture crucial aspects of politics structured in space and time, they do not offer a more comprehensive view of what Hall would call “social ecology”, i.e., the “distinctive institutional and ideological fields that persist over long periods of time”

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or, to put it otherwise, “the institutional practices, cognitive frameworks and network relations characteristic of a country” (Hall, 2016, 37). A study which is closer to the latter approach is Fishman’s comparative analysis of democratic practice in the post-authoritarian Iberian countries, Portugal and Spain (Fishman, 2019). Political inclusion is a set of “ways in which political actors…make use of the rights and possibilities for action provided by democracy and deal with others who are similarly engaged” (Fishman, 2019, 6). Actors may be office-holders, citizens, groups, unions and movements engaging in political activities. In conjunction with Fishman’s analysis, it could be added that political inclusion is a crisp concept capturing the propensity of decision-makers to listen to and adapt to reasonable demands “from below” (unions, movements, associations) and to avoid complete alienation from the people. Democratic practice differs by country for many reasons. Although constitutionally provided institutions and individual and collective rights may be similar, in practice political actors express themselves and interact within, but also outside of, formal political institutions in a variety of ways (Fishman, 2019). Of course, when dealing with unconsolidated democracies, let alone competitive authoritarian regimes, there are limits to the application of the concept of political inclusion. Fishman’s concepts probably would work better in an analysis of consolidated democracies. For example, it is difficult to argue that in the political regimes of post-Yugoslav successor states governing elites listen to and adapt to demands from citizens. The post-Yugoslav regimes were not responsive to such demands, to the extent that they were semi-authoritarian regimes or “electocracies” in the 1990s (Dawisha & Parrot, 1997). Nevertheless, elected officials, however authoritarian, are to an extent conditioned by the reactions of citizens. As Bermeo has put it, “…much of what elites attempt to do is conditioned by their judgments of how ordinary people will behave” (Bermeo, 2003, 3). It is to this conditioning that my focus on populist, clientelist or corruptible state-society relations speaks.

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1.8 Theoretical Approaches to State-Society Relations Conceptualizing State-Society Relations In order to assess and complement these theoretical perspectives to democracy’s backsliding, several conceptual and analytical distinctions are in order. One may start by asking what the political regime is which experiences backsliding. In other words, the question would be, “backsliding from what”? In this book, I understand backsliding as a decline of democracies, but not as a fall or complete breakdown of democracies of the early twenty-first century. I do not assume that before democracies found themselves on a downward slope, they were functioning impeccably. Major political scientists, to whom we owe most popular definitions of contemporary democracy (Dahl, 1982; Schmitter & Karl, 1991), have said as much, long before any discussion of democratic backsliding started. Nor do I assume that the majority of democracies in the world today experience backsliding. What is examined here are the causes of backsliding and the means through which it takes place. A second question would be, what is the context within which backsliding takes place? Following the theoretical approach of historical institutionalism, I adopt a context-specific analysis examining varieties of state-society relations which may not be replicable across the world of democracies. A major point of the book is that varieties of state-society relations which are significant for the analysis of democracy’s backsliding in the post-Yugoslav successor states are populism, clientelism and corruption. In other words, populism is not the only suspect held responsible for democracy’s backsliding. All three varieties constitute different mixes of institutional and ideological fields, in other words, variable kinds of Peter A. Hall’s “social ecology” within which politics is structured along time and space. Researching the “social ecology” of a country may resemble the experience of finding one’s way in a maze of institutional and ideological fields. The researcher may register many co-existing historical legacies, competing political ideologies, domestic institutional constraints, social interests and personal strategies of political leaders. A possible vantage point from which to look at such a maze is the set of relations between

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state and society and their development over a period of time preceding the emergence of the phenomenon to be explained. State-Society Relations in Comparative Perspective In the literature of comparative politics, state-society relations are a topic of extensive analysis along different lines of inquiry. First, comparative political analysts examine the extent to which states are autonomous from social interests, how the latter influence public policy-making and how states structure social relations and are constrained by them (Hall, 1986; Stepan, 1978). On the basis of Marxist, pluralist, elite-centred, corporatist and state-centred approaches, it is possible to articulate alternative interpretations of state-society relations and their development over time. In such interpretations the emphasis is on how the state relates to business interests and labour or peasant interests and whether—compared to society—the state is weak or strong (Migdal, 1988, 2001). In these contributions, there is valuable focus on how states are constrained by and also constrain social interests. More concretely, the state may privilege selected social classes or status groups or may itself be influenced by some of those classes or groups instead of others. Secondly and in a different vein, state-society relations are analysed in the context of relationships between citizens and public administration (Sternberg, 1972; Villeneuve, 2010). This is the domain of theories of public administration focusing on how public organizations treat citizens and on what kind of access citizens actually have to public bureaucracies. A third perspective, followed in this book, is to discuss how social actors, such as elites, organized interests and citizens, relate to the state, becoming closely associated with it. Actors do not take up the available options a state may offer all at once. Actors may do so depending on the constraints and opportunities which they encounter and on large-scale transformations, such as instances of economic crisis. The assumption behind this book’s focus on state-society relations is that the most useful institutional and ideological fields for an analysis of democracy lie at the intersection of state and society. In democratic regimes (including unconsolidated ones), state-society relations involve, among other things, citizens turning out to vote in elections, organizing themselves in political parties, civic associations and social movements, protesting against government policy choices and holding their elected government officials accountable to the extent that this is possible.

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Moreover, organizations and networks, be they private businesses, trade unions and professional associations, non-governmental organizations and churches as well as single-issue movements, periodically access state authorities, lobby state officials, press for policy change or policy continuity, and mobilize for institutional reforms or oppose reforms. However, this open-ended and pluralistic, if not idealized, image of state-society relations may hide other ways through which state-society relations are structured in contemporary democracies. Such other varieties of state-society relations are built around asymmetries of power. A more critical perspective would put forward an image of social class asymmetries in which the state accommodates the strategies of powerful global and domestic business classes. Some studies have illuminated different types of state-society relations in the form of linkages between business firms and interest groups on the one hand and the state, on the other hand, e.g., pluralism vs. social corporatism in twentieth-century democracies (e.g., Schmitter, 1974). More recent studies of comparative political economy (e.g., Hall & Soskice, 2001) have explored a range of advanced market economies functioning in a democratic setting to capture varieties of state-economy relations, understood as complementarities among production structures, labour markets and education institutions. But if we shift our attention to younger and less studied democracies and market economies, we note the existence, in fact the pervasiveness, of yet another set of modes of state-society relations. Three Types of State-Society Relations: Populism, Clientelism, Corruption Such modes of state-society relations are populism, clientelism and corruption. These three concepts are not usually mentioned as kinds of state-society relations in academic literature. The three concepts can be and have been understood as ideologies (Mudde, 2004, 2017 on populism), modes of participation of citizens in the political system (Mouzelis, 1986 on populism and clientelism) or types of abusive behaviour by office-holders (Rose-Ackerman, 1999 on corruption). These important conceptualizations do not preclude that populism, clientelism and corruption may also be perceived as types of state-society relations, as I would like to argue in this book.

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State-society relations do not only appear as structures of interest articulation and intermediation of social groups engaging the state. From a different standpoint, namely that of the state, state-society relations may also be understood as ways through which the state and state officeholders can and do extract compliance, participation and legitimacy on the part of society. While it is true that societies condition, in fact, “constitute” the state, the reverse also holds true (Migdal, 2001). Historically, in order to survive, states have needed a predictable degree of compliance on the part of the population over which they rule. Otherwise, states would lose control over society and would not survive domestic challenges to their sovereignty “from below”. States also need to integrate people into the political system. Without some form of participation in the political system, a myriad of diverging, if not clashing, social interests would lead to uncertainty and conflict, undermining coexistence within the boundaries of any social community and damaging social order. Further on, as it is well known, states, even during their most authoritarian periods, cannot continue for long without some form of consent from those who are governed. So, states seek some form of internal legitimacy, which, however, does not mean that people consider legitimate only those arrangements which are legal or which would conform to an ideal polity. People may come to accept or even enthusiastically support an authoritarian regime too, as twentieth-century European political history of Nazism and fascism shows. More specifically, populism, clientelism and corruption are obviously far less than ideal ways to structure state-society relations. They signify diversions from various democratic principles, such as pluralism, equality before the law, meritocracy, transparency and accountability (second chapter of the book). Yet, it cannot be overlooked that among other alternative ways to structure such relations, populism, clientelism and corruption help state elites extract compliance, participation and legitimacy from the population residing within the frontiers of a given state territory. In the same vein, governing elites use a repertoire of strategies and mechanisms to control political and administrative institutions in Serbia, Montenegro and North Macedonia (Chapters 8, 9 and 10 of the book). Populism, clientelism and corruption have been mostly associated with traditional, i.e., pre-modern or modernizing, states and societies. However, these are kinds of state-society relations which in fact also exist in longer established democracies and market economies. It is perhaps

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counterintuitive to perceive them as types of state-society relations in contemporary democracies, since, at least in principle, they seem incompatible with liberal democracy. Yet, I would like to argue that—in varying degrees—all three types of state-society relations are nevertheless very useful for understanding the irregular pendulum of democracy.

1.9 Research Design, Case Selection and Data Sources The book relies on a small-N research design. Its potential contribution to comparative politics is not so much to refine existing theories or introduce new research hypotheses as to depict causal processes which bring about the outcome of democratic backsliding (and—to some extent—the revival of democracy). In other words, the research on which the book is based was designed with an eye to registering and explaining the processes which have led to backsliding. This is what is meant by the claim that the book focuses not only on the “why” question (why the backsliding of democracy occurs), but also on the “how” question: how individual and collective actors interact with pre-existing legacies and structures of state-society relations in order for backsliding to take place. The methodological approach used in this book is less akin to the “process tracing” method (Bennett, 2010; Collier, 2011) and more to the “systematic process analysis” (Hall, 2003, 2006). The latter does not only seek to systematize the sequence of different stages and actions through which an outcome has come about, but also to construct predictions “about the process whereby an outcome is caused…about the specific actions expected from various types of actors, statements that might reveal their motivation, and the sequences in which actions should occur” (Hall, 2003, 393–394). In that respect, the implementation of systematic process analysis should not confine itself to explaining a very limited set of events but should systematically link as many observations as possible (Hall, 2003, 394, 397). For instance, this book’s analysis aspires to explain not only the outcomes of democracy’s backsliding per se, but the different sources and variable ways of democracy’s continuities and changes, including the partial overcoming of democratic erosion in one of the three selected cases. These research ambitions, namely, not only to establish a causal chain leading to an outcome, but also to show the process which evolves before

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this outcome is well served by the use of a small-N sample. Such a sample opens the possibility of testing alternative theories not only on the basis of their predictions of outcomes, but also on the grounds of “predictions about the process whereby an outcome is caused”. The latter would be a methodological advancement over just establishing a “correspondence between a few key causal variables and the outcomes they are supposed to produce” (Hall, 2006, 28). The book adopts the “most similar systems” research design of John Stuart Mill’s original “method agreement”. In this type of research design, according to Przeworski and Teune (1970, 32), if some important differences are found among these otherwise similar countries, then the number factors attributable to these differences will be sufficiently small to warrant explanation in terms of these differences alone”. Moreover, “common systemic characteristics are conceived as ‘controlled for’, whereas inter-systemic differences are viewed as explanatory variables. The number of common characteristics sought is maximal and the number of not shared characteristics sought, minimal. (Przeworski & Teune, 1970, 33)

Case Selection The three similar cases are Serbia, Montenegro and North Macedonia. These three countries made a transition from authoritarian rule in a similar manner in the 1990s and were also similar enough until 2017, as will be argued below. The outcome of their political development after 2017 was not the same, as on the one hand, Serbia and Montenegro are backsliding in terms of the performance of democracy, while North Macedonia has experienced a government change and reversal of the backsliding of democracy. In the 1990s, the regime of liberal democracy was established in North Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia. The former country had declared its national independence in 1991 as the “Republic of Macedonia”. At that time, the other two countries were constituent republics of the postsocialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY). In all three cases, the political regime transition occurred simultaneously with the transition to market economy and the redrawing of national frontiers (the “triple transition”, Offe & Adler, 1991).

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Serbia and (less so) Montenegro, which were constituent parts of the post-1991 Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY), were directly involved in the Yugoslav wars. North Macedonia was subjected to the fall-out of the wars in Bosnia-Herzegovina (1992–1995) and Kosovo (1999) and underwent its own internal violent ethnic conflict between Macedonians and Albanians in the first half of 2001 (Ramet, 2017; Ramet et al., 2013). After the Ohrid Framework Agreement (2001), ethnic tensions in North Macedonia subsided, while in Serbia the regime of Miloševi´c had fallen from power in late 2000. Montenegro had distanced itself from Serbia in the very last phase of Miloševi´c’s rule (1997–2000) and gained national independence in 2006. In brief, in the three countries formal democracy only arrived after a two-step process, that is, first in 1991 and then at a later stage in or after 2000 (Diamandouros & Larrabee, 2000; Pridham & Gallagher, 2000). A very brief introduction to each of the three national cases follows. North Macedonia As already mentioned in this chapter, for more than ten years (2006– 2017) Gruevski’s rule provoked North Macedonia’s quick slide towards the semi-authoritarian end of the pendulum of democracy. After his resignation in 2016, Gruevski faced five trials for his involvement in different cases of corruption, was condemned in at least one of them and in late 2018 escaped to Hungary to avoid imprisonment in his own country. (Hungarian courts refused to extradite him to North Macedonia.) Gruevski’s successor, Zoran Zaev, the leader of the SDSM party who became Prime Minister in 2017, slowly started restoring a better, if not exactly proper, operation of democratic institutions. Yet, for reasons related to North Macedonia’s relations with neighbouring countries and with the EU, during his term in government (2017–2022) Zaev was much more preoccupied with the country’s foreign affairs than with promoting democratization (Chapter 11). The reversal of backsliding took place, but the pendulum may have yet moved towards the democratic end. Montenegro Between its transition from authoritarian rule (1991) and the parliamentary elections of 2020, Montenegro was led by the Democratic Party

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of Socialists (DPS), forming successive coalition governments under the DPS leader Milo Ðukanovi´c (Bieber, 2003; Morrison, 2009). The party is heir to the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, the party which had ruled the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia under Tito since the end of World War II (the SDSM party governing North Macedonia emerged from this League too). Montenegrin opposition parties were for a long time unable to mount a substantive challenge to the ruling DPS, with the possible exception of the presidential elections of 1997, when two former allies in the party leadership of DPS, Ðukanovi´c and Momir Bulatovi´c fought for the presidency of Montenegro, with the latter losing by a few thousand votes (and disputing the result). It was only in the late summer of 2020 that the opposition, consisting of three parties of incompatible political profile, including a nationalist and strongly Eurosceptic party (the DF) and two centrist and pro-Western parties (the URA and the Demokrate), was able to remove the DPS party from power. The new government coalition relied on a thin parliamentary majority, holding 41 out of the 81 seats of the Montenegrin Parliament. Not only did the government coalition not affect populism, clientelism and corruption, but it probably relied on these state-society relations for as long as it stayed in power. It collapsed in early 2022 and was replaced by an even more fragile government coalition in April 2022. This case indicates that fragile coalition formation and government instability may easily undermine promises to redress the deficiencies of democracy. However, the anti-DPS coalition was partially resurrected in the presidential elections of 2023 when the DPS leader failed to be re-elected to the post of President of the Republic. Montenegro is a small country (pop. 629,000 in 2018) and is commonly perceived by the international press and neighbouring countries as a place where corruption and illicit trade thrive (Morrison, 2018; Roberts, 2007). Clientelism is also rampant, while populism is not so much a characteristic of the largest party (the DPS), but of the rest of the parties. However, as I will argue later, it is the unconstrained rule of the DPS which has pushed the country far away from the democratic end of the pendulum of democracy. Serbia In Serbia, after the fall of the regime of Miloševi´c in October 2000, shifting government coalitions led by centre and centre-left parties, the

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Democratic Party (DS) or the Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS), ruled the country in 2000–2012. However, the presence of an electorally strong ultranationalist party, the Serbian Radical Party (SRS), which had been excluded from all government coalitions due to its aggressive nationalism, loomed large in Serbia’s politics. Domestic cleavages evolved around national causes, as Serbia was dealing with the fall-out of the Yugoslav wars, namely issues of transitional justice for crimes committed in the Yugoslav wars in the 1990s. Serbia also faced challenges to its sovereignty (Montenegro’s split from what was left of the FRY in 2006, Kosovo’s declaration of national independence in 2008). Clientelism and corruption accompanied the rule of the DS-led government coalitions in the 2000s (Kmezi´c, 2017; Ramet & Pavlakovi´c, 2006; Wunsch, 2018). Since 2012, Serbia has been led by the progressive party (the SNS party), a split-off from the SRS party. The SNS leader, Aleksandar Vuˇci´c, used to be a government minister in the semi-authoritarian regime of Slobodan Miloševi´c, which was in power until 2000. Vuˇci´c has won all elections since 2012, including the 2017 presidential elections, the 2020 parliamentary elections and the 2022 presidential and parliamentary elections which took place on 3 April 2022. In this book, I will argue that Vuˇci´c is a typical populist leader who also practices clientelism at a large-scale, while under his rule Serbia’s democracy has steadily declined towards the semi-authoritarian end of democracy’s pendulum. The above, very brief introduction to post-Yugoslav politics serves the purpose of an initial glimpse at major protagonists of the drama of democracy’s fate in Serbia, Montenegro and North Macedonia. It also serves to underline the non-deterministic, non-structuralist epistemological assumptions of this book’s research: in order to describe and interpret the causal processes underpinning the backsliding of democracy, light is shed on motivations, actions and public utterances of actors. In the context of “systematic process analysis”, precise quantifiable estimates of causal variables cannot be produced. However, the upside of the inability to precisely measure and quantify estimates of the causes of democracy’s erosion is a non-negligible gain: …when the decisions of actions of key participants are crucial to the outcome, by comparing the statements and actions of those participants, the process analyst can often establish the relative influence various factors had over them with more precision than can be assured by statistical analysis. (Hall, 2006, 29)

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Data Sources I have collected data for this book through empirical field research and desk research. I did field research in a total of six field trips in Belgrade, Podgorica and Skopje in 2015–2016 and additional empirical work during the COVID-19 period (2020–2022) through personal communication and interviews over the internet. In total I carried out 47 face-to-face, semi-structured interviews (12 interviews in Belgrade, 14 in Podgorica, 17 in Skopje and 4 interviews over Zoom). My respondents came from media, universities and NGOs as well as political parties, while I took care to include pro- and anti-government respondents. I also conducted additional interviews with public policy experts from the three countries during my desk research in Cambridge, Massachusetts and Princeton in the spring and summer of 2019. Desk research involved the collection of statistical data (Eurostat, FH, BTI, EIU, World Bank data and data from national statistical authorities) and published reports of international and foreign organizations (e.g., the European Union, the Council of Europe, the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe and the US Department of State) as well as publications by mass media and NGOs for the period 2006–2022. In the following chapters, I present and interpret data on the political regimes, party systems and socio-economic conditions in the three countries under study, accompanied by figures and tables indicating the stagnation or backsliding under question.

1.10 Outline of the Book’s Chapters and Conclusion The book proceeds with a discussion of populism, clientelism and corruption as modes of state-society relations in the chapter that follows. It discusses the three concepts in an analytical fashion, the normative impact of populism, clientelism and corruption on democracy and the misuses to which elected governing elites may put democratic institutions (Chapter 2). Chapter 3 discusses the transition to democracy and the performance of democracy in the three countries under study. It also presents evidence on democracy’s backsliding and discusses existing approaches to democracy in the three cases (Chapter 3). The chapter that follows critically discusses alternative explanations for the backsliding of democracy in the post-Yugoslav successor states

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(Chapter 4). These explanations emphasize, first, the socio-economic context, i.e., the type of “wild” unrestricted capitalism one finds in these countries and capitalism’s negative consequences on politics and society in the region; second, the prevailing political culture in the Western Balkans which bears vestiges of the countries’ communist past and the birthmarks of the post-communist regimes that emerged in the region in 1989–1991; and third, the configuration of the political party systems of the three cases under study. I argue that causal variables such as the type of capitalism, political culture and party system do not explain the backsliding or stagnation of democracy as well as the varieties of state-society relations and strategies of governing elites do. Chapter 5 is devoted to a detailed analysis of the first variety, namely populism, in the three national cases under study. It is followed by Chapter 6 which analyses clientelism and Chapter 7 which discusses corruption in these cases. The next three chapters turn to strategies of governing elites which are interpreted in the context of the three kinds of state-society relations (Chapters 8, 9 and 10). These three chapters analyse how elected governments control democratic institutions in each of the three countries under study. The chapters trace how elected governments in the three countries have bent the rules of the democratic game without reaching a breaking point for democracy. The prior-to-last chapter highlights the differences of North Macedonia from Serbia and Montenegro (Chapter 11). I try to explain why the former country has started emerging out of a ten-year long period of democratic backsliding, in contrast to Serbia and Montenegro, where democratic erosion has lasted longer. Focusing on relatively recent developments in the three countries (2017–2022), I emphasize in my explanation the interactions between people and the governing elites, pressures (or lack thereof) by the parliamentary opposition, and the intervention of external actors (the USA, the EU) when political opportunities have arisen. These factors help understand why, in contrast to Serbia and Montenegro, North Macedonia’s political regime stopped backsliding after 2017 and reimbarked, albeit in a timid and as of yet ineffective fashion, on the road to democracy. The concluding chapter (Chapter 12) pinpoints similarities and differences among the three cases, summarizes the argument and underlines the limits of my analysis. It also sketches a context-sensitive theory of how democracies move like a pendulum.

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1.11

Conclusions

To summarize the introductory chapter and the main argument of the book, the government-driven backsliding of democracy is engineered “from above” and conditioned “from below”. In the countries under study, as well as in other post-communist and transition democracies, there are lingering historical legacies of socio-economic, cultural/ideological and party system conditions. These are background factors which may facilitate undemocratic developments, but do not explain democracy’s stagnation or backsliding. There are three specific types or varieties of state-society relations, populism, clientelism and corruption, which offer a chance to construct a different explanation: all three prepare the ground and set the stage for backsliding to take place. In this context, governments use several strategies to make democracies backslide, the most important being the disassembling of checks and balances among democratic institutions. In the case of West Balkan democracies, but probably also in other cases where populism, clientelism and corruption have been long standing modes through which states relate to people and vice versa, democracy’s backsliding cannot be explained exclusively through socio-economic structural variables (e.g., economic underdevelopment) or human agency (e.g., the purposeful actions of elites). State-society relations, such as populism, clientelism and corruption, constitute the missing link between historical legacies that may perhaps facilitate the backsliding of democracy and the concrete strategies which elites employ to push democracy on a downward slope. If populism, clientelism and corruption were not already deeply embedded in state-society relations, elites would not have been able to bend democratic institutions in the unconstrained manner they have.

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CHAPTER 2

Populism, Clientelism and Corruption and the International Crisis of Democracy

The movement of democracy’s pendulum in the post-Yugoslav successor states, manifested as a reversal of democratization, may be better understood if placed in the wider context of the international crisis of democracy at the beginning of the twenty-first century, which is now widely acknowledged (Freedom House, various years; V-Dem Institute, 2019, 2022). Various explanations for the relative decline of democracy around the world have been suggested, such as, the spread of economic globalization and the negative role of capitalism in constraining democracies (Streeck, 2011), the rise of populism (Mueller, 2016), the “state-led debilitation” of democratic institutions (Bermeo, 2016), the role of illiberal elites (Levitsky & Ziblatt, 2018) and the influence of strong non-democratic regimes, such as Vladimir Putin’s regime in Russia, on Western liberal democracies (Snyder, 2018). It has even been argued that democracy may have started to deconsolidate in advanced Western economies (Foa & Mounk, 2017; Mounk, 2018). On the other hand, we could plausibly argue that, at least in advanced Western economies, democracy is much more resilient than originally thought (Iversen & Soskice, 2019; Norris, 2017) and that democracy’s decline is not inevitable (Bermeo, 2019). This argument does not imply that democracy performs well, only that it is not breaking down across

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 D. A. Sotiropoulos, The Irregular Pendulum of Democracy, New Perspectives on South-East Europe, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25609-7_2

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the world, as the above literature on the crisis of democracy may have signalled. The first section of this chapter discusses global trends in the crisis of democracy, while the sections that follow expand on populism, clientelism and corruption and the related misuses to which some of the elected office-holders (e.g., governing parties in post-Yugoslav successor states and other East European states) put democratic institutions. An assumption of this book is that a part of the academic literature has over-stressed the negative impact of external forces and actors on the domestic settings of democracy. The international environment, particularly during a global economic crisis and its aftermath, cannot be removed from picture, nor should the EU’s mild pressure on authoritarian leaders of EU candidate Member States be dismissed as an irrelevant factor. Yet, democracy flourishes, stagnates or backslides in national settings, i.e., within nation-states. Consequently, the failure of democracy cannot be interpreted by exclusive or primary reference to external economic or political pressures. It is above all a domestic matter. It is thus pertinent to ask what the specific domestic political causes and mechanisms which have led to the observed backsliding of democracy are and how such causes and mechanisms are embedded in state-society relations. There are recognizable types of state-society relations in advanced economies (pluralism, neo-corporatism and their variations). However, this does not preclude that state-society relations can also be structured differently. As I argue in the second section of this chapter, political and economic relations may evolve within mixes of populism, clientelism and corruption which can be interpreted as varieties of state-society relations. While not necessarily incompatible with the institution of democracy, these three varieties of state-society relations often have a negative impact on democracy in different countries (third section of the chapter). The negative effects of populism, clientelism and corruption on democracy do not come about naturally. People and organizations, such as governing elites and political parties, bring about the negative effects through the use and more specifically abuse of political and administrative institutions in democracies (fourth section of the chapter). Populism, clientelism and corruption are thus structured state-society relations in the sense that individual and collective actors act and interact in populist, clientelist and corruptible institutional and organizational fields (concluding section of this chapter).

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The International Crisis of Democracy

The emergence, survival and multiplication of popular and illiberal governments across the world in the early twenty-first century pose at least three larger theoretical questions about contemporary democracies. First, given the above context, is the political responsibility and accountability of elected governments, a necessary feature of contemporary democracies, in fact carried out? Second, what kind of interaction is there between citizens and office-holders that make vital decisions? And third, are citizens able to hold political authorities accountable? Naturally, these questions concern all representative democracies today, not only the relatively young and unconsolidated democratic regimes of post-Yugoslav successor states which have started sliding towards the semi-authoritarian end of democracy’s pendulum. The three questions stated above are pertinent in recently established, albeit never fully consolidated democracies, as in these particular settings memories and possibilities of non-democratic rule are still available. These questions may acquire particular relevance in contexts where democracy is younger, for instance in Eastern and Southeastern Europe. One would think that—in comparison with contexts where democracy has been taken for granted for a long time now—in new democracies citizens are more hopeful about the fruits which democracy can bear, such as individual and collective freedoms. Yet, this has not proven to be the case in a uniform manner. After the turning point of 1989–1991, it was soon realized that the process of democratization is not necessarily linear, but may always remain unfinished (Friedman, 2011; Schedler, 1998; Whitehead, 2002). The crisis of democracy is evident today in many countries, including countries with long-established democratic regimes. For example, there has been a rising dissatisfaction with democracy in EU Member States (Foa & Mounk, 2016), which in fact preceded the onset of the economic crisis and was worsened by it. In the post-1991 regimes of EU Candidate Member States and particularly in the post-Yugoslav successor states, the crisis of democracy is even more manifested, as I argue in this book. The crisis is manifested in enduring clientelism and corruption, the crumbling of checks and balances, new constraints on the mass media and democratic freedoms, and the decline of the responsiveness of democratic institutions such as the government and the parliament.

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Earlier Concerns with Incomplete Democratization and the Quality of Democracy Since the transition to democracy in Eastern Europe, the general impression has been that liberal democracy, as a type of political regime, has spread around the world. The transition to and consolidation of democracy occurred in different regions of the world in the 1990s and the 2000s. For some analysts, it was possible to discern “arenas” in which democratic elites gradually established the rules of democracy. Eventually, if democracy became the “only game in town” for everyone involved, democracy was consolidated (Linz & Stepan, 1996, 5). After a first period of general approval, the usefulness of the concepts of democratic transition and consolidation was challenged (Carothers, 2002). Consolidation is a more protracted, fragile and complicated process than originally thought. Robert Fishman (2019) offers a definition of democratic consolidation that may better stand the test of time: democratic consolidation “refers to the institutionalization and stability of existing forms of political representation and power in democratic settings” (Fishman, 2019, 13). Following Robert Dahl, Fishman argues that a key component of this institutionalization is “mutual tolerance” between governments and opposition (Fishman, 2019, 13). If the opposition feels stripped of the freedoms necessary to compete in elections, then we have a case of political exclusion. The danger of exclusion is that it undermines tolerance between government and opposition, which in turn has negative effects on democratic consolidation (Fishman, 2019, 14). Exclusion in Fishman’s sense may include the barring of social partners (unions, professional and other associations) from consultations on government policy shifts. In the 2010s, the phenomenon of political exclusion was very evident during the economic crisis which hit the countries of Europe’s periphery. Democratic freedoms were negatively affected by the embarrassingly ineffective management of the economic crisis by elected governments in the Eurozone and by the rise of populist leaders or parties in a wide variety of old and new democracies (Hungary, Poland, the USA, Brazil). A shift occurred in the relevant academic literature as well. Not only new, but also older democracies came under the spotlight of analyses discussing a ten-year long “decline in global freedom” (Freedom House, 2016, for the period 2005–2015), a democratic “recession” (Diamond, 2015) or “deconsolidation” of democracy (Foa & Mounk, 2017).

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In fact, even before the recent rise in concern over the backsliding of democracy, scholarly research, noting that democratization was not progressing as initially hoped, shifted its attention to how badly some new democracies performed. The concepts of illiberal democracy (Zakaria, 1997) and defective democracy (Merkel, 2004) were coined. The concepts were meant to illuminate disappointing cases of democratization. To illustrate, in the new states emerging after 1991 out of the disintegration of former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY), fragile or incomplete electoral democracies replaced Tito’s autocratic regime (Boduszynski, 2010; Dawisha & Parrot, 1997; Dérens & Geslin, 2007; Hayden, 2013; Jelavich, 1983; Lukic, 2013). In such cases, democracy became a soulless procedure to elect or repeatedly reinstate to power the same all-powerful governing elites. Meanwhile, human rights and the rest of the democratic institutions associated with political liberalism remained on paper. People did not exercise political freedoms other than casting a vote (and that at decreasing rates of voter turnout in elections). In terms of Peter A. Hall’s (2006, 2016) theoretical approach to politics, one could argue that an unexpected new “cognitive framework” arose. This framework effectively disassociated the concept of democracy from the exercise of political freedoms and even from the alternation of parties in power, as there were and still are parties which have been ruling for decades on (e.g., Putin’s party in Russia since 2000, Erdogan’s party in Turkey since 2002). Such a cognitive framework is probably reflected in the way disappointed citizens of underperforming democracies and external observers assess democracy in the country of their interest in comparative surveys. These are surveys periodically conducted by the Freedom House, the Varieties of Democracy Institute, the Bertelsmann Stiftung, the World Bank’s “World Governance Indicators” project and the Transparency International (see figures and tables in Chapter 1). Expert respondents to periodical surveys conducted by these international organizations monitor the performance of democracy across the world. They are invited to assign numerical values to indicators of the level of the quality of democracy. Typical variables to which values are assigned are the control of corruption, de-legitimation of the state, stability of democratic institutions and the extent to which civil and political liberties are protected. It is to such surveys that we owe convincing comparative evidence that democracy in our times underperforms.

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Admittedly, there is a degree of arbitrariness involved in such world survey exercises. It is obviously debatable whether these dimensions of democratic performance are captured by the indicators in use or not. The basis on which informed experts assign higher or lower values to indicators of the aforementioned variables may be questionable. For example, the construction and use of quantitative indicators to measure corruption in democracies (and other political regimes) have been severely criticized (Heywood, 2017). It is useful, then, to use qualitative assessments as well. The comparative performance of democracies may also be assessed through nonquantitative analysis, for example, through national case study analyses of the rule of law in a comparative politics perspective in a set of countries (Dolenec, 2013; Magen & Morlino, 2008; Morlino, 2004; O’Donnell, 2004). But regardless of the quantitative or qualitative nature of the approach to the underperformance of democracies, what are the causes of the observed backsliding of democracy?

2.2 Alternative Explanations for the Backsliding of Democracy The stagnation and backsliding of democracy is so varied and has already lasted so long, that a uniform answer to the question above cannot be satisfactory. While quantitative and qualitative attempts to understand the fluctuating performance of democracies were under way, other studies had already pointed to possibilities of de-democratization (Tilly, 2003, 2007). Tilly’s “de-democratization” is a concept which denotes the receding of democracy. For Tilly, this is a process embedded in social relations unfolding at three levels: categorical inequality (e.g., institutionalized ethnic or racial inequality), limited or receding participation in public politics, and the small or decreasing extent of trust networks (Tilly, 2003, 39–40). According to Tilly, a reversal of democratization or the “decline of protected consultation” happens when categorical inequalities worsen and public policies or political blocks are inscribed into such inequalities; when trust networks are rolled back and become insulated from public politics; and when political participation starts to shrink or becomes very unequal, losing whatever control there was over government’s powers (Tilly, 2003, 40). Tilly subtly explores the processes through which and under which

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the reversal of democratization occurs. However, he devotes little attention to human agency, namely to collective actors, such as political elites who may actively pursue de-democratization in order to preserve their power. In Tilly’s approach, we do not find out how office-holders interpret existing institutions and historical legacies, nor how they react to people’s responses to their actions and to political opportunities, as Hall’s “systematic process analysis” would require. Nancy Bermeo (2016) has offered another, more agency-oriented approach. She discusses processes of “state-led debilitation or elimination of the political institutions sustaining an existing democracy” which she calls “democratic backsliding”. Such backsliding means “a willful turn away from an ideal” (Bermeo, 2016, 6). Naturally, the “ideal” does not refer to the current state of affairs in the liberal democracies of the world, but to ideal–typical characteristics of modern liberal democracy. These characteristics are multiple and include periodic, free and fair elections in which political parties compete, the absence of veto powers of a political player (e.g. the army, which could zone off a policy sector, e.g. defence or national security, from the scrutiny of elected decision-makers), a separation of and balance among the executive, legislative and judicial branches, and the protection of the human rights and freedoms of all citizens (Dahl, 1982; Schmitter & Karl, 1991). Bermeo argues that the violent—if not terrorizing—long-term, selfprofessed, explicitly anti-democratic regimes of the kind experienced in the twentieth century (e.g., long-term military or fascist regimes) have now dwindled. According to her, backsliding today takes place in three possible ways: first, through coups d’ etat followed by a promise to return to democracy; second, by manipulation of electoral systems and infringement of election regulations; and third, by the further enhancement of the powers of the executive over the judiciary and the legislative branches (Bermeo, 2016). Following Bermeo, in this book I explore the “willful” aspect of backsliding from democracy, but I place this process in a set of state-society relations which have been conducive to backsliding, such as populism, clientelism and corruption. The “willful” aspect is manifested in concrete strategies, choices and mechanisms which elected office-holders actually use while pursuing such backsliding. For example, subtle techniques of backsliding include electoral manipulation before polling day, tampering with ballot boxes (such as has

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indeed taken place in post-Yugoslav successor states) and above all “executive aggrandizement” (Bermeo, 2016, 10–13). The executive (e.g., the Prime Minister, the Cabinet) becomes aggrandized in an ostensibly legitimate manner by passing legislation in the parliament or issuing a presidential decree. Increasingly, parliament is bypassed while elected office-holders prefer to issue decrees of circulars. This has become such a common institutional practice in post-Yugoslav successor states and elsewhere that it may have acquired the status of informal rule (Chapters 8, 9 and 10 of the book). Prime Ministers and government ministers often rule by fiat rather than by submitting a draft bill to the parliament which would ideally first debate the bill and then make a new law out of it. Notably, in instances of backsliding of democracy, establishing a new rule through the issue of a decree or the passage of a law often serves only as a façade. In practice, the content of the law or decree in question typically restricts media freedom or judicial autonomy, thus gradually accomplishing executive aggrandizement (Bermeo, 2016, 11). A Repertoire of Strategies of Backsliding In fact, the above practices are only some of the items of a wider repertoire of political strategies that make democracy backslide or stagnate. Political actors, e.g., governing elites, may plan and programme the use of such strategies because they intend to control democratic institutions to the extent that they can. As I illustrate further in this book (in the three chapters mentioned above), governing elites push democratic institutions to the brink of collapse (e.g., the total collapse of media freedom). Yet, they stop short of completely overthrowing democracy. They refrain from pursuing the latter option, because the complete breakdown of democracy would create a more uncontrollable situation, as actors other than the governing elites (the army, the security forces) would have an enhanced role. Moreover, such a wilful breakdown would provoke unpredictable reactions from international actors (e.g., the EU), leading to negative economic consequences (e.g., the draining of EU funds from EU Candidate Member States like the three states analysed in this book). Democracy’s back-pedalling does not take place in an institutional void but rather in an environment replete with anti-democratic institutional practices. It does not take place in an ideological void either. There is

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a cognitive and normative framework, to adopt Peter A. Hall’s terminology (Hall, 2016), which is conducive to the backsliding of democracy. Governing elites in countries where democracy backslides espouse recognizable themes of such a cognitive and normative framework. For example, elites which pursue the backsliding of democracy claim that they legitimately dislocate checks and balances among democratic institutions, as I will illustrate in the last part of this chapter. Governing elites marginalize institutions which are disloyal to the government and tamper with the constitution and major freedoms, as the populist rule of Nikola Gruevski in North Macedonia (2006–2017) and that of Aleksandar Vuˇci´c in Serbia (2012–) has shown. They claim that it is legitimate to do so, because they represent the majority of the people, as indicated by the governing party’s most recent or successive electoral victories. They often invoke real or imaginary threats to national unity and to the people. These are just a few of the numerous items of a cognitive and normative framework which is akin to populism. However, as discussed in the following section, populism is not only a framework. It is also a set of state-society relations, i.e., a set of linkages through which interest groups and individuals relate to the state. In the countries under study such linkages constitute a historical legacy, constructed in the period after transition from state socialist rule.

2.3 Populism as a Variety of State-Society Relations The exact strategies, choices and mechanisms through which elected governments might employ to make a democracy backslide deserve a closer look. This is all the more so because liberal democracies, even in the heart of Europe, where modern democracy originated, now face uncommon challenges from the left and the right of the political spectrum, in the form of the rise of populism. Indeed, the advent of populist parties to power has raised questions about the origins and nature of populism and possible challenges to liberal democracy (e.g., Bermeo, 2019). Examples are the single-party majority rule of populists in Hungary and Poland; the formation of coalition governments based on right and centre-right radical populist discourse in Austria (2017–2019) and Italy (2018–2019 and again from 2022); and the meteoric electoral performance of populist candidates in other European democracies as well as in Brazil (Bolsonaro in 2018–2022) and the USA (Donald Trump

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in 2016–2020). Such challenges to democracy come from “above”, i.e., from winners of elections who tamper with democratic institutions after they obtain a parliamentary confidence vote and are sworn in. Briefly, populism denotes an ideology (Mudde, 2017; Mueller, 2016) or a discourse (Laclau, 2005) rallying the people around the nation and pitting them against national and foreign elites. It also denotes a set of government policies which are implemented after populists ascend to government. Populists may be supportive of democratic institutions, at least before they rise to government. In fact, populists may to an extent express the interests of popular strata, such as some low-income groups hit by the labour market dislocations provoked by an economic crisis. In that sense, depending on the historical period in question and the structure of the political party system, populist parties may contribute to the enlargement of political participation and the furthering of democratization. Yet, comparative political research in Europe has not fully analysed how such populist parties and leaders behave once they are elected to power. There is much more research on the pre-electoral discourse and attractiveness of populism (Kriesi, 2014; Kriesi & Pappas, 2016; Mudde, 2007; Pappas, 2019; Taggart, 2000). Indeed, European populism thrives on certain distinct themes and mentalities, which include loyalty to the nation (Taguieff, 2007) and hostility to alleged domestic and foreign enemies of the people. Usually, these alleged enemies are business elites and particularly bankers, foreign companies, the EU authorities, Islam and Judaism, migrants and refugees from the Middle East and North Africa, gender- and sexual-identity movements. Not all these themes are found in all populist discourses. For instance, left-wing populists are not necessarily nationalists and have supported policies in favour of refugees and migrants. Populists may be hostile to some or all of the above groups and authorities. They plan to attract the votes of citizens who seek familiar scapegoats for domestic economic and social ills or are alienated from supra-national authorities and from national politics. Once in power, populists share a propensity to govern in an unrestricted fashion (Mueller, 2016). In other words, populists tend to rule as if they were not restrained by democratic, political and administrative institutions. They actually take institutions such as the justice system or the media into account only insofar as they can undermine or neutralize them.

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Moreover, after populists ascend to government, they reshape statesociety relations or at least attempt to do so by formulating and implementing their own governing policies. With regard to distribution of income, employment and social protection, policies of populist parties to an extent overlap with similar policies of other parties which have been in power. For example, centre-left and left governing parties implement policies supporting low-income strata. Populist parties in power may also be supportive of selected low-income groups, which they pick out because they belong to their favourite electoral pool. Even if populists claim to authentically represent the people, in practice, once in government they implement policy measures in a very selective fashion. They only support selected population categories and groups (see Chapter 5). In other public policy sectors, populists share little with preceding governments, even with pro-labour governments. This is because a primary priority of populists is to adopt government policies which will create politically useful “institutional and ideological fields” (in P. A. Hall’s sense of the term). These are fields suitable to the reproduction of populists in power and are inimical or outright hostile to liberal democratic institutions. Populists strive to accomplish this governing project by drawing on a repertoire of strategies in the fields of justice and anti-corruption policy, welfare policy, media policy, public administration policy and policy towards the voluntary sector. Relevant populist strategies include the control of (if not the war against) the judiciary system, and the prosecution of political opponents and hand-picked businessmen; the favoured treatment of selected social groups (e.g., pensioners, civil servants) in the sense of selective, targeted policies of wage increases and welfare spending; the reshaping of the media sector to tailor it to the reelection needs of populists in power; the colonization of the central public administration and state-owned enterprises with populist party cadres and voters; and the pressure on (if not persecution against) dissident voluntary and professional organizations, including civic associations and unions critical of the government. Through such an array of strategies, populists attempt to obtain legitimacy for their policy choices and to reshape state-society relations in a very biased fashion, corresponding to their short- and medium-run political objectives. Combined with corruption and clientelism, populist governing makes democracy backslide without ever admitting it openly.

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In brief, populism can be understood as a variety of state-society relations. Despite opening opportunities for less-powerful social strata to mobilize against the state, populism also manifests itself as a formidable challenge to liberal democratic institutions and to the delicate balance of powers among them. While selected social strata and groups may share the main themes of populist ideology and look up to populist governments as defenders of the state and the nation against alleged domestic and foreign enemies, populist governments in fact attempt to shape society to suit their needs. Pervasively reshaping society to suit a party’s interests is not what one expects of democratic parties in a typical liberal democracy today.

2.4 Clientelism as a Variety of State-Society Relations Clientelism (or patronage, used interchangeably in this book) may have various meanings, but is also a type or variety of state-society relations. In academic literature, clientelism has most commonly been interpreted as a linkage or “patron-client exchange” (Kitchelt & Wilkinson, 2007). This approach focuses on the links which political clientelism creates, namely on the fact that clientelism functions as a mode of political participation through which citizens become integrated into the political system. Besides being a mode of political integration/participation, clientelism is also a way to structure state-society relations. Let us as look at it from the standpoint of voters. Instead of turning to any available local or professional association or labour union or other “horizontal” association, which they are entitled to be members of because of their place of residence or occupational status, voters engage with politics through “vertical”, i.e., hierarchical, linkages which they establish with individual patrons (Mouzelis, 1986, 76–77, 219). The latter are politicians, party cadres and government officials who promise to look after their clients’ personal or family interests. Typically, in this approach the clients are individual voters or whole families who side with particular candidates before elections or form a long-term relationship of political exchange with them. Politicians running for office and politicians who already hold office become patrons and benefit from this patron-client exchange probably more than their clients do. Patrons continue to enjoy power, while clients remain powerless. This unequal exchange involves voting for one candidate instead of

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another and receiving preferential treatment from public services which the patron politician can influence. Examples of preferential treatment include obtaining quicker or better treatment by public administrative and welfare services due to the intermediation of one’s own patron, after the patron has won a seat at the local, regional or national parliament or become a government official. A useful three-level analytical distinction is the following (Sotiropoulos, 2018): clientelism is a three-fold variety of state-society relations. First, we have clientelism at the top, namely the relations which are forged between the head of government and government ministers, on the one hand, and government-favoured businessmen, on the other. Then, there is clientelism in the middle, which includes the appointment of political party supporters at the higher- and/or the middle-echelons of the hierarchy of ministries, public bodies and state-owned enterprises. And third, there is the most common form of clientelism, namely clientelism at the bottom. This entails the recruitment of party voters to entry-level positions of the public sector. Patronage also entails the preferential treatment of such voters, if they are public employees, when it comes to horizontal mobility, i.e., transfers of employees across public services, and vertical mobility, i.e., their rise in the career ladder. In all these cases, clientelism does not imply a “fair” patron-client exchange, where the former offers protection and the latter political support. It implies a rather unequal relation, where the patron has the power to elevate or downgrade a client. This is true even if the client is not an unemployed person seeking work in the public sector, but a businessman seeking investment opportunities. Indeed, the first of the three types of clientelism, i.e., clientelism at the top, involves the government’s distribution of state assets, bank loans and government-controlled investment opportunities to selected business circles. All this constitutes the meeting point, the intersection, of clientelism and corruption, which materialize in the form of informal networks structuring state-society relations. In other words, clientelism is a mode of political integration or participation and a type of state-society relations because members of society build patronage-based political identities. To apply Peter A. Hall’s concepts of “systematic process analysis” of politics, an informal network is created between clients and their patrons, while a relevant cognitive framework is created through patronage practices. Clients understand politics through the exchange relationship they forge with a politician or a

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political party. Clients abandon politicians or parties which fail in their role as patrons. Subsequently, chances are that clients, accustomed to experiencing politics through their integration into networks of patronage, will shift their allegiance to another patron.

2.5 Corruption as a Variety of State-Society Relations Corruption is commonly defined as the misuse of public office for private gain (Johnston, 2005, 11; Rose-Ackerman, 1999). According to the World Bank (2022), corruption occurs when public power is “exercised for private gain, including both petty and grand forms of corruption, as well as ‘capture’ of the state by elites and private interests”. It involves informal networks linking businesses to government officials (grand or high corruption) and individual citizens to civil servants (petty or low corruption). As I argue in this book (Chapter 7), corruption is not only the use of public office for private gain in the form of personal enrichment. It is also the use of public office for private gain in the form of consolidation of political power. There is more than private gain in corruption. In other words, a government-business nexus is built to serve two functions. Its first function is to facilitate the personal enrichment of involved politicians and businessmen, while the second one is to foster and prolong the involved politicians’ grip on power. Thus, there are two obviously inter-connected functions of corruption, serving the interests of corrupt politicians, namely the political and the economic function. One may understand the political and economic function of corrupt politics as an extension of Max Weber’s conceptual distinction of living for politics and living off politics. As Weber stated in his “Politics as a Vocation” (1919, 5): There are two ways of making politics one’s vocation: Either one lives ‘for’ politics or one lives ‘off’ politics. By no means is this contrast an exclusive one. The rule is, rather, that man does both, at least in thought, and certainly he also does both in practice. He who lives ‘for’ politics makes politics his life, in an internal sense. Either he enjoys the naked possession of the power he exerts, or he nourishes his inner balance and self-feeling by the consciousness that his life has meaning in the service of a ‘cause.’ In this internal sense, every sincere man who lives for a cause also lives off

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this cause. The distinction hence refers to a much more substantial aspect of the matter, namely, to the economic. He who strives to make politics a permanent source of income lives ‘off’ politics as a vocation, whereas he who does not do this, lives ‘for’ politics.

In this passage, Max Weber did not discuss corruption. Yet his conceptual dichotomy can be used to understand how corrupt politicians in practice do both, namely live “for” politics as well as “off” politics. Corrupt politicians use corruption to continue living for politics, to fulfil their passion for politics and hold on to power, while enriching themselves too. At the same time, as Weber claims in the above passage, the same politicians strive “to make politics a permanent source of income”. Evidently, if corruption becomes widespread, then involved politicians do this almost without limitations. Politicians do not limit themselves to living off their salary, e.g., as prime minister or minister, but use their position of authority as a resource or a springboard to become very wealthy. Both the political and economic functions of corruption may be also interpreted as a variety of state-society relations, namely as ways through which state officials relate to individuals and social groups in a less-thantransparent manner. There are not only economic, but also political, benefits for the participants in such corrupt exchanges. Domestic State-Society Relations and External Actors All three varieties of state-society relations may already be widespread in the countries under study in this book and are obviously highly problematic for liberal democracy. These relations amount to a context conducive to bring about a halt in the democratization process or a shift away from liberal democracy, a shift which usually stops short of a complete breakdown of democracy. This was to an extent paradoxical in post-Yugoslavia. Most of the post-Yugoslav successor states were and still are on the road to European integration (Džanki´c et al., 2019; Elbasani, 2013; only Slovenia and Croatia have become full EU Member States). Ideally, being on that road would mean that countries already enjoying EU candidate status or aspiring to obtain it would attempt to adapt their political, administrative and economic institutions to required standards,

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such as absorbing the “acquis communautaire” and meeting the “Copenhagen criteria”. These are the criteria for democracy, market economy and EU membership, which were formulated at the Copenhagen European Council of June 1993. They are required of candidate EU Member States and—among other things—stress respect for liberal democracy. Instead, in the second half of the 2010s, countries such as Serbia were seen as back-pedalling away from the fulfilment of EU accession criteria and standards (European Commission, 2018a, 2019a; Freedom House–Serbia, 2019). The same back-pedalling had been evident in North Macedonia for more than ten years, between 2006 and 2017 under the coalition governments led by Gruevski (European Commission, 2014, 2015) as well as in Montenegro under DPS rule (European Commission, 2018b, 2019b). The fact that the EU’s accession negotiations with Montenegro began in June 2012 and with Serbia in January 2014 does not diminish the fact that both countries have had a very mixed record, under SNS rule in Serbia (since 2012) and under DPS rule in Montenegro (at least since 2006, when the country became independent from Serbia).

2.6

The Negative Impact of Populism, Clientelism and Democracy

Populism, clientelism and corruption have been recurrent types of satesociety relations in authoritarian, transitional and even long-existing democratic political regimes. Some analysts have discussed the positive aspects of these three political phenomena. For example, there are normative arguments underlining positive effects of populism (see Mouffe, 2018, for supporting democracy’s rejuvenation through leftwing populism). Others have summarized the advantages and disadvantages of clientelism (De Sousa, 2008, 9, for a comparison of “toxic” and “tonic” effects of clientelism) and corruption (Wei, 1999, for a survey of corruption’s effects on economic development). However, in this book, I assume that populism, clientelism and corruption effectively have an adverse impact on democracy, as argued below. In detail, populism translates differences of opinion into irreconcilable divisions (“us” vs. “them”) and perceives political opponents as alien to democracy. Democracy is conceived by populists only as popular sovereignty, without checks and balances. Populism adopts a majoritarian concept of democracy, potentially circumscribing human

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rights and the rights of minorities, and pretends to represent the interests of economically poor or politically underrepresented strata. After rising to government, populist parties marginalize universalistic social and economic policies in order to adopt selective government policies which shield from economic or social risks only those electoral pools supportive of populist causes. Importantly, populists in government upset checks and balances among democratic institutions by aggrandizing the executive as opposed to the legislative and the judicial branches of democratic governance (Eckiert, 2017; Mudde, 2017; Mueller, 2016). It has been argued that clientelism may have a positive impact on the legitimation and consolidation of democracy (Morlino, 1998, 251–252, 339), despite the fact that it enables governing parties to illegitimately provide favourable treatment to their supporters. In the absence of a strong early legitimation for a new democratic regime, clientelism may help anchor the regime in civil society. By favouring their respective groups of supporters, governing parties perform an inclusionary function which is positive for democracy. More specifically, governing parties keep inside the new regime sectors of society, which might otherwise defect to “anti-regime extremist alternatives” (Morlino, 1998, 252), under control. It is through their clientelist inclusion in the democratic regime that such sectors accept it as legitimate. This argument is not applicable to all instances of democratization. This would be a valid argument, if the question was how new democratic regimes, deeply divided along partisan lines, managed to reach democratic consolidation (e.g., post-fascist Italy or post-dictatorial Greece). However, one may think of multiple negative facets of clientelism’s impact on democracies in the long run. Hampered by clientelism, a post-authoritarian regime may not reach full democratic consolidation or start sliding back into authoritarianism after having become a consolidated democracy. After all, it is obvious that clientelism eventually undermines the principle of equality before the law; it creates enclaves of political exclusion because supporters of opposition parties are excluded from access to state resources, while democracy should ideally be an inclusionary project (Fishman, 2019). Clientelism reduces state capacity to reform, as public administration employees are hired on the basis of their political connections rather than their credentials and suitable skills. Notably, clientelism depresses the legitimacy of democracy, while also contributing to the

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spread of cynicism and mistrust towards democratic institutions (De Sousa, 2008; Piattoni, 2001). Finally, corruption reduces public organizations to tools for private gain. By off-loading decision-making on to invisible circuits of power, corruption diminishes popular sovereignty over decision-making, generalizes suspicion and erodes trust, and fuels the growth of inefficiencies through increases in public expenditure (e.g., the cost of public works increases, owing to corrupt deals). Corruption irrationally and irresponsibly shifts resources to debatable or useless projects and turns citizens’ rights into favours which are selectively distributed only to some of them, thus leading to “unjustifiable disempowerment” of the people (Warren, 2004).

2.7

Re-using, Misusing and Abusing Democratic Institutions

While governing elites interact with institutions, they are constrained by existing institutional arrangements (e.g., the constitution, the mass media, the public bureaucracy, the justice system) to varying degrees. However, to the extent they can, elites use, control or change institutions. Such change is usually small scale. In the historical institutional logic, actors are usually unable to drastically reshape institutions (Hall & Taylor, 1996). They are “locked in” by the choices of past decision-makers. However, gradual change is possible, usually in the form of shifts in the rules determining the creation and implementation of public policies and organizations (Mahoney & Thelen, 2015). Thus, to an extent, it is possible for individual and collective actors to first change, then implement the formal and informal rules and finally bring about such shifts. What matters, then, is the uses to which actors put institutions. They may put them to uses different from those initially intended by institution-builders. For instance, as I argue in this book (Chapters 8, 9 and 10), managers of institutions, such as governing elites, may pursue strategies of controlling institutions such as the parliament, the justice system, the public administration and independent authorities. Analysts of post-Yugoslav democracies have noted that elected governing elites which engage in undemocratic practices abuse any institution at their disposal. For example, they construct or redraw ideological cleavages, create and manage crises, control the state mechanism, heavily influence the state

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and private mass media, and abuse public resources for the benefit of their political party and their own personal enrichment (Dolenec, 2013; Komar, 2019). It may be analytically useful to look closer at what such institutioncontrolling elites actually do. They are not all-powerful, nor are they able to remake institutions from scratch. Yet institution-controllers can do at least three different things in their drive to bend political and administrative institutions to their own interests: they can re-use institutions in unpredictable ways, they can misuse them and finally they can abuse them. Re-using institutions may mean gradually and slowly pushing the development of an institution out of its original trajectory. This way an elected government may benefit from and expand on past uses of an institution by its predecessors. Take, for instance, a justice system which has served past governments in polities in which the government traditionally exerts influence over the judiciary. Re-using such an institution would render it subservient to the political strategies of a governing elite to retain power by neutralizing a potential challenge that an independent judiciary may pose. An example is the onset of changes which the Serbian coalition government, led by the SNS party, started effecting on the Serbian judiciary after the party rose to power in 2012. The SNS replicated, albeit in a more drastic and excessive manner, what previous Serbian governments had done to the justice system before 2012 (Cohen & Lampe, 2011, 150; Dalara, 2014; Kmezi´c, 2017). Misusing institutions goes one step further. It trespasses commonly accepted norms of behaviour in democratic settings. It reaches the outer limits of freedom for manoeuvre which constitutions and law usually grant to most elected governments. Take, for instance, a distortion of the rules, for example, through a new law that gives an electoral advantage to the governing party over the major party of the opposition. Another example is the case of an incumbent government misusing state resources before an election. This takes place by pressing public employees to vote for the governing party, conflating the governing party’s electoral campaign with the usual discharging of official tasks and duties by government ministers, and distributing cash benefits and transfers-in-kind to potential voters who are under economic hardship. In Montenegro the DPS party engaged in such misuse of state institutions throughout its long term in power (1991–2020).

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Finally, abusing institutions is not a small step, but a giant leap. It clearly trespasses all expected behaviour within the confines of the democratic game. For example, abusing institutions means that a government illegally bends the rules to the point of violating the constitution. That is the case of a government which has the state’s secret services engage in wiretapping of political friends and foes, as did the government of Gruevski in North Macedonia in the last phase of its term in power (2014–2016), if not earlier (Chapter 11). Re-uses, misuses and abuses of the kind mentioned above have taken place in many different polities. Governing elites have managed institutions in these three ways in polities embedded in a wide range of varieties of state-society relations that do not stand out as populist, clientelist or corrupt-prone. Populism is not unknown to long-time established liberal democracies (e.g., in the USA under the administration of Donald Trump, in the UK during the Brexit campaign). Corruption at the highest government level is not unknown in democratic regimes which are considered as more or less smoothly operating liberal democracies (Germany, France, Japan). And yet, populism, clientelism and corruption have a systematic relation, namely an elective affinity, with the re-uses, misuses and abuses noted above. These types of use of institutions are the strategies, choices and mechanisms which governing elites employ in order to bend a vast array of norms or principles associated with liberal democracy. Thus, democratic norms are eroded, if not completely undermined, by populism, clientelism and corruption. Whenever they re-use, misuse and abuse institutions, governing elites may prolong their stay in power, but they simultaneously inflict wounds on pluralism, equality before the law, transparency and accountability. Populism, clientelism and corruption create a cultural environment and a cognitive framework which are ideal for such re-uses, misuses or abuses. People who are familiar with such manipulation of political and administrative institutions are residents and citizens of countries in which the relations between state and society have for a long time or at least periodically been structured along populist, clientelist and corruptible lines. In other words, practices as those listed above are common; networks have been woven together; and a corresponding cognitive framework, which is hard to overcome, has prevailed in state-society relations.

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Governing elites diffuse populist, clientelist or corrupt institutional practices, along with the corresponding cognitive and normative frameworks, in society. People may interpret these routine actions of elites in a responsive, if not positive manner. For example, in the post-1989 Western Balkans, people adapted to the populist, clientelist or corrupt practices of elites in order to overcome economic hardship, proceed with their career or make business profits. This was required, so to speak, of any anyone trying to make ends meet in a conflict-ridden context, like the politically unstable and economically faltering environment of post-Yugoslavia. This does not mean that all people in post-Yugoslavia have been engaging with the state authorities of their country through populism, clientelism and corruption. Many democratic citizens and civic associations have resisted these temptations. By contrast, some may have indeed benefited from political opportunities to be recruited to the public sector, using their connections to the governing party (clientelism). Others, however, may have been attracted by the biased populist promises of selective redistribution made by a populist party before elections and fulfilled after that party came to power at the expense of more universalistic redistribution (populism). And yet others, business owners of large, medium or even small enterprises, may have profited from ties with government officials which have grown into fruitful business opportunities (corruption).

2.8

Conclusions

In brief, populism, clientelism and corruption create a natural habitat, so to speak, for the control of political and administrative institutions. In societies long familiar with populism, clientelism and corruption, governing elites will feel less restricted to proceed with control of institutions than in societies in which state-society relations are usually not patterned along populist, clientelist or corrupt lines. Furthermore, within one and the same society, control of institutions will be less constrained in historical periods during which populism, clientelism and corruption reign supreme than during periods of ebb or retraction of such state-society relations. In the context of populism, clientelism and corruption, governing elites may control institutions by re-using, misusing or abusing them. In the three countries under study in this book, there is a varying mix of re-use, misuse or abuse of institutions, which will be detailed

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in the following, empirical chapters of the book. The use to which governing elites put institutions does not evolve in an ideological and socio-political vacuum. Elites act in settings of state-society relations which are familiar to them and to the rest of the actors whom elites want to influence, including voters and their networks as well as formal and informal organizations. In other words, state-society relations such as populism, clientelism and corruption set the stage for the emergence of ideological and institutional fields in which governing elites pursue their strategies, seeking to obtain compliance, participation and legitimacy on the part of the population as well as to achieve their re-election to power and even personal enrichment. In post-communist Serbia, Montenegro and North Macedonia, the three types of state-society relations are familiar to all actors involved, namely governing elites and the people, because such patterns of relations have been long established there (Cohen & Lampe, 2011; Ramet, 2010). In other words, there is a historical legacy of populism, clientelism and corruption which was already evident in the period of state socialism and the period after the transition from state socialism. Those who govern and those who are governed are already deeply familiar with the institutional practices, the cognitive frameworks and the network relations which are associated with populism, clientelism and corruption. Institutional practices involve playing the game of clientelist exchanges or linking up oneself with networks of corrupt businessmen and politicians. A prerequisite of this is socialization into the proper cognitive frameworks. A patron and client know what to expect from one another in a relation of patronage. In the same fashion, a populist party knows how to instrumentalize age-old resentment towards national and foreign elites and organizations. The party creates a climate of political polarization in which populist thinking blossoms, while the electoral chances of non-populist parties are undermined. Finally, formal organizations and especially informal groups constitute the networks of relations through which supporters of populist parties are mobilized; participants in clientelist exchanges trade votes for state favours; and members of business circles and governing officials make deals under the table. None of the above is beyond the grasp of political elites, voters and social groups of post-Yugoslav societies. All the above are wellknown and widespread institutional practices, cognitive frameworks and

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informal networks of relations which have survived the transition from state socialism and experienced a revival in the post-transition regimes. Populism is familiar to the Serbs and Montenegrins, who in the 1990s were exposed to the nationalist/populist ideology and state policies of the Miloševi´c regime and his party, the SPS (Ramet, 2006, 367–369, 419– 421, 532–535; Ramet & Pavlakovi´c, 2006; Thomas, 1999). Corruption was rampant in the personal entourage and the party of the Serb nationalist/populist leader. Corruption was continued by some of Miloševi´c’s successors, as, for instance, in the second half of the 2000s under DS party rule (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 2011). Clientelism was a typical way for pro-government voters to obtain and retain public sector jobs, while government-friendly civil servants achieved favourable transfers and promotions in Serbia as in other Southeast European public administrations, before and after transition to democracy (Cohen & Lampe, 2011, 130–137; Sotiropoulos, 2002). To sum up this chapter, there is a set of state socialist and particularly post-socialist, populist, clientelist and corrupt-prone relations between state and society, which date back at least to the 1990s. This set of relations has provided a context conducive for governing elites to control institutions. In doing so, governing elites have reversed the process of democratization. In the next chapter, I analyse alternative explanations of the reversal of democratization in post-Yugoslav successor states, focusing on why governing elites have been able to control and bend democratic institutions at the expense of democracy.

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CHAPTER 3

The Pendulum of Democracy in Post-Yugoslav Successor States: Causes of the Backsliding of Democracy

For three decades now, Serbia, Montenegro and North Macedonia have been navigating a course which has brought them to the unchartered waters of a constrained democracy (Bieber & Risti´c, 2012). After being semi-authoritarian regimes or “electocracies” in the 1990s (Dawisha, 1999; Dawisha & Parrot, 1997), post-Yugoslav successor states have not completed their political transformation into functioning democracies (Balfour & Stratulat, 2011). In terms of the pendulum of democracy, the metaphor used in this book, these states have become more authoritarian, meaning, among other things, that there is a clear shift entailing fewer civil rights, less citizen participation, “and also restricted opportunities in changing governments” (Bieber, 2020, 4). The three countries have experienced incomplete democratic consolidation. They are democratic regimes in the making rather than competitive authoritarian regimes. Of course, this claim can be disputed, if one calls them plain autocracies or competitive authoritarian regimes on the basis of the relevant conceptualization of Levitsky and Way (2010). From example, Bieber, who also selects the same three countries out for comparison (Bieber, 2018) treats them as “competitive authoritarian cases” (Bieber, 2020, 5, 10, 28–29 and 139). Freedom House (FH) applies a typology of regimes to countries. It reports annually on their democratic status. Until 2018, FH assigned © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 D. A. Sotiropoulos, The Irregular Pendulum of Democracy, New Perspectives on South-East Europe, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25609-7_3

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Serbia and Montenegro the label “semi-consolidated democracy”. From 2019 onwards, the label was changed for both countries to “transitional or hybrid regime”, despite the government change in Podgorica in 2020. The FH labelled North Macedonia a “hybrid regime”, similar to Kosovo, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Albania (Freedom House, 2019). This label remained the same before and after the fall of Nikola Gruevski from the government of Skopje (2017). These are disputable choices on the part of FH or other similar international observers of the state of democracy in the world today. It is difficult to use labels to register political change. It is also hard to assign labels to political regime types in a precise fashion, and it is harder to reach a consensus on labels. Yet, one cannot equate the three Balkan cases under study either with the clearly undemocratic cases of hybrid regimes in the former Soviet republics (e.g., Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan) or with the usual competitive authoritarian regimes (Levitsky & Way, 2010). Such regimes may be found in the easternmost areas of Europe today, e.g., in Belarus and other former Soviet republics. In contrast to such examples of competitive authoritarianism, in the three post-Yugoslav successor states real opposition exists, is very active and can rise to power through elections (e.g., in North Macedonia in 2017 and in Montenegro in 2020). None of the above is typical of competitive authoritarian regimes. In this book, I would like to argue that in the 2000s the three countries are not competitive authoritarian regimes. That would be a characterization too rigid to capture major political changes in at least two of my cases (North Macedonia, Montenegro). Characterizing today’s Serbia a competitive authoritarian regime would also be neither accurate nor fair. It would underplay or minimize the importance of successive and persistent, albeit ineffective, anti-authoritarian movements and electoral campaigns of the opposition against SNS rule over the past ten years (2012–2022). The three cases under study remain unconsolidated democracies which have started backsliding at different time points and may have been on the verge of becoming competitive authoritarian regimes. But, as the cases of North Macedonia and Montenegro have shown, they have not become competitive authoritarian regimes. To be sure, the above regimes are not consolidated democracies. The fact that there has been a double government turnover, i.e., the national government has changed hands at least twice, as has happened in North

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Table 3.1 Trust in the judiciary and in government’s abiding by the law in post-Yugoslav successor states, 2015

Albania Bosnia-Herzegovina Croatia North Macedonia Kosovo Montenegro Serbia

% have a lot or some confidence in courts and the judiciary

% agree that the government acts in accordance with the law

17 23 66 40 26 42 28

25 16 26 48 22 37 26

Source Regional Cooperation Council—Balkan Barometer 2015: 82 and 84

Macedonia (1998, 2006, 2017) and Serbia (2000, 2008, 2012) does not suffice to call these regimes “consolidated democracies”. In Montenegro, such turnover did not really happen until 2020, even though there had been different governing coalition partners of the ruling DPS party of Ðukanovic. Democratic consolidation requires much more than the simple fact that government changes hands. While nominally all competitors may adhere to the rules of the democratic game, the rule of law and media freedom leave a lot to be desired in all countries under study (Chapters 8, 9 and 10). Moreover, as Table 3.1 shows, with the exception of Croatia, in the rest of the West Balkan states there are low levels of trust in the courts and the government’s abiding by the rule of law. In the remainder of this chapter, I will present the main features of the current Serbian, Montenegrin and North Macedonian political systems. I will argue that for Serbs and Montenegrins, the transition from state socialism in 1989–1991 was the first step in a two-step democratization process (Diamandouros & Larrabee, 2000, 48–49), which did not progress until a second step was taken with the defeat of Yugoslavia in the Kosovo war of 1999 and the fall of Miloševi´c from power in 2000. Montenegro’s national independence in 2006 marked a new period for its post-socialist democracy, based on its constitution of 2007. As for North Macedonia, the second step of democratization took place with the Ohrid Framework Agreement between the Macedonian majority and the Albanian minority in 2001.

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The historical legacies of war, ethnic conflict and constitutional set-up in the three countries, briefly discussed below, have laid the bases for the movement of democracy’s pendulum towards and away from democracy. In the first half of the 2010s, the pendulum may have moved away from the democratic end of its course. In the last part of the chapter, I will present and critically evaluate alternative explanations for the failure of democratization in the post-Yugoslav successor states.

3.1

The Pendulum of Democracy in Serbia

Serbia is a prime example of the two-step democratization process. After 1989, Miloševi´c and his Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS, an outgrowth of the League of Communists of Serbia under Tito) established a semiauthoritarian regime (Cox, 2002, 161–174). The regime allowed for minimal political participation by opponents, suppressed dissident movements, controlled the state administration, the security forces and the mass media, and also probably rigged elections (Ramet, 2006, 497–499 and 504–510; 2010, 292–293). After the disastrous effect of the Kosovo war for Serbia in 1999, opposition against Miloševi´c was strengthened. It became better organized and was able to launch the “October 2000” revolution, after Miloševi´c did not recognize the parliamentary election results of the same year which signalled his defeat. A period of a more or less functioning democracy followed in the 2000s, indicating that in Serbia too, for a while, the pendulum of democracy moved away from the semi-authoritarian end. The political regime which emerged after 2000 was a semi-presidential democracy of the premier-presidential type (Passarelli, 2019), as the President of the Republic was directly elected. The Prime Minister (PM) and the cabinet, who came from the party or coalition of parties winning parliamentary elections, were solely accountable to the 250-seat parliament. The Serbian President does not have substantive powers, as his competences are limited in the policy sectors of defence and security. The President has veto power over laws passed by parliament, but he (or she) can be over-ridden by the latter. Unless the President is supported by the governing party, then he (or she) is definitely weaker than the PM. Serbia’s electoral system is a proportional representation (PR) system with closed party lists and a threshold of votes (3%) required by a party to

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win parliamentary representation, but the threshold is waived for parties representing ethnic minorities in the Serbian Parliament. Yet, due to multiple cleavages on foreign policy issues and social issues, as well as to personality clashes among politicians, the party system of Serbia has often been extremely fragmented (Bochsler, 2010; Spasojevi´c & Stojiljkovi´c, 2019). As a result, government instability was a permanent trait of Serbian politics between 2000 and 2012. After the fall of the Miloševi´c regime in 2000 and until the rise of the SNS to government in 2012, the major competitors in Serbia’s party system were four political parties, namely the SPS, the Democratic Party (DS, led first by Zoran Ðind-inc and—after his assassination in 2003—by Boris Tadi´c in 2004–2014), the Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS, led by Vojislav Koštunica in 1992–2014) and the Serbian Radical Party (SRS), led by Vojislav Šešelj since 1991 (Cohen & Lampe, 2011, 274–277). In 2008, a split inside the SRS party led to the formation of the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), which was first led by Tomislav Nikoli´c and then by Aleksandar Vuˇci´c. It is the party that has ruled Serbia since 2012. Vuˇci´c, the party leader of the SNS, has been able to tailor the party to his priorities and stay in power for at least ten years. He served as PM in 2012–2018 and was elected to the Presidency of Serbia in 2018 (Spasojevi´c & Stojiljkovi´c, 2019, 52). He has exploited the party structures and the party system in an astute manner. Serbia’s party system was not only fragmented until 2012, but very polarized too. In fact, it remains polarized to this day. Particularly after the mid-2000s, there was a split in the party system between a pro-European and a strong Eurosceptic political camp, which overlapped with a chasm between a more Western liberal and a more traditional nationalist/statist camp. There is recent research indicating such a polarization in Serbia’s political culture. A nationwide opinion survey, conducted in May 2022, found that a “higher percentage of respondents believed that it would be better for Serbia to have a strong leader that everyone would listen to, compared to those who thought that a democratic system was the best” (CRTA, 2022, 5). Whichever party or coalition of parties was in government systematically penetrated the public administration, controlled the state media and forged linkages with favoured businessmen who in turn relied on the government for projects, loans and impunity if they committed law violations (Chapters 6 and 7).

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Yet, political competition, however fierce, was quite open, a pattern which changed in the early 2010 when the SNS established its predominance in Serbian democracy. The party system itself had not taken a predictable shape until 2012, when the large-scale electoral victory of the SNS transformed it into a dominant party system (Cohen & Lampe, 2011, 99–104; Ramet, 2010, 295–296; Spasojevi´c & Stojiljkovi´c, 2019; Suboti´c, 2017; 168–170).

3.2

The Pendulum of Democracy in Montenegro

Although Montenegro was part of what had remained of the former Yugoslavia (after the declaration of national independence of Slovenia, Croatia, the then “Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia” and the war in Bosnia), in the late 1990s Montenegro’s political leader, Milo Ðukanovi´c, gradually distanced himself from Miloševi´c. He shed Serbia’s tutelage, approached the West and built a pro-independence electoral base for himself and his party (Morrison, 2017, 351–353; 2018; Ramet, 2006, 517–518, 520 and 523). After the aforementioned short-lived experiment with the “Union of Serbia and Montenegro”, a second transition to democracy occurred. After Montenegro’s declaration of national independence in 2006, a new constitution was promulgated in 2007 which set the parameters of the current political regime. Montenegro has also ended up with a dominant party system and a less-than-consolidated democracy, but has taken a different route from Serbia (Bieber, 2010; Morrison, 2008; Ramet, 2006, 523–524). It had participated in a loose federation with Serbia, the “State Union of Serbia and Montenegro”, which lasted for three years (2003–2006). Montenegro conducted a referendum on national independence in 2006. The vote in favour of independence from Serbia won by just 55.5%, against the threshold of 55.0% which the EU had set in advance to give its approval. The slim margin (0.5%) proved enough, as the international community had monitored the referendum process. Meanwhile, Serbia had resigned to the fact that Yugoslavia had already ceased to exist and therefore did not vehemently resist this additional secession of the smallest of the constituent republics of former Yugoslavia (Cohen & Lampe, 2011, 87; Morrison, 2008, 205–220). Thus, Montenegro also experienced the movement of democracy’s pendulum and a two-step democratization process. A first-step transition

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to democracy had occurred in 1990 when the first multi-party presidential and parliamentary elections took place in that country. The former communist party, i.e., the League of Communists of Montenegro, which used to be the only party in the one-party regime of Montenegro (as in the rest of Yugoslav republics), was much better positioned than its younger and unorganized competitors in the field of the electoral contest. The party was led by long-time experienced leaders (Momir Bulatovi´c, Milo Ðukanovi´c and Svetozar Marovi´c) and relied on its former communist local party branches for voter mobilization (Cohen & Lampe, 2011, 96 and 277). The party won the first parliamentary elections (December 1990) with 56% of the vote. The party renamed itself the Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS) in 1991. For three decades, it went on to win every single parliamentary and presidential election (Morrison, 2017, 345–346), until it fell from power in 2020. Electoral competition was strengthened in 1997 when a split between two former political allies, Momir Bulatovi´c and Milo Ðukanovi´c, led to a neck-to-neck race for the Presidency of Montenegro which Ðukanovi´c won. After that, however, little competition emerged against the Montenegrin leader who ruled mostly unchallenged between 1997 and 2020. Montenegro is a semi-presidential regime (Vujovi´c & Tomovi´c, 2019, 119), as the President of the Republic is directly elected by the people. The prime minister and cabinet are solely responsible to the parliament, which means that Montenegro’s semi-presidentialism is of the premierpresidential type (Passarelli, 2019, 17). The President is institutionally weak: he (or she) appoints the Prime Minister and has a few other competences, such as, to coordinate the supreme command, namely, the “Defence and Security Council”, a council composed of the country’s President, Prime Minister and Speaker of the Parliament. Essentially, the Prime Minister, the cabinet and the 81-seat parliament are the main political institutions. They were dominated by the winner of all elections, the DPS party, until 2020. The Montenegrin electoral system is a proportional representation system with closed party lists. The system requires that a party obtains at least 3% of the national vote to win parliamentary representation, but there are much lower thresholds (0.35 and 0.70% of the vote) to secure the parliamentary representation of minority ethnic groups, such as Bosniaks, Croatians and Albanians. Even though many years have passed since the first multi-party elections (1990), Montenegro’s democracy may still be unconsolidated. The

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lack of complete democratic consolidation is evident in a number of patterns: the DPS party has a long tradition of misusing state resources in between elections and particularly in the period prior to elections to win support from the electorate. Other parties are much weaker in parliamentary elections, experience frequent internal splits and jockey for positions with or against the DPS (Bieber, 2010). Moreover, freedom of expression is not fully implemented. For instance, public employees refrain from freely expressing their political opinions, lest they be sanctioned by the governing party, while journalists critical of the government have periodically been harassed and even physically attacked (Chapter 9). After the parliamentary elections of August 2020, the Democratic Front (DF, 33% of the total vote), along with much smaller parties (the United Reform Action-URA and the “Peace is Our Nation Coalition” including the Demokrate and other parties), formed a new government coalition that replaced the DPS in power. The above patterns of incomplete consolidation of democracy have not changed yet. In 2020–2022 the new governing coalition ensconced itself in the familiar state-society relations of populism, clientelism and corruption and employed some of the tools of controlling democratic institutions that the DPS had been using for a very long time (Chapter 9).

3.3

The Pendulum of Democracy in North Macedonia

North Macedonia also went through a two-step democratization process like Serbia and Montenegro did, but was and still is exposed to the destabilizing factors of internal ethnic conflict and threats to its national sovereignty (Cohen & Lampe, 2011, 64–67, 82–83; Irwin, 2010; Ramet, 2017b). Since 1991 North Macedonia has made a protracted transition to democracy. At the same time, it has been exposed to challenges regarding its nation-building as a newly established nation-state in Southeastern Europe. While North Macedonia did not itself participate in the Yugoslav wars, it was ravaged by internal ethnic strife in the 1990s between the Macedonian majority and the Albanian minority (about 30% of the total population; Table 3.2) and suffered negative consequences because of the Kosovo war of 1999. In the spring of that year, Kosovar refugees of the war, fleeing for their lives, crossed the Kosovar-Albanian border in

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great numbers, while many others travelled to south and entered North Macedonia’s national territory. In addition, the country was embroiled in a very long dispute with Greece (1991–2019) over its name. Until 2019, when it was changed to “North Macedonia”, the country’s name was identical with the north Greek region of Macedonia. Long diplomatic tensions also centred on provisions of its constitution (1991, amended in 2001 and 2018), some of which Greece considered as provisions laying future territorial claims by the newly born nation-state. Greece also challenged the use of national symbols reminiscent of Alexander the Great and his dynasty in the fourth century BC. There were also disagreements between North Macedonia and neighbouring Bulgaria regarding the official language spoken in the new nation-state. (Bulgaria claimed that the language spoken in North Macedonia was a dialect of Bulgarian; the claim was rejected by North Table 3.2 A comparative snapshot of the ethnic composition of three post-Yugoslav successor states

North Macedonia (2021) North Macedonians Albanians Turks Bosniaks Croats Roma Serbs Montenegrins Hungarians Others Total Population

58.4% 24.3% 3.9% 0.9% – 2.5% 1.3% – – 8.7% 1.8 mil.

Montenegro (2011) – 4.9% – 8.8% 1.0% 1.0% 28.8% 45.0% – 6.6% 0.6 mil.

Serbia (2011) – – – 2.0% – 2.1% 83.3% – 3.5% 9.1% 7.2 mil.

Source Ramet (2017b, 300), Morrison (2017, 347), and Suboti´c (2017, 169). Data from the 2021 census of North Macedonia is drawn on the State Statistical Office of North Macedonia, available at https://www.stat.gov.mk/PrikaziSoopstenie_en.aspx?rbr txt=146, last accessed on 9 August 2022. Serbia’s next census was scheduled for the end of 2022, while Montenegro’s 2021 census has been postponed

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Macedonia.) Such disagreements led Bulgaria to block the EU Membership negotiations with North Macedonia in November 2020. In brief, the spillover of the Yugoslav wars and the disputes with neighbouring countries, in conjunction with internal ethnic strife, created an external environment that was the least conducive for democracy to flourish. Throughout the last three decades, power in North Macedonia alternated between the centre-right nationalist party Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization-Democratic Party for Macedonian National Unity (VMRO-DPMNE), founded in 1990 and named after the legendary nineteenth-century national liberation movement VMRO, and the centre-left party Social Democratic Union of Macedonia (SDSM). The latter had been the only party in the southernmost constituent republic of former Yugoslavia under Tito. Until the beginning of the break-up of Yugoslavia the party was officially known as the Communist Alliance of Macedonia-Party for Democratic Prosperity. It was revamped in 1991, when it changed its name along with its political programme. These two were and still are the largest parties in the country. Yet, they never governed alone, but formed coalition governments with changing partners from among the Albanian parties, such as the Democratic Party of Albanians (DPA, a usual government coalition partner in the 1990s) and the Democratic Union of Integration (DUI, a usual government coalition partner of either VMRO-DPMNE or SDSM governments since 2002). While there was government turnover in 1998, when the SDSM replaced the VMRO-DPMNE in government, democracy remained unconsolidated for three decades. Electoral irregularities were common, while ethnic violence erupted periodically. Eventually, after the armed insurrection of bands of Albanians in 2001 and the Ohrid Framework Agreement between the two ethnic communities in August of the same year, North Macedonia took a second step towards democratization. Pressure from the international community to stabilize the democratic regime and the partial normalization of Macedonian-Albanian relations within the country allowed for the emergence of a semi-presidential and (since 2001) consociational democratic regime (Šedo, 2010; SiljanovskaDavkova, 2013, 2014; Taleski et al., 2019). As in Serbia and Montenegro, the electoral system is a proportional representation system with closed party lists. To sum up this section, the three countries, Serbia, Montenegro and North Macedonia originated in former Yugoslavia, were deeply affected

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by war or strife (Serbia much more than the other two countries), and experienced a rather belated, two-step process of democratization (Diamandouros & Larrabee, 2000). The three countries share a rather similar profile, lie in the same region of Europe and draw on the same historical past after 1945.

3.4

Ethnic Tensions and Democracy

Serbia, Montenegro and North Macedonia originate in former Yugoslavia and perhaps still share many similarities today, but they are obviously different in many respects. Examples of such differences are population size, the weight of minorities in their ethnic composition and their degree of participation in the Yugoslav wars, among other aspects. Regarding the ethnic composition of the three societies, North Macedonia has the largest ethnic minority within its national territory, the Albanian minority (Table 3.2). Its exact numbers are not known, as the prior-to-last census, which was a heavily politicized affair, took place in 2002. The next census took place almost two decades later, in 2021. It was conducted under the COVID-19 pandemic and was challenged by parties of the opposition. Compared to 2002, the 2021 census results, if accurate, show a small decline of both the Macedonian and Albanian ethnic groups. As Table 3.2 shows, there are large-scale differences among the three countries in terms of their ethnic composition. Differences are reflected in political representation and the political party systems of the three countries. For instance, there are numerous ethnic minority parties in Serbia and Montenegro, but ethnic divisions do not necessarily prove destructive for democracy. The country which has the most sensitive— if not explosive—ethnic divisions, namely North Macedonia, has been able to integrate its largest ethnic minority, the Albanians, into its political system. In the beginning of the transition from state socialism, the Albanian minority did not want to cooperate in state-building and challenged the country’s foundation and the constitution of 1991. However, the national independence of the country from the FRY was achieved in that year through a vote in parliament and a referendum (boycotted by the Albanians). While the transition to a new state with its own borders was thus relatively peaceful, tensions between Albanians and Macedonians boiled up

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periodically in the 1990s and culminated in the Albanian armed insurrection of 2001. The Ohrid Framework Agreement of that year stabilized the situation. It can be argued that, compared to other post-Yugoslav successor states (Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo), in North Macedonia the in-fighting was relatively short and not as destructive in terms of loss of lives and property (Engstroem, 2009, 103). Moreover, both the Macedonians and the Albanians accepted the rules of the democratic game, albeit with different ends. Whereas the former attempted to approximate a Western-style liberal democracy emphasizing individual rights, the latter preferred to see democracy as an opportunity to fight for and win collective rights based on ethnic communities. This disparity obviously threatened state sovereignty and national unity, two cornerstones for a stable democratic regime. Yet, with the benefit of hindsight, we can accept the claim that the democratic regime served the ends of both the ethnic majority and the ethnic minority of North Macedonia. Particularly after the Ohrid Framework Agreement (2001), democracy proved to be a suitable means to prevent internal disintegration and to unite North Macedonian’s political elites for representation in international fora and in the face of external challenges to the country (Engstroem, 2009, 110–111). Gradually, in contrast to Serbia or Montenegro, North Macedonia has been able—since 2017—to start pushing the pendulum of democracy towards the democratic end (Chapter 11). Yet, aside from the differences mentioned above, there are also similarities among the three post-Yugoslav republics. In the 2000s and for most of the 2010s, these three countries have shared and still share many political characteristics. Such similarities might help explain the common phenomenon which these cases exhibit, namely the backsliding of democracy which was already noted in the first chapter of the book. The political similarities of the three cases are summarized in Table 3.3.

3.5 Alternative Explanations for Democracy’s Backsliding in Post-Yugoslav Successor States Academic debates in comparative politics and in the political history of post-communist Southeastern Europe offer several explanations of the continuing failure of democracy in the region and more specifically in the post-Yugoslav successor states. “Failure” is understood in this context as the inability to achieve the consolidation of democracy.

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Table 3.3 A comparative snapshot of the similarities among three postYugoslav successor states

Type of democratic regime Type of electoral system Freedom House’s (FH) assessment (2022) FH label of political regime Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem project, 2022) World Bank’s (WB) Control of Corruption (2020) Percentile Rank (the lower, the worse)

North Macedonia

Montenegro

Serbia

Semi-presidentialist

Semi-presidentialist

Semi-presidentialist

PR with closed lists

PR with closed lists

PR with closed lists

“hybrid”

“partly free”

“partly free”

Electoral Democracy

Electoral Autocracy

Electoral Autocracy

38.00

56.3

37.5

Sources Freedom House: https://freedomhouse.org/search, Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project: https://v-dem.net/media/publications/dr_2022.pdf,World Bank: https://info.worldbank.org/govern ance/wgi/#home. According to V-Dem, an electoral democracy is characterized by “clean”, i.e., free and fair elections, but is not equally successful in terms of rule of law, ensuring respect for civil liberties, and constraints on the executive by the judiciary and legislature. If the latter prerequisites were fulfilled, then there would be liberal (not electoral) democracy. As for electoral autocracy, the term denotes an essentially authoritarian regime in which elections are not “clean”

Another manifestation of the same failure is the back-pedalling away from liberal democracy after such consolidation has been achieved in formal terms (e.g., with government turnover or the formal but not substantive adoption of the rule of law). Explanations of failure may be divided in five large categories, namely first, explanations which prioritize long-time historical patterns as causes of failure; second, explanations which focus on economic structural causes; third, explanations which underline large-scale global capitalist forces and mainstream economic policy models, such as neoliberalism; fourth; other external causes, i.e., the impact of international factors and inter-linkages between the EU and domestic politics in the countries under study; and fifth; more recent, post-1991 historical legacies and the on-going political conjuncture in these countries. All five are discussed in turn below.

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Authoritarian Regime Type and Mode of Extrication from State Socialism The first category of causes includes long-term patterns such as the mode of extrication of a state from state socialism; for example, whether the transition to democracy was negotiated, as in Bulgaria, or involved a violent overthrowing of the communist elite, as in Romania. The relevant political science literature has suggested a few explanatory factors for differences in transition from state socialism, such as the following ones: the type of communist regime, i.e., whether it was a one-party authoritarian regime, e.g., Yugoslavia under Tito, or a rigid totalitarian regime, e.g., Albania under Hoxha (Linz & Stepan, 1996); and the cultural legacies of authoritarianism and democracy dating back to the pre-communist period in the political history of a state (Diamandouros & Larrabee, 2000, 29–35). As Ivan Krastev explains, this is an approach that emphasizes the negative legacies of war, communism and history and identifies “nationalism…as the leading threat to the democratic process” (Krastev, 2002, 42). This first approach, in all its variations, may be useful in sketching the historical context of democracy’s failure in Southeastern Europe, but the causes it chooses to underline do not suffice for a comprehensive explanation. The approach centring on ethnicity may have helped explain the trajectory of Serbia or North Macedonia in the 1990s, but it can no longer explain democratic developments or the lack thereof in the rest of Southeastern Europe (Krastev, 2002, 43). This approach cannot adequately explain why democracy in Southeastern Europe and more particularly in the countries that emerged from the former Yugoslavia started backsliding after a certain point in time, long after the onset of transition to democracy. The type of non-democratic regime (authoritarian or totalitarian) was probably very useful as an analytical category when the type of transition was in question. Extreme totalitarian regimes, such as Romania’s Ceausescu and Albania’s Hoxha, came down more violently (Romania) or in a more protracted and painstaking manner (Albania) than the rest of pre-1989 regimes. In brief, it would be difficult to explain variations in the performance of democracy and democratic backsliding on the basis of the characteristics of regimes deposed three decades ago. For the same reason, the mode of

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extrication in 1989–1991, i.e., the violent overthrow or smoother transition from authoritarian rule, cannot shed adequate light on the way political institutions and social interests interacted in institutional and ideological fields in the 2010s. Economic Development and Democracy The level of economic development is frequently associated with chances for democratization. Disparities in economic development under socialism in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) have been linked to the breakup of Yugoslavia. More concretely, an explanatory factor is a state’s level of economic development before and after transition to the market system. For example, it has been argued (Woodward, 1995) that it matters whether prior to the demise of the SFRY, a former constituent republic of Yugoslavia, such as Slovenia or Croatia, already possessed an advanced economy or—by contrast—an underdeveloped economy, as was the case with Kosovo or North Macedonia. The transition from state socialism was more successful in the former two than in the latter two countries. However, the relevant scholarship can only point to an elective affinity between economic development and democracy, to put it in Weberian terms. The well-known hypothesis that achieving advanced economic development is associated with furthering democratization (Lipset, 1960) has not been fully substantiated by academic research. Regarding the interaction between economic performance and democracy, only less ambitious hypotheses may stand. For example, there is strong evidence that if a democracy surpasses a certain threshold of economic development, then it is very improbable that it can be deconsolidated (Przeworski et al., 2000). With regard to economic development and democracy in Southeastern Europe, we do not find evidence that more economically developed countries will necessary be more democratic compared to less developed countries. Countries richer than the three post-Yugoslav successor states under study, such as Turkey, cannot claim to be more democratic, particularly after the turn Erdogan’s regime in Turkey took in the wake of the coup d’ état of July 2016. Nor does the fact that Hungary is richer than Serbia and Montenegro render the former less prone to democratic backsliding than the latter.

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Capitalist Globalization and Neoliberalism The third category of explanations shifts attention away from domestic economic development patterns and towards the influence exerted by international factors on the domestic political scene of countries undergoing democratic back-pedalling. These may be external economic or political factors. From among the economic factors, the forces of capitalist globalization, multinational corporations and the international financial institutions (IFIs) are usually selected out as prime suspects for the failure of democracy (Horvat & Sticks, 2012, 2015). From among the political factors, many institutions and countries are mentioned, the prime suspects being the EU and Western powers such as the United States. According to this approach, the rapid and destructive transition from the command economy to capitalism in Southeastern Europe is responsible not only for the extensive poverty and acute economic inequalities still observable in the region today, but also for the crisis of democracy. Successive post-socialist governments have continuously pursued neoliberal policies which, combined with the weakness of labour unions responsible for defending workers’ interests, have resulted in political apathy and cynicism. Successive governments have embarked on a race to the bottom when it comes to protecting workers’ rights and lifting constraints on national and foreign capital. Eventually, political and economic oligarchies have established an unaccountable type of rule which characterizes today’s emaciated democracies in the region. This approach correctly observes that public policies have not addressed acute social problems in most of the democracies in the region and that there are very close political-business ties thriving on policy capture and corruption (Chapters 6 and 7 of the book). However, the approach has some shortcomings. First, in contrast to what one would expect from the application of typical neoliberal policies in a certain economy for a considerable period of time, the public sector in the Western Balkans has not shrunk. State-owned enterprises (SOEs) are still predominant in various sectors of the economy, while government intervention in the economy is far from negligible. For example, in Serbia, roughly one out of four of the largest 100 companies are state-owned. SOEs dominate the banking, insurance and transportation sectors, while all companies in utilities are state-owned as well (World Bank Group, 2019, 19). Total public spending hovers

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around 40% of the GDP in Serbia and Montenegro (35% in North Macedonia). Furthermore, in all West Balkan countries and primarily in Serbia and Montenegro, public spending is overwhelmingly channelled towards wages, pensions and untargeted social benefits (World Bank Group, 2019, 18 and 92). In view of these figures, it is implausible to argue that neoliberalism is the default status of the economic model prevailing in the region. And despite some well-known and very adverse phenomena, such as the very slim employment protection granted to private sector workers in the region, it is not possible to directly attribute the travails of democracy to neoliberalism. Second, this approach misses the reactions of the subjects of neoliberal policies, the citizens of post-communist Balkan democracies themselves: “Happily, economic decline and rising social inequality have not given a boost to anti-democratic sentiment. On the contrary, Balkan citizens have reacted to economic hardship with demands for more – not less- democracy. Polls reveal popular dissatisfaction with how democratic regimes have performed, but not longing for nondemocratic alternatives” (Krastev, 2002, 48). Finally, this approach adopts a sweeping view, attributing democratic failure to a continent-wide, if not global, neoliberal turn and therefore ignoring the regional and local developments which, after all have recently resulted in worse performances of some unconsolidated democracies (e.g., Serbia where democracy rapidly declines) than others (e.g., North Macedonia, where democracy has to an extent stopped backsliding). The Impact of the European Union There is a variation of the approach attributing the stalemate of democratization in the Western Balkans to external factors. In this additional view, the role of the EU, although it is ostensibly in favour of promoting democracy, has in practice been harmful for democratization. In detail, as indicated by the cases of Kosovo and Bosnia-Herzegovina, which can be labelled Western protectorates, in political terms the EU has established neo-colonial rule in post-Yugoslav successor states. In economic terms, in these and other cases in the Balkans, it has practiced “neoliberal restructuring”. One way or another, the EU has undermined the development of democracy (Horvat & Sticks, 2012, 42–43, 47).

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Other analysts, less adamant about condemning the EU, have converged on the idea that the EU has not contributed to the democratization of the Western Balkans as much as was originally predicted. The EU is accused of having in fact created new dependencies. More concretely, the power distribution between the EU and its Southeastern European partners is asymmetrical (Anastasakis, 2005, 81; Vachudova, 2014). The dependency in question is not only economic, i.e., couched in terms of flow of funds to EU candidate Member States in the Western Balkans. Dependence has also assumed political and cultural forms, as the “EU-Southeast European interaction is a one-way, didactic and patronizing process” (Anastasakis, 2005, 83). Moreover, the EU’s stance towards the Western Balkans has suffered from lack of consistency or lack of clarity or both (Anastasakis, 2008). This is a pattern which has given mixed signals to pro-reform governing elites and has slowed down Europeanization and democratization. There is a more extreme version of the above argument. Today, it is argued, the EU directly and explicitly endorses the authoritarian tendencies of the region’s political regimes. The EU is accused of having turned a blind eye towards the anti-democratic moves of the Serb and Kosovar governing elites (Radelji´c, 2019, 174). An even stronger version of the same argument is that supposedly, the EU needs to shore up the authoritarian regimes of Western Balkans in order to reach a tolerable level of “stable instability” in the region (Mujanovi´c, 2018, 105, 107–108). The above arguments are perhaps unjust and premature. The EU’s project in the region is not over, nor is it carved in stone. While the strategies and shifting attitudes of the EU towards the Western Balkans, including during and after the Yugoslav Wars, may be far from irreproachable, it is somewhat problematic to hold the EU primarily or exclusively responsible for the state of democracy in countries which are candidate Member States (e.g., Serbia, Montenegro, North Macedonia). The economic potential of all these countries is not crucial for European integration. The EU does not stand to lose a lot if these countries do not quickly become full EU Member States. For instance, in terms of the scale of profit-making endeavours, the market of all West Balkan countries added together is small and uninteresting for major capitalist investments on the part of European firms. The EU’s political unification is not dependent on further European enlargement. In terms of political transformation, it is rational to think that the EU would prefer the postYugoslav successor states to sort out their domestic problems on their

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own and resolve any remaining regional tensions, before they are admitted to the EU as new member states. One must remember, first, that the EU has had bitter experiences with ethnic and transborder tensions in countries already admitted (the Cyprus question, the transborder disputes between Croatia and Slovenia) as well as with semi-authoritarian regimes (e.g., in Serbia) which pursued nationalist policies in the region in the 1990s. After all, EU Member States decide whether to enhance the “European perspective” of the Balkans or not relying on the criterion of what is best for their own interests (Economides, 2008, 31). In more theoretical terms, the EU enlargement process is characterized by “asymmetric interdependence: the candidate states stand to gain more from joining the EU than do existing members” (Vachudova, 2014, 123). In brief, it is not evident why the EU would intervene in the region in order to dampen democracy and create additional political complications in countries which elbow one another at its doorstep. Based on its political values, the EU may have a moral duty to promote democracy in the Balkans. It has probably not fulfilled that duty well over the last two decades, since 2003 when EU leaders committed themselves to the European perspective of the Western Balkans at the Thessaloniki EU summit. But the fact that this project is incomplete cannot be solely attributed to the EU. Indeed, secondly, it is probably wrong to believe that the chances for democratic transformation rely much on external support for democracy. Even when such support was offered by the West, e.g., in the overthrow of the Serbian semi-authoritarian regime in October 2000, it would have amounted to nothing, if there had been insufficient domestic pressure from Serbian opposition political parties and movements to topple the regime of Miloševi´c. It is one thing to argue that the EU has perhaps tolerated political stability at the expense of further democratization (“stabilitocracy”; Pavlovi´c, 2016) and a totally different thing to claim that the EU prefers authoritarian or semi-authoritarian to democratic rule. The EU should use its transformative power to battle state capture and promote democracy in the Western Balkans (Keil, 2018, 14), but clearly its transformative power has limits. In fact, the EU has as much of a democratizing effect on Western Balkans as local forces and domestic political elites allow it to have. On the one hand, parties and governments in the Western Balkans have been pressed to change their policy

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priorities and preferences and to make them compatible with those of the democracies of the EU Member States (Vachudova, 2014, 128). On the other hand, post-Yugoslav political elites may become unrelenting when it comes to real steps towards democratization. They obviously do not wish to limit their room for manoeuvre in the context of populism, clientelism and corruption. This is a context of state-society relations which, as I argue in this book, elites have inherited from the past (from the 1990s) and which they continue to sustain. As Milada Anna Vachudova has put it: When faced with stalled or shoddy reform in a candidate country, it is always relatively easy for scholars to point out the shortcomings of EU policy; indeed, this is far easier than untangling the complicated domestic factors that allow contended power holders to perpetuate the status quo. It is ultimately domestic actors that make choices about the pace and quality of reform. (Vachudova, 2014, 124)

For this reason, explanations which focus on the strategies of domestic political actors in the aforementioned context and in the recent political conjuncture may be more useful than explanations which tend to underline the long-term inconsistencies and short-term failures of international actors (e.g., the EU) in the region under study. The Recent and Contemporary Political Conjuncture The fifth category of explanations focuses on the political conjuncture in the countries under study and examines shorter-term causes, for instance, preceding events. The starting point of this type of explanation is that historical legacies matter for explaining more recent political developments. These are legacies of the recent past, not of the nineteenth century or the “short twentieth century” (1914–1991), as Eric Hobsbawm (1994) called the last century. More specifically, the legacies of state socialism, which ended in 1989– 1991, are important for interpreting the political developments of the 1990s, but are not as useful when it comes to understanding the political situation of the 2010s. The current situation is better analysed by reference to practices, cognitive frameworks and informal networks, as well as conflicts and cleavages which emerged in the post-transition period, namely the decades of the 1990s and 2000s.

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Examples of relatively recent but consequential legacies include the following political developments: the post-socialist experience of war or violent inter-ethnic strife during democratization; the particular type and fragility of the party system, including extreme polarization among political parties, the rapid formation and disintegration of parties and the division of the party system almost exclusively along ethnic lines, as in the case of Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1992–1995; overall state capture and capture of selected profitable policy sectors by strong domestic economic interests, formed in the process of privatizations which followed the transition from communism; the politicization of the state apparatus, including the placement of public administration, the judiciary, the state media and the police and security forces in the service of political parties alternating in power, as in North Macedonia; or the domination of domestic politics by one party which has frequently or always been the winner of national elections, as in Montenegro; and, finally, the inability of post-socialist regimes to build reliable democratic institutions and above all to establish and consolidate the rule of law. This approach is very interesting in the sense that it underlines the relatively recent context in which actors such as political elites organize for political action. They “map” the world which surrounds them, try out new institutional practices, construct cognitive frameworks, weave informal networks and explore their options. Four analysts, Florian Bieber (2017, 2018, 2020), Danijela Dolenec (2013), Sabrina Ramet (2010, 2017a) and to an extent Filip Milaˇci´c (2022), have offered variations of this approach.

3.6

Four Recent Approaches to Democracy’s Backsliding in the Western Balkans Bieber’s View

Bieber (2020) underlines that while traces of authoritarianism of the 1990s remained throughout the 2000s, it was only since the mid- or late 2000s that a shift towards less democracy occurred in the postYugoslav successor states (Bieber, 2017, 2018, 2020). According to this multi-faceted, useful approach by Bieber, the backsliding of democracy in these states today may be comparable with, but certainly not identical to, the semi-authoritarianism or competitive authoritarianism which marked the 1990s (Bieber, 2017). In that period, semi-authoritarian rulers in

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Serbia and Croatia relied on flagrant formal violations of rule of law (e.g., human rights violations) and rallied social support through an extremely nationalist, often anti-Western political discourse. Back then, the lack of a clear break with the authoritarian past was owed to low levels of socio-economic development, challenges to national sovereignty and war and little external support for the consolidation of democracy (Bieber, 2020, 17–20). The reversal of democratization is now occurring due to a different combination of domestic and external factors, which is not the same for each country (Bieber, 2020, 8, 82 and 149). For instance, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo still face problems arising from disputes over national sovereignty and their borders. They never moved away from the stage of “multi-party politics without democracy” (Bieber, 2017, 39). In Serbia, Montenegro and North Macedonia, after a relatively short period of democratization, a new shift away from democracy occurred with the rise of the SNS party to power in Serbia (2012), the VMRO-DPMNE party in North Macedonia (2006) and the consolidation of DPS rule in Montenegro after it became independent in 2006. Whereas the earlier authoritarian rulers of the 1990s were viewed by Western powers as producers of regional instability in the Balkans, today’s rulers put themselves forward and are viewed by the international community as guarantors of stability. In contrast to the post-Yugoslav rulers of the 1990s, current rulers are in favour of their countries’ integration into Western structures, as such as NATO and the EU. The relatively recent shift of Yugoslav successor states such as Serbia, Montenegro and North Macedonia (roughly until 2016) as well as Republika Srpska within Bosnia-Herzegovina away from liberal democracy is characterized by “moderate populism with authoritarian features” (Bieber, 2017, 44). This shift is owed to three factors (Bieber, 2017, 46–54). First, there was a lack of social protests against the backsliding into authoritarianism and in favour of further deepening liberal democracy. There was a conspicuous absence of any pro-democracy mobilization of the kind which had brought down the Miloševi´c regime in 2000. Second, at the level of political elites, there was a lack of internal transformation of the authoritarian structure of major political parties in the Yugoslav successor states, such as the DPS in Montenegro, the SPS in Serbia and the VMRO-DPMNE in North Macedonia.

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Political party elites may have shed their extreme nationalism of the 1990s, but not their tendency towards overconcentration of power in the hands of party leaders and propensity to control state and society through informal networks. And third, external conditions did not facilitate further democratization, but in fact may have contributed to the stalling of the opening up of political regimes. The direct interventions to support reforms towards democracy and promises for integration into the EU, which EU leaders have offered post-Yugoslav successor states, have brought about mixed results. International actors have tolerated insufficient implementation of democratic reforms and have overlooked the meagre progress in democratization. They have favoured progress in regional stability and containment of inter-ethnic conflict. The lack of substantive popular resistance to the backsliding of democracy, the reproduction of authoritarian structures within political party structures over time and the ineffective external support for democracy are crucial factors for any analysis of the back-pedalling of democratization in post-Yugoslav successor states. However, there are two problems with this otherwise very perceptive approach which emphasizes interlocking dynamics among several factors. First, as Bieber himself stresses (Bieber, 2017, 45), there is diversity rather than a uniform pattern. For example, in North Macedonia the populist authoritarian rule of Gruevski was overturned in 2015– 2017 through popular mobilization from below and external pressure from abroad by international organizations and foreign governments. And second, it is important to put the interlocking dynamics of domestic and external actors, which have made democracy trip over successive impediments, into a larger social context. More concretely, there are explanatory factors which originate outside the West Balkan region, such as the global financial crisis and the Eurozone crisis of the late 2000s and the early 2010s, as Bieber underlines (Bieber, 2017, 55; 2020). However, I argue that the most consequential factors are domestic patterns which appear and reappear overtime in the countries under study. These domestic factors are critical antecedents of democracy’s backsliding. They are a mix of state-society relations, namely populism, clientelism and corruption, which have their historical origins in the period of transition from state socialism and today still facilitate shifts away from democracy. To use Max Weber’s metaphor, adapted to the

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cases I study in this book, post-Yugoslav governing elites find it convenient for their reproduction in power to push political regimes in the Yugoslav successor states towards the anti-democratic rails already laid down by legacies of populism, clientelism and corruption. Dolenec’s View A second approach is suggested by Dolenec (2013). She offers a somewhat different view on the causes of stagnation and reversal of democratization in the region. She ingeniously underlines the lingering historical legacies of post-communist authoritarianism and the persisting lack of rule of law. For Dolenec, the key to understanding why various forms of authoritarian rule continued to reproduce themselves, long after transition from state socialism, lies in three “processes of power mutation” which took place in the Western Balkans in the 1990s and the 2000s (Dolenec, 2013, 4–6, 159, 188–189, 194). The first processes occurred in the 1990s, when power was concentrated in the hands of authoritarian leaders, for example, Tudjman in Croatia and Miloševi´c in Serbia. Not only did these leaders abuse the division of powers formally guaranteed by the constitutions of their countries, but—in a second process of power mutation—also facilitated the concentration of economic power in the hands of a few tycoons. Authoritarian leaders combined this concentration of political and economic power with a third process, namely the politicization of the state apparatus through political patronage. In the meantime, rulers had obtained legitimation through nationalist political discourse and mobilization for war (the Yugoslav wars of 1991–1995 and 1999). The authoritarian grip on power by post-socialist rulers was very strong and it created permanent weaknesses in post-Yugoslav successor states. Among the weaknesses, two were glaring: extensive corruption and lack of rule of law. For Dolenec (2013, 154–159 and 185–188) the lack of rule of law was the weakest link in the chain of democratization. It placed major obstacles to democratization even after the demise of the aforementioned rulers, as their successors in power benefited from the pattern of “authoritarian party dominance, which produced a mode of rule inimical to functioning rule of law systems” (Dolenec, 2013, 192). Structural preconditions of continued regional and ethnic tensions facilitated the prolongation of this deviation of post-Yugoslav successor states from the

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road to democratization, in contrast to the experience of most Central and Eastern European post-1989 regimes. Dolenec’s emphasis on the failure to implement the rule of law is a crucial point. However, if we ask why this failure occurred, then we have to discuss the larger picture of incomplete democratization in the postYugoslav successor states. Essentially, rule of law could not have flourished in a totally unhospitable environment. Such an environment had been constructed not only by war and ethnic conflict (which eventually ended), but also by populism, clientelism and corruption which have continued to exist unabated in different mixes since the transition from state socialism. Ramet’s View A third approach, offered by Sabrina Ramet, agrees that the lack of rule of law was manifest in the Balkans already in the 1990s and is a major cause of incomplete democratization today. However, Ramet perceptively prefers to stress, first, the impact of the Yugoslav wars and, second, longterm patterns of political culture which have held back the spread of democracy and liberalism in the region (Ramet, 2017a). What primarily made the project of liberal democracy unsuccessful were the negative effects of war which brought contempt for the rule of law, disrespect for human rights, intolerance towards minorities, indifference towards the spread of inequalities, xenophobia, bias in favour of state religion as well as “neurotic and quasi-psychotic syndromes” (Ramet, 2017a, 9), including victimization and tendency to conceive political developments along conspiratorial lines. Moreover, communist elites in SFRY and their successors in the postYugoslav states have cultivated values which were and remain incompatible with liberal democracy. Ramet singles out two dominant tendencies in the post-Yugoslav value systems. The first is statism, i.e., a propensity to resort to the state when seeking solutions to all economic and social problems; and the second is a tendency to “polarize along the religious (clerical) vs. anti-clerical divide” and to support ethnic minorities and nationalism, invoking complete identification with one’s own nation and intolerance towards all other, particularly neighbouring nations (Ramet, 2017a, 9). However, at the level of elites, the above cultural divides may have not been as destructive as they seem. This is probably true not only in Serbia

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and Montenegro, but also in the country most ravaged by ethnic divisions, i.e., North Macedonia. As Lenard J. Cohen observes (2013, 276): “value conflict between elites in Macedonia does not appear to seriously threaten the routine operation or existence of the country”. And as a Macedonian political analyst Zhidas Daskalovski, writing about the period after the Ohrid Framework Agreement of 2001, argues, there are no …important sections of the Macedonian Albanian community that are ready to take up arms to fight for political issues. Elites among the local Albanians have now all been in power and have accepted the democratic rules of the game. Having access to legitimate means of power and public resources, none of the elites are interested in undertaking (para)military activities against the government. (Daskalovski, 2008, 279)

Further on, as Ramet herself notes, “political culture does not emerge out of nowhere; rather, it is a product of actual conditions in a society, the specific mix of peoples living in the country or migrating to it, and, of course, the active construction, shaping, and promotion of certain values, by the political and economic establishment” (Ramet, 2017a, 29). Milaˇci´c’s View Finally, Milaˇci´c (2022) argues that the reasons why democracy has never been consolidated and is constantly under risk in Serbia, Montenegro and North Macedonia, as well as in Bosnia-Herzegovina have to do with the stateness problem. As Linz and Stepan (1996) argue, for democracy to be founded and then become consolidated, the exercise of national sovereignty over a territory of clearly demarcated state boundaries is necessary. In other words, the legitimacy of the state is a question to be answered prior to the question of legitimacy of a democratic regime in that state. Otherwise, the regime’s stability is undermined from the start of its existence, while the question who has citizenship rights remains unanswered. For Milaˇci´c none of the above countries has decidedly resolved such issues. Montenegro may have acquired its national independence with the national referendum of 2006, but the dividing lines that had emerged at the time, remain relevant today. These are the dividing lines between the Montenegrin national identity and the Serb national identity. In North Macedonia, despite the Ohrid Framework Agreement of 2001

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and the Prespes Agreement of 2018, nation-building is incomplete too. National sovereignty has been challenged from within North Macedonia (by the Albanian minority, about 30% of the total population of North Macedonia); and from outside the country (by neighbouring countries). Meanwhile, North Macedonia’s citizens are divided on the issue whether to build a cross-ethnic political community or one based exclusively on the nation and language of the population’s majority. As for Serbia, while the Kosovo issue is not resolved, it remains unclear who are citizens of Serbian democracy (Milaˇci´c, 2022, 54–55). One could add that today, after the onset of Russia’s war on Ukraine, Serbia is divided between Russophiles and the rest. In brief, the main argument of Milaˇci´c is that—in contrast to other post-Yugoslav successor states—the three countries studied in this book and Bosnia-Herzegovina too encounter open questions of nationbuilding and state-building. These are unresolved state conditions which do not favour democratic consolidation (Milaˇci´c, 2022, 26–28). It could be argued that the argument of Milaˇci´c is much more relevant to Bosnia-Herzegovina than the other three countries. In the former country, the possibility of secession of Republika Srpska cannot be ruled out, while bitter legacies of the war in Bosnia (1992–1995) still divide the population and shape party politics. By contrast, in the three countries under study in this book nation-building and state-building used to be relevant in the past decades, during the wars following the disintegration of Yugoslavia. They are not as crucial anymore. The citizens of the three countries may debate among themselves whose side they are on in regional and international affairs. Yet, there is no evidence that the majority of citizens of Serbia, Montenegro and North Macedonia actively seek another path to nation-building; nor that they wish to see the frontiers of their countries altered. To sum up this section, the four analysts select out different conditions for democratic consolidation in the region under study. Some are structural, domestic and international conditions, while other conditions are related to human agency (political elites, people engaging in political mobilization). Without neglecting these conditions, I would like to offer a complementary view, focusing primarily on the domestic context, closer in terms of time and space to the issue at hand: the backsliding of democracy in still unconsolidated democracies. I suggest that a suitable manner to view and interpret the aforementioned conditions, involving elites, people, and the rise of illiberal and

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anti-democratic values, is to use the kaleidoscope of the three types of state-society relations adopted in this book.

3.7

Conclusions: Beyond Recent Approaches to Democracy’s Backsliding in the Western Balkans After the demise of SFRY in the 1990s, a possible, albeit slow, route to democratic consolidation in the region’s fragile democracies was visible. In the early 2000s the political regimes under study, under external pressure and support by the EU and the USA, had established new democratic institutions (e.g., parliaments, independent authorities) and were ruled by pragmatic leaders who had constructed a profile of the democratic reformer. This trend even included Gruevski in North Macedonia just after he assumed power in 2006 and Ðukanovic in Montenegro after the fall of Miloševi´c (2000) and after Montenegro’s declaration of independence in 2006. However, according to the approaches of Bieber, Dolenec, Ramet and Milaˇci´c, the political regimes under study suffered from the following cumulative characteristics: a weakness of established democratic institutions; the implementation of undemocratic practices by elected rulers, such as control of public and private media; the construction of crises by the rulers which they themselves went on to manage, thus underlining their indispensability; state capture in favour of the governing elite; and also external (primarily EU) legitimacy which the rulers enjoyed, as any opposition to them was translated into opposition to reform and impediment to their countries’ path towards EU accession. Thus, according to one opinion, in the 2010s competitive authoritarian regimes arose in the post-Yugoslav successor states in lieu of consolidated democracies (Bieber, 2018, 343–348; 2020, 10 and 139). This understanding of the causes of democratic backsliding or stagnation is both well-grounded in contemporary theory (Levitsky & Way, 2010) and sensitive to empirical details of variations within the Western Balkans. It bears similarities with the arguments offered by Levitsky and Ziblatt (2018) regarding how elected rulers may purposefully erode even consolidated democracies.

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Yet, there is a larger context which the above authors do not explicitly discuss. This is not the “outer universe” of the specific variety of capitalism, kind of political culture and type of political party system which characterize post-Yugoslav political regimes. It is the more proximate, inner context of state-society relations within which elected rulers engage in their undemocratic practices. Within state-society relations found in each country, rulers gain social and economic support for themselves as politicians, primarily from domestic actors, such business groups, selected social interest groups and a large share of the electorate. Considering this larger context of state-society relations offers a complementary interpretation to the approaches suggested by the four aforementioned authors who have analysed the Western Balkans. My complementary interpretation, which I further discuss in the rest of the book, departs from the observation that the far-less-than democratic regimes of post-Yugoslav successor states have enjoyed a continuing legitimation. Despite the damage they have inflicted on democratic institutions, rulers of Serbia, Montenegro and North Macedonia (particularly in 2006–2017) have shored up support for the way in which they managed the politics and administration of their countries. Table 3.4 offers a glimpse of that support by registering relatively high levels of trust in two political institutions, the government and the parliament. Compared to North Macedonia, which by 2018 had experienced government turnover, in Serbia and Montenegro there was higher trust towards institutions. There was less trust towards the democratic Macedonian institutions, which had changed hands after Gruevski’s fall from power, than towards the Serb and Montenegrin national governments and parliaments, which were still managed in a semi-authoritarian fashion. Table 3.4 Trust in political institutions in Serbia, Montenegro and North Macedonia, 2018

Serbia Montenegro North Macedonia EU-28 average

% have a lot or some confidence in the national government

% have a lot or some confidence in the national parliament

44 48 30 34

33 45 26 34

Source Standard Eurobarometer (2018), no. 89, Spring 2018

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It is difficult to interpret this data outside a context of specific populist, clientelist and corruption-based state-society relations which are conducive to offering support to semi-authoritarian rule and the analysis of which provides a conceptual framework for this book.

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CHAPTER 4

Economy, Culture and the Party System: Preconditions for State-Society Relations Eroding Democracy

In the previous chapter, I argued that adverse economic conditions, political values incompatible with democratic norms and acute political party competition do not in and by themselves necessarily lead to stagnation or the backsliding of democracy. They are not direct causes of the phenomenon under study, primarily because in such explanations there is very little, if any, room for the role played by human agency. When it comes to politics, human agency evolves within state-society relations which, in turn, are not free-floating. State-society relations are dynamic and malleable but need a suitable environment, a set of preconditions out of which to emerge. In other words, state-society relations obviously do not appear by chance, but are linked to specific economic, cultural and political party system settings. For example, social corporatism or neo-corporatism (Katzenstein, 1984; Schmitter, 1974; Schmitter & Lehmbruch, 1979) is a type of state-society relation which involves tripartite coordinated linkages among the state, business and labour. Social corporatism emerged in post-war Central and Northern Europe in a context of economic development brought about by heavy industrialization accomplished by large business companies and monitored by the state and strong labour unions. Norms of collective bargaining, intermediation and consensus were prevalent in the culture of social corporatist national systems. In countries of © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 D. A. Sotiropoulos, The Irregular Pendulum of Democracy, New Perspectives on South-East Europe, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25609-7_4

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the aforesaid European regions, party systems were dominated by centreright or centre-left political parties which, based on their policy choices, converged on the need to coordinate and intervene in the free market and create welfare states. All these preconditions for the emergence of social corporatism as a model of state-society relations are not freely available everywhere. They are bound by historical trajectories and political economy constraints, such as those characterizing Central and Northern Europe in the midtwentieth century. Post-Yugoslav successor states have followed historical trajectories and are bound by constraints vastly different from the above. It is then probable that state-society relations in post-Yugoslav successor states would be of a different type, fitting the economic, cultural and political party preconditions which originated in the period of transition to democracy and the market, i.e., the post-1991 period. The post-1991 preconditions in the Balkans were shaped by war and ethnic conflict and favoured the emergence of the state-society relations of populism, clientelism and corruption. In addition to war and ethnic conflict within and between post-Yugoslav successor states in the 1990s and the early 2000s, one could think of other preconditions that negatively affected democratization. In terms of economy, one precondition was the very uneven, unregulated development of capitalism after 1991, provoking extensive unemployment, poverty and social exclusion. In terms of political culture, we registered aggressive nationalism, intolerance of ethnic, religious and other cultural differences exacerbated by the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. And in terms of political parties, we would add the long-term problems of the fragmentation of party systems and more importantly the domination of national politics by a single formidable winner of elections suppressing political opposition, such as the successor parties of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia in Serbia and Montenegro. In what follows, I turn to each of the above dimensions, namely the economic, the cultural and the party-political dimension. My purpose is to examine the extent to which these dimensions have contributed to the emergence of populism, clientelism and corruption which, in turn, have created a context conducive to the political elites’ engineering of democracy’s backsliding.

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The Socio-Economic Context as Explanatory Framework for Democracy’s Erosion

The primary theme of this book, namely, the strategies of post-Yugoslav governing political elites which evolve within distinct sets of state-society relations, should be interpreted in the context of the socio-economic structures of the countries under study. Additional types of elites (e.g., large business entrepreneurs) and social groups should be included in the analysis of democracy in the post-Yugoslav successor states. The wider context is an economic environment of unrestrained, if not wild, capitalism and a cultural/ideological environment conducive to the backsliding of democracy. To start with, completely unrestrained national and local business interests in conjunction with corruption-happy governing elites have had a corrosive impact on post-Yugoslav political systems. In the first two decades of the twenty-first century, capitalism may have been untamed in many parts of the world, but it was clearly out of control in the postYugoslav successor states. There was an almost completely unregulated variety of capitalism in the Western Balkans (Bartlett, 2007). Due to pressures from the EU (Elbasani, 2013), some state agencies and regulatory authorities entrusted with the task of supervising the free market were established with delay. Market regulators only inched their way into the region’s capitalist economies. In fact, business corporations from the wider region, i.e., from Germany, Italy, Austria and Greece, established their own beachheads in the post-socialist national markets of postYugoslav successor states in the early 1990s. Thus, foreign corporations gradually dominated whole sectors, such as banking and telecommunications. Foreign interests benefited from and contributed to the formation of unregulated capitalism. In the three national cases under study, examples of unregulated capitalism were the construction and energy sectors in North Macedonia, the real estate and tourism sectors on the Montenegrin coast of the Adriatic Sea, and the construction and media sectors in Serbia. In the three countries business companies, active in these and other sectors, have been able to closely liaise with government ministers to have government parliamentary majorities pass legislation fitting to their business endeavours, and to completely dominate competition. To use the concepts of P. A. Hall’s “systematic process analysis” (Hall, 2006, 2016), governing elites engaged in “practices” favourable to business elites.

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Their interaction, in turn, helped to construct “cognitive frameworks” sustaining “networks” of politicians and businessmen impenetrable to competitors of either of these two groups. In other words, there was state capture (Keil, 2018; Richter & Wunsch, 2020) which, as I will argue in Chapter 6, was complemented by the capture of selected business sectors by governing elites. Indeed, concrete business interests preyed on the state in other countries of Southeastern Europe as well (Ganev, 2007). An expected result was that market regulation was not independent of business interests, but rather tailor-made to them. Certainly, it was not regulation suitable to serve the public interest and even when that was the case, there was a glaring policy implementation gap (e.g., regarding conflicts of interest). Global and local private economic influences have been detrimental to the emergence of predictable, let alone free, market competition in the countries under study. Evidently, the economic policy choices of governing elites played an important role as well. Such elites were not the passive recipients of instructions by strong businessmen. Members of governing elites served their own business interests too (Chapter 6 of the book). The lack of regulation and gaps in its implementation create preconditions conducive to the emergence of informal institutional practices, i.e., informal rules known to and practised by business owners and their business associates in government circles (e.g., bribing, the specification of public tenders to suit only one possible bidder, and the like). Consequently, there are negative effects on democracy too, in the sense that policy-making is not transparent, nor does it reflect popular sovereignty. It usually reflects shifting alliances between government and well-connected business circles. To be sure, informal institutional practices and corruption are not traits exclusive to post-Yugoslav successor states today. Capitalism has a corrosive impact on the functioning of advanced democracies too. For instance, American democracy is disproportionately influenced by the size of donations of businessmen to potential candidates for the US presidency. Financial mishandling has also plagued the governing parties of major European democracies, as the scandal over the finances of the Germany’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party in the early 1990s clearly showed. However, in that specific respect, the politics-business nexus in Western Europe or in the USA differs from the type of capitalism predominating in the post-Yugoslav successor states. In the latter a single, usually

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government-connected, business conglomerate may fully control one or more business sectors. Moreover, governing and business elites shape labour relations at will. They feel free to do so in the context of weak labour unions, high unemployment rates and amidst flourishing black markets which the relevant authorities (e.g., public administrative inspectorates, independent regulatory authorities) simply watch grow, incapable or reluctant to intervene. Further on, private enterprises which are not well-connected with the government, may be competing with large state-owned enterprises (SOEs). In cases of law violations by state authorities or legal disputes among business competitors, private enterprises are not necessarily able to find protection by appealing to the rule of law, the implementation of which is erratic in post-Yugoslav successor states (Dolenec, 2013; Kmezi´c, 2017). Law-enforcing institutions (prosecuting and judicial authorities) are heavily influenced by the government which, in turn, may cater to selectively favoured business interests. These economic preconditions have evolved over time, as I explain in the next section. The Macro-Economic and Fiscal Context of West Balkan Democracies Over the past 15 years, the economic framework within which the political interests of post-Yugoslav governments and domestic and foreign business interests evolved was the context the global financial crisis, set off in 2008, and the crisis’ aftermath. Overall, Southeast European economies grew very little in the wake of the crisis (Table 4.1). The only exceptions to this pattern were Albania and Kosovo. The Albanian economy relied a lot on transmittances sent back home by Albanian migrants working abroad and did not suffer as much from the crisis. The Kosovar economy, on the other hand, barely survived and continues to survive on foreign economic life support. West Balkan economies grew faster in the second half of the decade of the 2010s, in 2014–2019. Then, they too were hit by the negative economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, which was still going on in 2021–2022. In 2021, the economies of Serbia, Montenegro and North Macedonia did not grow but, compared to the previous year, receded by −0.9, −15.3 and −6.1%, respectively (IMF, 2022). Under these circumstances, the evolution of these three economies of the region was unpredictable even in the short run, let alone for the rest of the 2020s.

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Table 4.1 Economic growth and public debt in Southeastern Europe, 2009– 2019 % GDP growth

North Macedonia Montenegro Serbia Kosovo Croatia Bosnia-Herzegovina Albania Bulgaria Romania

General Government Gross Debt as % of GDP

(2009–2014 av.)

(2015–2019 av.)

(2020)

1.8 0.4 −0.3 3.8 −2.2 0.1 2.4 0.1 0.1

2.9 4.0 3.2 4.9 3.2 5.3 3.1 3.1 4.7

51.9 107.3 57.9 22.5 87.3 36.5 36.5 23.3 46.6

Source Data on GDP growth in Western Balkans is drawn from the Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies (WIIW), as published in Regional Cooperation Council (2015), Balkan Barometer 2015, Sarajevo, Table 1, p. 17. Data for GDP growth in 2015–2019 and on public debt for 2020 is drawn from International Monetary Fund, World Economic Outlook Database, April 2022

Meanwhile, compared to other Southeast European countries, Croatia, Albania and above all, Montenegro, have incurred the largest public debts (national debts over 60% of the GDP). As Table 4.1 shows, the worst performer in the 2009–2014 period was Croatia, which on average experienced negative economic growth. By contrast, the best performer was Northern Macedonia. Its economy grew, owing to attractive conditions for foreign investment, such as a flat tax of 10% for businesses, low insurance contributions for employers and the very low cost of labour: in 2014 the average monthly salary in that country was 352 euros (Mileki´c, 2014), the lowest in the Western Balkans. Extremely low salaries obviously spur economic insecurity. This, in turn, fuels a tendency on the part of lowly salaried strata, in the absence of strong labour unions, to relate to the state in populist and clientelist terms (Chapters 5 and 6 of the book). In detail, after a sharp decline in 2008–2009 which coincided with the global financial crisis, annual economic growth in North Macedonia picked up in 2010, only to decline again in the following two years and increase in 2013–2014. The annual rate of growth reached 3.8% in 2014 over the previous year, a level far above that of the rest of West

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Balkan countries, but much lower than North Macedonia’s own impressive growth in 2004–2007. In that short period, in that country economic growth ranged between 4.7% and 6.5%. The North Macedonian government’s creating of a business-friendly environment was matched with a skeletal welfare state which has proven unable to alleviate the negative effects of recurring large-scale unemployment. In other words, the North Macedonian government’s economic policy incited economic growth, but also provoked extensive poverty and social exclusion. As it will be shown in the last part of this chapter, the extent of such social problems was quite large. By contrast, Serbia, which had also experienced very high levels of growth in 2002 (7.1%) and in 2004 (9%), experienced economic decline after 2009. It reached a negative rate of growth in 2012 (−1.0%) and in 2014 (−1.8%). However, overall, the Serbian economy abruptly shifted from recession to growth and back within a relatively short time span (2009–2014). Sharp shifts in Serbia’s economic performance, combined with a large, relatively poor agricultural force and negligence of the country’s social problems by successive governments, were eventually reflected in negative trends in income inequality, poverty and social exclusion, analysed further on in this chapter. A similarly uneven growth trajectory is evident in the case of Montenegro. Its annual economic growth rose from 1.1% in 2001 to 10.7% in 2007, only to fall to a negative −5.7% in 2009. Economic growth continued to rise and fall again between 2010 and 2014, when it ranged between −2.7% and +3.5%. In other words, the global financial crisis, combined with domestic economic imbalances, negatively affected all three countries in 2007– 2009. A period of unstable growth followed in 2010–2012, and from then on North Macedonia performed better than Serbia and Montenegro and in fact much better than all the rest of West Balkan economies. Moreover, with the exceptions of Kosovo and Bosnia-Herzegovina, in the early 2010s all West Balkan countries incurred mounting public debts over time. In 2016, the public debt was highest in Croatia (82% of the GDP in Croatia) and lowest in North Macedonia (40% of the GDP). By 2020, things had changed. Montenegro’s public debt surpassed 100% of its GDP (Table 4.1). However, the public debt in Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina (as well as in Bulgaria and Romania) has remained at comparatively low levels (Table 4.1).

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Overall, in terms of overtime economic growth before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, North Macedonia lagged behind Montenegro and Serbia. Moreover, as indicated further below, in terms of per capita income, North Macedonia remained a relatively poor country, ravaged by low per capita income and high unemployment. Incomes and Labour Market Context In almost all West Balkan countries, apart from Croatia, average incomes remain low. By contrast, unemployment is persistently high (Tables 4.2, 4.3 and 4.4). West Balkan countries experienced increases in per capita income over time in 2005–2021. Overall, however, except for Croatia, these countries are still lagging behind Bulgaria and Romania (the economic laggards of the EU in terms of per capita income). As far as the three countries under study are concerned, Montenegrins have higher average income than North Macedonians and Serbians, but of course we must consider that in all these countries, there is a large informal economy. Notably, North Macedonians, along with Kosovars and Albanians, are on the average the poorest nation in the Western Balkans. What is more, indicators such as those shown in Table 4.2, hide large income disparities and labour market divisions. This is why such trends should be placed in the wider context of the capitalist economy of the Western Balkans. Table 4.2 Gross National Income per capita (Atlas method, current US $) in Southeastern Europe (World Bank data)

Albania Bosnia–Herzegovina Croatia Kosovo Montenegro North Macedonia Serbia Bulgaria Romania

2005

2009

2015

2019

2021

2,610 3,000 9,630 2,600 3,600 2,840 3,430 3,640 3,920

3,880 4,700 13,720 3,240 6,440 4,400 5,520 6,060 8,330

4,290 4,680 12,690 3,950 7,240 5,110 5,500 7,220 9,500

5,240 6,150 14,910 4,640 9,010 5,910 7,020 9,410 12,630

6,110 6,770 17,150 4,970 9,300 6,130 8,440 10,720 14,170

Source World Bank (2022a), “GNI per capita-Atlas method- current US$”, https://data.worldbank. org/indicator/ny.gnp.pcap.cd, last accessed on 9 August 2022

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Table 4.3 Labour Market Data on Three Post-Yugoslav Successor States, age group 15–64, % (2015) in EU Perspective

Activity rate Total unemployment rate (2015) Long-term unemployment Youth (15–24) % employed in the informal sector

Serbia

Montenegro

North Macedonia

EU-28

63.7 18.7

62.6 17.3

64.9 25.1

72.5 9.5

64.5 43.3 20.4

76.7 37.6 22.3

81.6 47.3 19.2

48.1 20.3 n.a

Source European Commission (2017, 44) for total unemployment rate; and Jusi´c (2018, 28, Figs. 1 and 2, based on Labour Force Surveys of 2015). Data for the informal sector are for 2016, Jusi´c (2018, 29)

Table 4.4 Unemployment rate in the Southeastern Europe during and after the economic crisis, 2009–2019

North Macedonia Montenegro Serbia Kosovo Croatia Bosnia-Herzegovina Albania Bulgaria Romania

(2009–2014, % average)

(2015–2019, % average)

30.6 19.5 20.3 37.7 14.1 27.0 14.8 10.9 7.2

22.0 18.9 13.9 … 12.4 21.5 13.7 6.5 5.1

Source For the first period (2009–2014), data on unemployment in Western Balkans is drawn on the Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies (WIIW), as published in Regional Cooperation Council (2015), Table 2, p. 18. For the second period (2015–2019), data is drawn on Focus Economics (2022), available at https://www.focus-economics.com/regions/south-eastern-europe, last accessed on 9 August 2022. For both periods, data on unemployment in Bulgaria and Romania is drawn on the World Bank Database (World Bank, 2022b)

Serbian, Montenegrin and North Macedonian capitalism is characterized by pockets of often externally financed industrial activity, coupled with low-productivity agriculture and an extensive public-sector based service sector. Generally speaking, some West Balkan countries retain rather large-sized agricultural sectors, while in all countries of the region most of the people who are employed work in the services. Serbia is—after

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Bosnia-Herzegovina—the West Balkan country with the largest agricultural force (21% of total employment), while Montenegro has the smallest such force (6% of the total; Eurostat data). Montenegro also has the smallest industrial force (18% of total employment), whereas in North Macedonia 30% of all employed persons work in industry, a percentage share matched only by Bosnia-Herzegovina. In all these cases, the remaining share of total employment is attached to the service sector (Eurostat data). In the 2010s the three countries suffered from relatively high total unemployment rates. In particular, in North Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia there were very high youth, female and long-term unemployment rates, low women’s participation in the labour force and large-scale employment in the informal sector compared to the EU-28 average (Table 4.3). Unemployment continued to be high in the Western Balkans throughout the 2010s (Table 4.4 and World Bank, 2022b). Current problems with unemployment in the countries under study must be seen in the historical perspective of the abrupt transition to the market economy since 1991 and the Yugoslav wars that followed, as well as in the perspective of the post-2008 economic crisis. After 1991 economic growth dipped for a long period, causing chronic unemployment. To exaggerate, there were almost no jobs in the private sector. From 2006, a year coinciding with the rise of VMRO-DPMNE to power in North Macedonia, unemployment started falling in that country. In fact, unemployment declined spectacularly from 37% in 2005 to 28% in 2014. By contrast, in Serbia, the unemployment rate fell for a short while from 21% to 14% in 2007–2009. It then increased dramatically, reaching 24% in 2012 and 19% in 2015 (Regional Cooperation Council, 2015, 18). Montenegro never experienced such sharp declines and increases. Its unemployment rate has hovered around 19–21% since 2001 but fell to 17% in 2015 (Table 4.3). Thus, North Macedonia has the largest unemployment rate among the three countries under study (Table 4.4). A point to retain for the analysis of democracy’s erosion is that in the context of a meagre welfare state, there was little social protection that job seekers could hope to obtain from the state. In all three countries, the only shield from such shifts and turns of employment opportunities in the private sector was to seek jobs in the public sector. Relations between people of working age groups and the state were obviously shaped by patterns of extensive

4

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and chronic unemployment. Such an unpredictable situation in the labour market nurtured clientelist state-society relations. Income Inequality, Poverty and Social Exclusion Such negative labour market patterns are in turn associated with phenomena of high-income inequality and poverty (Table 4.5). While— compared to EU-28—individual income is comparatively low, there are also flagrant income inequalities and extensive poverty and social exclusion in the post-Yugoslav successor states. While—as Table 4.5 shows—North Macedonia performs worse than Serbia in terms of poverty and social exclusion, Serbia has undergone a rapid process of worsening inequality and poverty (Tables 4.6 and 4.7). While in North Macedonia, there is improvement over time in terms of the extent of income inequality, poverty and social exclusion, the reverse holds for Serbia. Table 4.5 Income inequality and poverty in the three post-Yugoslav successor states in comparative perspective Serbia GINI coefficient of equalized disposable income after social transfers (2017) S80/S20 Income Share Ratio (2015) % at risk of poverty or social exclusion (2016)

37.8

Montenegro

North Macedonia

EU-28

32.4

31.0

31.9

9.0

n.a

6.6

4.1

38.7

n.a

41.1

23.5

Sources World Atlas Poorest Countries 2016 and Eurostat (https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/data/dat abase). For Montenegro’s GINI coefficient (2014), the source is Index Mundi, https://www.indexm undi.com/facts/montenegro/indicator/SI.POV.GINI, last accessed on 19 November 2020

Table 4.6 Evolution of income inequality in Serbia and North Macedonia, S80/S20, 2013–2016 in EU perspective

Year

North Macedonia

Serbia

EU-28

2013 2014 2015 2016

8.4 7.2 6.6 6.6

8.6 9.8 9.0 9.7

5.0 5.2 5.2 5.0

Source Jusi´c (2018, 18), Fig. 3.3. No data for Montenegro

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Table 4.7 Evolution of poverty ratio at national poverty lines (% of Population) in Serbia and North Macedonia, 2012–2015

Year

North Macedonia

2012 2013 2014 2015

26.2 24.2 22.1 n.a

Serbia 24.5 25.4 25.4 25.5

Source Jusi´c (2018, 19), Fig. 3.5. No data for Montenegro

This is an outcome which cannot be fully attributed to the economic destruction following Serbian involvement in the wars in BosniaHerzegovina (1992–1995) and Kosovo (1999) and the long and tortuous road of Serbia to economic development since then. It must also be attributed to the specific asymmetries of economic power which are observed in Serbia (Richter & Wunsch, 2020), regardless of which political party or coalition of parties is in government. Economic power holders improve on their finances through under-the-table business deals with corrupt government officials. The other social groups, e.g., middleand low-income groups and outsiders of the labour market, are exposed to economic risks and turn to the state for jobs and social assistance benefits. As expected, there are also legacies of favouritism in the job environment, including recruitment to public sector jobs. Overview of the Social and Economic Context of Post-Yugoslav Successor States In view of the above, it seems that the economies of post-Yugoslav successor states suffer from economic stagnation and lack of competitiveness, while comparatively acute income inequality and unemployment characterize all post-Yugoslav societies. Comparing the three countries, it turns out that, while North Macedonia was performing comparatively well in the first half of the 2010s in terms of growth, it was simultaneously the most unequal society as far as income distribution and size of unemployment were concerned. In the second half of the same decade, the country’s economic growth lagged behind that of other West Balkan democracies. Moreover, its public debt almost doubled between 2008 and 2016, when it increased from 20.6 to 39.5% of the GDP (IMF World Economic Database) and by 2020 it had surpassed the 50% threshold (Table 4.1).

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Serbia faced and continues to face problems of economic decline, as data on growth, public debt and unemployment indicate. Serbia’s economic decline in the second half of the 2000s and the first half of 2010s can only be compared to the very problematic decline of Croatia in the same time period. Furthermore, Serbia’s public debt soared from 32.4% to 73.1% of the GDP between 2007 and 2016 (but fell later on; Table 4.1). Finally, Montenegro is characterized by relative economic stagnation and most importantly by fiscal deterioration, as its public debt more than doubled between 2007 and 2016, when it rose from 27.5% to 66.4% of the GDP (IMF data). By 2020, the country’s public debt had risen to over 107% (Table 4.1). Essentially, in North Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia in the early 2010s, large segments of the population experienced unemployment. Naturally, this trend negatively affected the social class structure of these countries. Given the acute levels of income inequality, the middle class, a typical social carrier of liberal democratic ideas, was rather small in size and mostly employed in the public sector. These were negative outcomes of the preceding global financial crisis of the late 2000s as well as longer-term trends dating back to the fall of state socialism in the region. Indeed, the large-scale social transformations that took place in the post-Yugoslav successor states in the 2000s had already emerged in the decade of the 1990s. Some transformations were triggered by the impact of global and European economic trends on the region of Western Balkans. As the economic crisis petered out in the early 2010, negative shifts marked the rate of unemployment and large-scale income inequalities. An argument could be made that economies which are on the decline are more prone to experience an erosion of democracy. However, in the 2010s, countries as varied as Turkey, India, Brazil, Hungary and Poland, all major market economies, were also examples of the phenomenon of backsliding democracies. These countries did not encounter the persistent and deep economic problems the three post-Yugoslav democracies did for three decades (1990–2020). In other words, accounting for the backsliding of democracy through an analysis focusing on economic performance or the type of capitalism in a country is not a promising route to take. It does not adequately explain democracy’s erosion. If that were the case, then democracy would backslide every time capitalism became untamed and when and

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where economic conditions worsened. But this would be a reductionist type of argument. It can be countered by historical evidence pointing to the survival of democracy during periods of grave economic crisis. For instance, many West European and North European democracies during various economic crises of the nineteenth and twenty centuries did not break down or even backslide. Other such countries, however, did experience democratic breakdown under severe economic crises. In view of the above, we can hypothesize that in post-Yugoslav successor states, the erosion of democracy is not necessarily related to national economic performance or to a certain threshold of adverse living conditions, below which democratic institutions start crumbling. Democratic regimes in Post-Yugoslavia may perform very unevenly, but observed declines in democratic performance are not necessarily related to negative developments in the national economy and labour market.

4.2 The Cultural and Ideological Context as Explanatory Framework for Democracy’s Erosion According to Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan (1996, 17 and 25), democratization is not easy, if not one but several “subjective ideas” of the nation are diffused among residents of a state. Post-Yugoslav successor states are typical examples of states in which national identity is contested. While the contestation of national identity is a major factor impeding democratization, it may not be as useful as analytical tool when it comes to explaining democratic erosion. To start with, it is true that the development of democracy becomes very problematic if instead of accommodation, there is neglect of the interests and demands of different ethnic groups which live side by side in the same national territory. Neglect of such issues may provoke political instability and even cause violence. Indeed, after 1991, post-Yugoslav successor states underwent a “long period of unsettled elements in their statehood”, a problem negatively affecting democracy (Stojanova, 2013, 58 and 63). Moreover, regarding the cultural and ideological context, the three post-Yugoslav successor states lack a home-grown political vision of the future among political elites. Such a vision, if it exists in the region today, is imported from abroad and consists of a repertoire of repeating the

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themes of Europeanization and modernization in a ritual-like manner. Moreover, governing elites in the post-Yugoslav successor states cannot fall back to the (by now defunct) state socialist ideology of the pre-1989 period. Governing elites in the region are pushed in opposite directions. They are pulled, first, by pressures from below, often rekindled by mass media, to subscribe to nationalist, populist and anti-liberal projects and, second, by pressures from the EU and International Financial Institutions (IFIs) to adopt recognizable liberal democratic and pro-market policies. Thus, post-Yugoslav governing elites stand at the crossroads of a historically contested past and an uncertain future of integration into the EU. The EU and Mixed Political Ideologies in the Region Regarding the role of the EU, a caveat is necessary at this point. The EU, when facing a dilemma to press for further democratization or for political stability (i.e., avoidance of further wars among Balkan countries, control of ethnic strife within these countries), has consistently opted for promoting stability (Chapter 3). This has occurred even at the expense of further democratization. Domestic and international observers of Balkan politics have labelled this trend as “stabilitocracy” (Bieber, 2018; Pavlovic, 2016, 2017). In the meantime, the integration of post-Yugoslav successor states into the EU has also been damaged by the propensity of these countries’ governing elites to oscillate between embarking on the road to Europe and alighting from the EU’s slowly moving carriage, at unpredictable stops. In fact, in their publicly expressed opinions, these elites span the whole range from xenophobic, nationalist, and populist discourse all the way to pro-EU rhetoric. A typical example is the shift of a foremost nationalist Serb politician and former cadre of the Miloševi´c regime, Tomislav Nikoli´c, to a proEU stance after he abandoned the ultra-nationalist Serb Radical Party (SRS) and launched the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) along with Vuˇci´c in 2008. This was a pro-European shift which was later reversed by the SNS government’s populism and by repeated overtures to the Russian President Putin at moments of tension between Russia and the EU (Bechev, 2017). The SNS oscillated between nationalist populism and pro-Europeanism.

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Admittedly, populism has become a pan-European phenomenon (Kriesi & Pappas, 2016). Moreover, in the 2010s, elites of EU Member States managed economic problems in a disturbing and problematic fashion by mixing large doses of neoliberalism with what is left of a skeletal European Social Model. European elites today also sometimes mishandle human rights and security issues, as they find it difficult to strike a balance between cosmopolitanism and defensive measures against refugees and immigrants, a balance between freedoms and counterterrorism and a balance between human rights and necessary restrictions in the context of public health measures to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet, the cognitive framework of post-Yugoslav political elites is more complicated than that. There is an even more problematic situation when it comes to the elites of post-Yugoslav unconsolidated democracies. It is a situation reflected in these elites’ resorting to nationalism and populism; their lack of a political vision of how to steer their countries; and the capturing of policy sectors with the help of favoured businessmen. Further on, public opinion in the post-Yugoslav successor states presents an equally tenuous mix of norms and values, resulting from the historical legacies of Yugoslav socialism and the dissolution of the SFRY. Under Yugoslav state socialism, a culture of paternalism by Tito and subjugation of citizens to Tito’s party fostered passive acceptance of the socialist regime. Before collapsing, the Yugoslav socialist regime reinforced ethnic nationalism and after 1991, the newly emerging states did not come to terms with their own past. Consequently, post-socialist societies were soon deeply divided along ethnic lines (Calu, 2013, 154). Indeed, in the post-Yugoslav successor states democratic values are mixed with undemocratic and illiberal ones (Cohen, 2013, 267–271, 275–277 and 280–285). As Table 4.8 shows, in 2016 respondents in North Macedonia and Montenegro showed the largest support for democracy (as contrasted to authoritarianism), while respondents in Serbia showed the smallest support for democracy (the rest were indifferent to this issue or answered that under some circumstances, they would prefer authoritarianism). Generally, support for democracy in the region fell in 2016 compared to 2006, with the exception of North Macedonia, where support for democracy increased. Over time, there was more support for democracy in the mid-2000s, relative to the period of the 1990s and the early 2000s (Cohen, 2013, 270). While there is general support for democracy—at least when compared to authoritarianism—people still define themselves in terms of

4

Table 4.8 Support for democracy in the Western Balkans (% share of survey respondents, 2006 and 2016)

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121

Support Democracy

Albania Bosnia-Herzegovina Croatia North Macedonia Montenegro Serbia

2006 (%)

2016 (%)

66 61 55 47 73 51

51 46 49 72 58 38

Sources Cohen (2013, 268), based in EBRD’s Life in Transition Survey of 2006 and EBRD (2016)—European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, “The Life in Transition (liTS) Survey: A Decade of Measuring Transition”, available at https://voxeu. org/article/lits-survey-decade-measuring-transition, last accessed on 9 August 2022

their ethnic rather than their citizenship identity. In addition, there is little tolerance towards ethnic, sexual or other minorities and strong rulers are preferred over democratic institutions, such as national parliaments (Cohen, 2013). How could we explain this uncomfortable mix of political and social values? In Serbia in the 2000s this set of contradictory opinions, with people supporting democracy while simultaneously espousing illiberal values, probably reflected a “fundamental division between those who advocated various shades of conservatism and nationalism on the one side, and those supporting liberal notions and more tolerance in society on the other” (Cohen, 2013, 281). For the better part of the 2000s, Serbia manifested “a confusion of values or the persistence of elite and mass perspectives both strongly opposed to, and supportive of, the development of civic and European values in the country” (Cohen, 2013, 282). In Montenegro, since the late 1990s the reorientation of the political elites towards the West contributed to the combination of forces supporting civic values with nationalist forces which were seeking Montenegro’s independence from Serbia (Cohen, 2013, 285). National cohesion was achieved by placing emphasis on a distinct Montenegrin ethnic identity. In North Macedonia, ethnic rather than civic identities prevail. This goes hand in hand with mistrust of the two largest ethnic communities

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towards one another and mistrust towards the politicians of the other side. Yet, there is an “elite consensus on democratic values within and across ethnic lines” (Cohen, 2013, 277). Further on, in terms of political culture, the societies under study were and still are segmented along ethnic cleavages which are superimposed on social class and occupational cleavages. In other words, there are cleavages along ethno-nationalist lines. Typical examples are the cleavage between Macedonians and Albanians in North Macedonia and the cleavage between Serb and Montenegrin citizens of Montenegro. This was a cleavage reinforced by the referendum launched in that country in 2006 on the question of its independence from the pre-existing union of Serbia and Montenegro and further strengthened in 2020 with the mobilization of the Serb Orthodox Church in Montenegro against the law of the DPS that affected church assets. To the all-pervasive identification of voters with ethnic groups, we must add ideological anchors typical of the contemporary North Macedonian, Serb and Montenegrin societies. These include the belief that one’s nation is constantly being attacked by foreigners and a diffuse sense of victimhood; loyalty to one’s extended family; the weak roots of individualism; the long-term influence of Christian Orthodox religion (Ramet, 2006, 95–99 and 583; Roberts, 2007, 429 and 471–472); legacies of favouritism in local communities and job markets; legacies of circumventing the law and resistance to authority; and long-term legacies of trusting unaccountable institutions (e.g., the church, the army, the police, etc.) more than accountable ones (e.g., the parliament or the government), as attitudinal survey research has shown (Mungiu-Pippidi, 2005; Sotiropoulos, 2005). However, varieties and combinations of these ideological anchors can be found in other European democracies which do not experience a backsliding of democracy. In other words, the ideological context does not suffice to explain why democracy regresses in the countries in which it is observed.

4.3

The Political Party System as an Explanatory Framework for Democracy’s Erosion

Political apathy and cynicism today in post-Yugoslav successor states may be associated with a very negative view of political parties. Typically, in this line of thinking, parties and the party system are blamed for democracy’s

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erosion. It is assumed that as a rule, political parties aim to exploit democratic institutions and processes (e.g., national elections, the parliament) to ascend to and prolong their term in government as well as to provide opportunities for the personal enrichment of politicians. In short, one may argue that political parties engage in uses and abuses of democracy to the point of risking democracy’s survival. Yet, as Grzymala-Busse has argued in her work on post-communist and more generally transitional democracies, it is probably irrational to interpret the role of parties along these lines. Indeed, evidence from postcommunist Europe points to other conclusions (Grzymala-Busse, 2007). According to her analysis, political parties in power in post-communist Europe did not unavoidably raid the resources of the states which they governed. First, they strived to achieve democratic consolidation, in order to avoid risking their own survival (Grzymala-Busse, 2007, 6–7). And second, given that such parties needed resources to fight costly electoral campaigns, they preyed on the state only to the extent that they did not encounter resistance from opposition parties. If parties in government faced strong enough opposition from other parties, then they were prevented from exploiting state resources. Thus, whether state exploitation by incumbent parties bore fruits or not depended on the robustness of electoral competition. On these grounds, there was more extensive state exploitation in post-communist systems where party competition was weak, such as Bulgaria, Lithuania, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, than in the rest of Central Eastern European countries (Grzymala-Busse, 2007, 4–5 and 10–12). While this argument is correct, one may think of the phenomenon of low party competition as a result rather than a cause of higher state exploitation. In the cases of Serbia, North Macedonia, and Montenegro, we encounter party systems in which for long periods of time (Serbia since 2012, North Macedonia in 2006–2016 and Montenegro in 1991– 2020) the opposition was either coopted into the governing coalition (e.g., Albanian parties in North Macedonia) or extremely fragmented (e.g., in Montenegro and Serbia). In such cases, as will be shown in Chapters 8, 9 and 10 of this book, there was a long-term and consistent strategy of governing parties to suppress opposition. The governing party achieved this through the use of numerous mechanisms, including attacks by government-controlled mass media against the opposition, biased implementation of anti-corruption policy measures so as to only target

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opposition politicians and anti-government critics, and even violence against the government’s opponents. As Table 4.9 shows, the governing party or governing coalition in the three countries was consistently able to predominate in successive legislative elections for a very long period. The most extreme cases were the victory of the DPS party over the second largest party in the Montenegrin parliamentary elections of 2009 (with a victory margin of 35 percentage points) and the victory of the SNS party over the second largest party in the Serbian elections of 2016 (with a victory margin of 37 percentage points). Compared to these two parties, the winner of all elections in North Macedonia in 2006–2014 was not as strong vis-à-vis its competitors, a pattern that partly explains the government change in that country in 2017 (Chapter 11). In Serbia and Montenegro, the winner of elections used a battery of strategies to stifle opposition and control all democratic institutions, not only on the eve of elections, but long before. Since the opposition had been cornered in such a manner, electoral competition became anemic. After having rendered the opposition fragmented and weak, the governing party (or governing coalition) felt free to let democracy backslide, short of overthrowing democracy altogether. To substantiate this point, it is useful to briefly analyse the party systems of the three countries under study. In Serbia, Montenegro and— less so—North Macedonia (until 2017), the party system was a variety of the dominant or predominant party system. This is a system in which a party constantly wins successive elections, often by a margin of 10% or more over the party which comes second (Sartori, 2005; see also Table 4.9). The fact that a party is significantly stronger than all other parties is further shown by the fact that the former wins many elections in a row and forms single-party majoritarian governments or is the major coalition partner in all governments over a long period of time. The party systems of the three countries reflected deep cleavages which were not the typically social, i.e., class-based, age group-based or rural– urban cleavages usually encountered in Western democracies. Rather, the cleavages, which were predominant and to an extent were reflected in divisions within the party system, sprang from differences over national sovereignty issues and issues of a country’s foreign policy orientation and position in regional disputes. In detail, in Montenegro, the party system in the 2000s reflected a split between the pro-Serb elements of the population and the rest who

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Table 4.9 Dominant parties in the party systems of North Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia in 2006–2022 (A) Country

(B) Election year

(C) Share of total votes won by the party coming 1st in parliamentary elections (%)

(D) Share of total seats won by the party coming 2nd in parliamentary elections

(C)–(D)

2006 2009 2012 2016 2020

48.6 51.9 45.6 41.4 35.1

SL party, 16.7% SNP party, 16.8% DF party, 22.8% DF party, 20.3% DF party, 32.6%

31.9 35.1 22.8 21.1 2.5%

2006

32.5

9.2

2008

48.8

2011

40

2014

44.5

2016

39.4

2020

SDSM: 35.9

SDSM party, 23.3% SDSM party, 23.6% SDSM party, 32.8% SDSM party, 26.2% SDSM party, 37.9% VMRO: 34.6%

2012

24.1

2

2014

48.5

2016

48.4

2020

60.7

2022

44.3

DS party and allies, 22.1% SPS party and allies, 13.4% SPS party and allies, 11% Most opposition parties abstained from the elections Opposition coalition “United for the victory of Serbia”, 15.2%

Montenegro, DPS party Parliamentary elections

North Macedonia, VMRO-DPMNE party Parliamentary elections

Serbia, SNS party Parliamentary elections

25.2 7.8 18.3 1.5 1.3% (in favor of SDSM)

35.1 37.4 –

29.1

Source Author’s own calculation based on official electoral results. In this table, the first election for each country is the election year in which the noted political party (DPS, VMRO-DPMNE and SNS) won the first in a sequence of successive elections. The VMRO-DPME party claimed to have won the elections of 2014 in North Macedonia, but its victory was immediately disputed by the domestic opposition and international observers. The VMRO-DPMNE lingered on in government until January 2016. The DPS party in Montenegro had won all elections prior to 2006 too, but in Table 4.10 only the first post-independence (i.e., post-2006) elections are mentioned. The SNS party in Serbia split off from the SRS and first participated alone in national parliamentary elections in 2012

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wanted independence from Serbia, which was eventually attained through a national referendum in 2006. The DPS has benefited from its gradual detachment from the Miloševi´c regime in the 1990s and its support for national independence in the 2000s. The DPS benefited electorally from its identification with the vote in favour of Montenegro’s national independence which prevailed in the referendum. The parties which in the referendum had supported the opposite, that is, non-independence (e.g., the Serb List, SL, party), did not fare well in the elections of the second half of the 2000s and soon vanished. Political cleavages in Montenegro in the 2010s were drawn along similar lines. The DPS adopted a pro-NATO and pro-EU stance and wanted to fully integrate Montenegro in Western organizations. Once again, the party benefited from and contributed to the post-2006 proWestern hegemonic ideological current in Montenegro. Parties of the opposition (e.g., the DF—Democratic Front) appealed to anti-Western and pro-Russian elements in the population but had little success throughout the 2010s (however, the DF increased its electoral influence in 2020). In North Macedonia, the VMRO-DPMNE party benefited from the declining popularity of the SDSM party in the mid-2000s. The latter was the heir to the League of Communists of Yugoslavia in Macedonia, which had been the protagonist of the peaceful emergence of the “Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia” (FYROM) as a new state after 1991, almost unscathed by the wars over the dissolution of Yugoslavia (1992– 1995). The VMRO-DPMNE was a centre-right party, more nationalist than anything else, which in successive elections benefited from and contributed to a prevalent nationalist ideology in the country. That ideology had been fuelled by the periodic tensions between Macedonians and Albanians since 1991 and the Macedonian name dispute with Greece, which lasted for 28 years (1991–2019). Such challenges, around which the VMRO-DPMNE attracted many votes, had become more acute due to the Albanian uprising of 2001 (which led to the Ohrid Framework Agreement of the same year) and the rejection of North Macedonia’s petition to join NATO in 2008 upon the insistence of Greece, as the name dispute had not been solved. Importantly, the Albanian-speaking segment of North Macedonia’s population (around 25% of the total; Ramet, 2017, 300) had created its

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own smaller-scale party system, in which 2 or 3 personalistic, patronagedriven Albanian parties jockeyed for positions and joined either of the two aforementioned Macedonian parties in power in various party coalitions. Thus, in contrast to the cases of Serbia and Montenegro, the party system of North Macedonia was only to some extent dominated by one party, the VMRO-DPMNE. Yet the latter party, for as long as it lasted in power, resorted to the full repertoire of strategies which let unconsolidated democracy slide further downhill. In Serbia, the SNS party has been in government since 2012, in coalition primarily with the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS, the former party of Miloševiˇc). In Montenegro, the DPS party (also heir to the League of Communists) has been the governing party for decades. And in Macedonia, the VMRO-DPMNE-headed coalition governments with Albanian parties, representing the Albanian minority, in 2006–2017. In all three countries and particularly so in Serbia and Montenegro, the parliamentary opposition was divided, primarily owing to personality clashes among party leaders. Moreover, parliamentary opposition was discredited, as voters had associated the term in power of the centre-left DS party in Serbia or the SDSM party in Macedonia with corruption and neoliberal policies. Equally discredited were labour unions, which were associated with support to the communist regimes of these countries up to 1989. One may argue that under those circumstances, predominant (or dominant) party systems may seem like a natural “habitat” for the backsliding of democracy. It is difficult to imagine a government-engineered erosion of democracy without a strong party in government which puts itself to that destructive task. Yet, the existence of such a party does not suffice as an explanation. It would be a necessary but not sufficient condition for the backsliding or stagnation of democracy. Moreover, in 2017 in North Macedonia and in 2020 in Montenegro, new governing coalitions consisting of parties of the opposition came to power. The aforementioned dominant parties, i.e., the VMRO-DFMNE in the former country and the DPS in the latter, were now in the opposition. In other words, the type of party system did not preclude such a pro-democratic development. Yet, the fall of these dominant parties from power did not lead to a reversal of backsliding. The new governing coalitions did not even start to deconstruct the state-society relations which had nurtured democracy’s erosion. In view of the above, in order to explain democracy’s erosion, one may better look, first, at a combination of long-term state-society relations which are rather inhospitable to

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democracy and, second, to concrete, anti-democratic governing party strategies embedded in such relations (Chapters 8, 9, and 10).

4.4

Conclusions

To sum up this chapter, there are preconditions which create the background for specific state-society relations to emerge. These are economic, cultural/ideological and political party-related preconditions in which three kinds of state-society relations, i.e., populism, clientelism and corruption, are embedded. First, unpredictable shifts and turns in economic growth, persistent unemployment, poverty and social exclusion predispose middle- and low-income strata as well as labour market outsiders to weave relations of clientelism with the state and to subscribe to populist discourse. Economic hardship and—particularly so—abrupt income decline in an environment in which foreign economic actors are visible offer a background in which populist state-society relations may emerge. In such a context, vulnerable social groups respond approvingly to populist political discourse and populist governing policies. Second, dominant cultural patterns also help to forge populist and clientelist relations between state and society. Persisting patterns of nationalism, hostility towards neighbouring nation-states, intolerance towards ethnic and religious minorities and xenophobia, as well as mixed feelings towards the West (NATO and the EU, which have also offered mixed signals to the region’s populations and governments, are widespread in the post-Yugoslav successor states. Such patterns facilitate the rise of a populist understanding of domestic politics and foreign affairs. Moreover, legacies of unregulated capitalist development, including the lack of market regulation and the lack of implementation of regulatory policies, allow for the weaving of informal ties between business entrepreneurs and government officials. In turn, this tendency fosters a third type of state-society relation, namely corruption. Finally, in postYugoslav successor states the type of party system does not suffice to explain the erosion of democracy. In short, none of these preconditions (the structure of the economy and the labour market, political culture, political party system) alone or in combination seem to fully explain the backsliding trends in the frail democratic regimes of post-Yugoslav successor states. There is a missing link

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between the aforesaid preconditions and the actual rolling out of government strategies and mechanisms to make democracy backslide. This link may be found in a range of state-society relations prevailing in the countries under study, starting with populism, the topic of the chapter which follows.

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CHAPTER 5

Populism as a Type of State-Society Relation Eroding Democracy

Existing comparative political research has rarely inspected Southeast European politics through the lens of populism (Brentin & Pavasovi´cTrošt, 2016, 9–13). However, one way to look at how ruling elites in the contemporary post-Yugoslav successor states prolong their stay in power is to shed light at their bases of political power through the concept of populism (Canovan, 1981; Mudde, 2004). The study of populism often focuses on the populist logic and discourse (Laclau, 2005; Pappas, 2019; Taggart, 2000) and the rise of populist movements and parties to power. It rarely looks at what populist parties do after they gain power (Bartha et al., 2020; Malloy, 1977). This is the question on which I will focus in this chapter. In this book, I argue that populism is not so much a thin ideology (Mudde, 2007, 2017) or a mode of political integration of the masses into the political system (Di Tella, 1965; Lyrintzis, 1987), as a mode of state-society relation. As a mode of state-society relation, populism entails specific institutional and ideological fields, two of which stand out: first, the direct, unmediated relationship between the populist leader and his or her followers, while intermediary bodies, such as party cells and committees, are marginalized (Mouzelis, 1986). The populist leader personally galvanizes the party supporters into action, not only on his or

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 D. A. Sotiropoulos, The Irregular Pendulum of Democracy, New Perspectives on South-East Europe, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25609-7_5

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her campaign trail before elections, but also after elections are over, when the leader has become President of a country or Prime Minister. And second, at the level of discourse, this mode of state-society relation thrives on an acute ideological antagonism (Laclau, 2005) pitting the people, represented by the populist party, against an oligarchy or the so-called establishment. Populist elites insist on this antagonism as part of their electoral campaign and also use it after their electoral victory. The targets of populist leaders are often businessmen who are foreigners or have ties with the political parties which populists loathe. Populism as a type of state-society relation thrives not only through the aforementioned organizational and ideological characteristics (unmediated association of the people with the leader, antagonistic understanding of politics), but also through a purposeful dislocation of institutions, which populist governments pursue. Populists’ victims usually are the judiciary and any mass media, civic associations and opposition political parties which could pose a potential threat to the populist party and the populist leader in power. Populists in power slide into authoritarian practices, but stop short of completely abolishing democracy. They base their political legitimacy on winning frequent or snap national elections. In other words, populism in power is dynamic and fluid. In the relevant academic literature, it is common to distinguish between right-wing and left-wing populism and treat them as totally different entities (Mouffe, 2018; Mudde, 2007). However, it is difficult to classify post-Yugoslav populism as right-wing or left-wing, as it may be both. The reason is that, as I will underline below, post-Yugoslav populists in government both pursue pro-labour policies, catering to the needs of selected low-income groups, and also diffuse a nationalist and xenophobic discourse in order to reap electoral benefits. To analyse these themes in this chapter, I will discuss the context in which democratically elected populist leaders of post-Yugoslav successor states (Serbia, North Macedonia) bend democratic institutions to their own interests but stop short of abolishing democracy. I rely on personal interviews which I have conducted in the countries under study, on official records and press clips, and on academic sources. The governing elites of the DPS party in Montenegro also unabashedly curbed their country’s institutions to their party’s goals in 1991–2020, as I show further on (Chapter 9 of the book). While they used populist rhetoric, in Montenegro it was primarily not populism, but the two other types of state-society relations, namely clientelism and above all

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corruption, which provided the institutional and ideological fields facilitating democracy’s erosion. Nevertheless, after the government turnover in 2020, in Montenegro political parties that opposed the DPS formed a tripartite government coalition and used populism as a legitimation basis at varying degrees. Populist leaders often, but not necessarily, attempt to turn their ascent to power into something more than government change, something that resembles regime change. To show this tendency, I take in turn the examples of Serbia and North Macedonia and refer to populist-ridden developments in the domestic politics of the two countries. I analyse the particular ways in which the Serb Progressive Party (SNS) under Aleksandar Vuˇci´c has governed Serbia since 2012; and the manner in which the VMRO-DPMNE party under Nikola Gruevski exercised populist power in North Macedonia in 2006–2017. I also devote a smaller section to state-led populism and populist opposition in Montenegro. In the chapter’s conclusions, I underline my main point, namely that populism is a type of state-society relation which the aforementioned rulers try to mould and use in order to prolong their stay in power.

5.1 Democracy and Authoritarianism in Post-Yugoslav Successor States While between 1991 and today post-Yugoslav successor states oscillated between democracy and semi-authoritarianism, not all periods of undemocratic rule were the same. Today’s malfunctioning democracy, standing at the crossroads between unconsolidated democratic rule and competitive authoritarian rule, is different from the type of semiauthoritarian regime which was prevalent in the region, e.g., in Croatia and Serbia, in the 1990s (Bieber, 2020). In that period, under Tud-man in Croatia, Miloševi´c in Serbia, and successive SDSM and VMRO-DPMNE governments in North Macedonia, democratic institutions were clearly controlled from above, elections were neither free nor fair and human rights were grossly violated (Boduszynski, 2010, 22–24, 74–80, 140–144, 172–178; Cohen & Lampe, 2011, 52–67; Ramet, 2006, 497–499, 568–570, 587–588). At the time, it was almost impossible to expect that smooth government change would take place as a result of elections. Transfer of power occurred either because of a ruler’s death or a violent overthrow of the ruler. Indeed, political change took place because of Tud-man’s death

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from physical causes in 1999 in Croatia and a revolution from below against Miloševi´c in October 2000 in Serbia. In fact, one may claim that, even though state socialism had collapsed by 1991, substantive democratization did not start in either country before 2000 (Diamandouros & Larrabee, 2000). In North Macedonia, on the other hand, ethnic conflict dominated domestic politics throughout the 1990s. In fact, an armed struggle between Albanians and Macedonians broke out in 2001, when armed bands of Albanians rose against the Skopje government. Conflict subsided only after the two warring ethnic groups reached an agreement with the help of the international community in August 2001 in Ohrid (the Ohrid Framework Agreement). In the years that followed (the 2000s), democratic consolidation was only to an extent approximated in Serbia and North Macedonia. There were periodic problems with infringement of human rights, government interventions to control the mass media and erratic conduct of national elections, including many electoral irregularities in North Macedonia and Serbia. Populists rose to power in North Macedonia in 2006 (first electoral victory of the VMRO-DPMNE party under Nikola Gruevski) and in 2012 in Serbia (first electoral victory of the SNS party under Tomislav Nikoli´c and Aleksandar Vuˇci´c). In both countries, populists made their way up to power in a context of unconsolidated democracy. Then they made the pendulum of democracy move towards competitive authoritarianism, without reaching that end. After first coming to power through elections, populist elites adapted to and benefited from the pre-existing institutional and ideological fields in their country. Populist rule was coloured by historical legacies of a socio-political context, a “social ecology” (Hall, 2016), inimical to further democratization. These legacies were three preconditions (discussed above in Chapter 4), namely unregulated capitalism, nationalist and divisive political culture, and party system fragmentation and polarization. Such preconditions had nurtured incomplete democratization in Serbia and North Macedonia and had paved the way for populist rule.

5.2 Translating Electoral Victory into a Control of Democratic Institutions Elected governments such as the Vuˇci´c government in Serbia and the Gruevski government in North Macedonia were unfettered by opposition

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political forces, constraints of public opinion shifts or any institutional checks and balances. Unencumbered by such constraints, populist heads of government at times behaved as regime rulers rather than accountable heads of elected governments. In other words, what is at stake is the transformation of a legally and legitimately elected governing elite into a regime-ruling elite. The latter uses its rise to power as a springboard to accomplish a near-regime transition. This process may unfold at least until a decisive defeat in national elections or a quasi-revolutionary political mobilization from below ousts the new rulers, as was the case with Gruevski in 2015–2017 (Chapter 10). However, the shift of democracy’s pendulum away from the democratic end may seem paradoxical. How is the semi-authoritarian (quasidictatorial) comportment of elected governments at all possible in the early twenty-first century? The current historical period in Europe is a period of at least some political pluralism, relatively free movement of people and ideas, rapid diffusion of information within and across national borders and close inspection of domestic developments, e.g., government actions, within the post-Yugoslav successor states by foreign observers, including international organizations (e.g., the EU, the OSCE and the Council of Europe). The answer to this question is multi-faceted. The key for the elite of a governing political party to turn into a regime-like ruling elite is to win elections with a comfortable absolute majority of seats in parliament, in order to form a single-majority government (e.g., as it happened with the political party of Orbán in Hungary and that of Vuˇci´c in Serbia). Alternatively, a party may capitalize on an electoral victory through which it secures not an absolute majority in parliament, but a sizeable relative majority. The party then proceeds to build a government coalition with smaller parties, eager to share the fruits of political power (e.g., as happened with the party of Gruevski and his government coalition partners in North Macedonia). Parliamentary majority by itself is a necessary but not sufficient condition to exercise control over the most important, if not all, political and administrative institutions. Three more conditions must be fulfilled in order for a parliamentary majority to acquire control over such institutions, such as the public administration, public and private mass media, the justice system and independent regulatory authorities. Populists, in particular, exploit such conditions, if they rise to government.

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The first condition is the ability to benefit from a historical legacy of politicization of state institutions. If in a democracy the institutional practice is that after each government change ministries, supervised public bodies and state-owned enterprises, state media and the justice system are colonized by the incoming governing elite, then the winner of elections will imitate this pattern. The new governing party will appoint its own party cadres and sympathizers to middle- and high-ranking posts in the state administration and public sector. This is also a pattern of political clientelism analysed in more detail in the following chapter (Chapter 6). The second condition is inheriting and prolonging an unequal balance of power among democratic institutions. In the post-Yugoslav successor states, the first post-socialist governments were successful in keeping other institutions, such as prosecuting authorities, supreme courts, the public bureaucracy and independent authorities, under firm control (Ramet, 2006). Since that was the case in the past, incoming populist governing elites benefit from and actually expand on the prevalence and control of the executive branch over the rest of the branches of governance. The third condition is to continue political campaigning against the opposition at the national level, if not also at the local level (e.g., in small towns and villages), long time after the elections. In brief, the populist governing party continues to behave towards the rest of the parties as it did during its last electoral campaign. In a nutshell, populists never stop blaming the opposition. The electoral campaign of the governing party continues well into the post-electoral period, even though the opposition has been defeated in the elections. This may be understood as part of a long-term strategy on the part of the populist party to remind its electoral pool of the fight against what the party considered the country’s oligarchy. The purpose of this populist strategy is to preserve a winners’ hegemony in the political system and to keep the opposition in a defensive position. In the same vein, there are various means which populist governments in post-Yugoslav successor states employ to accomplish this task. One is to publicly discredit Members of Parliament and former ministers, now in opposition, for their earlier deeds while they were in government. A second is to accuse the opposition of voicing opinions and making policy choices which can be interpreted as conspiracies or plans of foreign actors. A third is to start criminal investigations against members of the opposition for alleged acts of corruption or petty crimes, given that, as already mentioned, prosecuting authorities are traditionally placed under

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the supervision of the government. And a fourth means is to marginalize any critical voices of opposition through the control of state-owned and private media. Thus, freedom of expression and dissemination of antigovernment ideas may be practised only through the less easily controlled social media (blogs, Facebook, Twitter). All these conditions and means have been met in the two post-Yugoslav cases summarized below (North Macedonia, Serbia) and to some extent in the third case (Montenegro).

5.3

The Case of North Macedonia The Overall Political Context

After 2006, when it came first-past-the-post in the parliamentary elections, the dominant party in North Macedonia was the VMRO-DPMNE. It rode to power on the waves of nationalism, of which the party’s leader and Prime Minister (2006–2016), Nikola Gruevski, was a fervent advocate. Gruevski’s party also reaped electoral benefits from widespread popular discontent with the failed economic policies of preceding governments, including SDSM-led government coalitions. Unemployment was always over 20% and constantly rising in the 1990s (Bodszynski, 2010, 169). Unemployment even reached a high point of 37.3% in 2005, before Gruevski’s electoral victory (Ramet, 2017, 296). In addition, voters associated the SDSM party, which was the successor party of the League of Communists in Macedonia, with the ills of Tito’s one party-state. Like Croats and Slovenes, North Macedonians also disliked the domination of Serbia over the rest of the Yugoslav republics until 1991. Notably, however, the SDSM party, which remained in opposition in 2006–2016, performed strongly in elections and remained the main competitor to the populist VMRO-DPMNE throughout that period. VMRO-DPMNE also came to power on a promise of “Revival”, i.e., a set of reforms, and governed in coalition with the Albanian party Democratic Union of Integration (DUI). The promised reforms included policies to boost foreign direct investment in the country by offering very attractive terms for foreign businesses (flat tax rate, very low wages); to cater to the social needs of the party’s clientele (low-income groups, nationalist-minded citizens across different social strata); and to put the state mechanism as a whole under the complete control of the governing party, including control of public administration, state-owned enterprises,

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the judiciary and state-run and even private mass media (Chapter 10 of the book). Thanks to such policies, Gruevski’s party managed to win more parliamentary elections in 2008 and 2009 as well as the presidential elections of 2009. By 2014, when another round of presidential and parliamentary elections was called, VMRO-DPMNE had firmly established its hold on power (Table 5.1 for presidential and Table 5.2 for parliamentary elections’ results). The way in which VMRO-DPMNE became hegemonic over state and society was multifold. Among other things, it included staffing the state with the party’s supporters, channelling state funds to selected private media, and inciting nationalism. Gruevski’s nationalist drive was manifested in the large-scale rebuilding of the centre of Skopje. His government paid for the construction of many buildings and statutes which glorified ancient Macedonia (the so-called “Skopje 2014” project to embellish the centre of the city of Skopje). The parliamentary opposition (SDSM) reacted to such policies of the ruling party. In December 2012, after parliamentarians of the SDSM scuffled with parliamentarians of the governing party inside the parliament building, the opposition was ejected from the parliament (the events of “Black Monday”, prior to Christmas day 2012). The SDSM abstained Table 5.1 Results of the 2014 presidential elections in North Macedonia

Presidential candidate

Gjorge Ivanov (VMRO-DPMNE) Stevo Pendarovski (SDSM) Illijaz Halimi (DPA) Zoran Popovski (GROM) Total Voter turnout

% of votes First round (turnout 48.86%)

% of votes Second round (turnout 54.36%)

51.69

55.27

37.51

41.14

4.48 3.61 100.00 48.86

– – 100.00 54.36

Note Percentages may not add up to 100% due to rounding Source Election Guide (2014a), first round, https://www.electi onguide.org/elections/id/2776/, second round https://www.ele ctionguide.org/elections/id/2790/

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Table 5.2 Results of the 2014 parliamentary elections in North Macedonia Party VMRO-DPMNE Social Democratic Union of Macedonia (SDSM) Democratic Union for Integration (DUI) Democratic Party of Albanians (DPA) Citizen Option for Macedonia (GROM) National Democratic Revival (NDR) Total percentage, total parliamentary seats

% of votes

Seats in parliament

42.98 25.34 13.71 5.92 2.82 1.59 100.00

61 34 19 7 1 1 123

Note Percentages may not add up to 100% due to rounding Source Election Guide (2014b), http://www.electionguide.org/elections/id/2781/

from all parliamentary proceedings and started a campaign of civil disobedience which culminated in the first semester of 2015 with selected public revelations of wiretapped calls of 20,000 citizens. The opposition’s revelations concerned telephone calls exchanged among VMRO-DPMNE ministers in which they were overheard planning how to “misuse public resources and institutions for party interests” (Gjuzelov, 2015, 3). The government attributed the wiretapping to “foreign intelligence services” and accused the leader of the SDSM, Zoran Zaev, of corruption and of orchestrating a coup d’ état against the country’s elected government. Networks of opposition parties and social movements were formed. They now shared a cognitive framework that portrayed the government of Gruevski as a government leading North Macedonia down the path towards authoritarianism. Large-scale anti-government protests followed in May 2015. The government was cornered and the polarization between pro-government and anti-government forces reached a critical point, impeding the functioning of the country’s institutions. Under pressure from protesters and the international community, three of Gruevski’s government ministers resigned. Then, in the summer of 2015 the EU authorities intervened and facilitated negotiations between Gruevski and Zaev in which the leaders of the two largest Albanian parties also participated. An agreement (the Pržino agreement) was reached on preparing the ground for the conduct of fair elections (discussed in more detail in Chapter 10). Government turnover did not take place until May 2017, after protracted negotiations and even

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some political violence committed by VMRO-DPMNE militants against their opponents. The tendency of the VMRO-DPMNE to build a regime rather than simply run a government in 2006–2017 can be better understood in the light of answering the following question: how has the ruling party managed to dominate North Macedonia, leaving only a narrow political space to the parliamentary opposition, anti-government NGOs and critical mass media? An answer is that VMRO-DPMNE capitalized on three complementary modes of state-society relations, namely clientelism, corruption and populism. While the former two require a separate analysis (Chapters 6 and 7), the third one is analysed in the following section. Gruevski’s Populist Political Discourse Before elections, populist parties, like other parties, tend to promise to satisfy different and often incompatible demands made by varied social strata and groups. However, populists aspire to include as many social strata and groups in the so-called anti-establishment camp as possible. Their difference from other catch-all parties attempting to do the same before elections lies in the type of political discourse they employ. Making unspecified promises to all, populists tend to include almost all voters under their political umbrella, except for (1) a vaguely defined oligarchy or (2) an ethnic minority in the country or (3) foreigners (e.g., migrants and refugees). Moreover, populists aim to find a convenient powerful target, to which they attribute malevolent intentions, so that they can play the usually popular role of the socio-political underdog which resists oligarchic power. Populists typically portray their major opponent as part of the establishment and—if need be—they construct such an enemy. Even after ascending to government in 2006, the VMRO-DPMNE painted an ugly profile of the main opposition party, the SDSM. It portrayed the latter as “an elitist party which inherited the political power and party infrastructure of the once ruling party of the League of Communists in Macedonia” (interview 7; list of interviews at the end of the book). The Elective Affinity Between Populism and Nationalism Populism often rises to power and settles in power along with nationalism, a malleable, community-wide ideology. Nationalism also underplays

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internal divisions and looks for external enemies. Of course, not all nationalist parties are populist as well. However, it is probably rare to find a populist party which is not tainted by a current of nationalism or does not ally itself to nationalists (Taguieff, 2007). Nationalism was at the root of Yugoslavia’s troubles even before the country disintegrated (Bana´c, 1984). The nationalist ideology gave rise to populism and certainly played a major role in the disintegration of Yugoslavia and the ill fate of multi-party democracy in postYugoslav successor states (Bianchini, 2013, 41–56; Cali´c, 2019, 286–288, 331–332; Denitch, 1993; Ramet, 2006; Teokarevi´c, 2019, 129–139; Vladisavljevi´c, 2008). North Macedonia offers a typical example of this elective affinity between populism and nationalism. Candidates for the role of the enemy are neighbouring countries such as Bulgaria and Greece. Regardless of who bears the main responsibility for the emergence and rekindling of the name dispute with Greece for almost three decades (1991–2019), the dispute clearly created an environment favourable to the flourishing of nationalist populism in North Macedonia. The latter country’s dispute with Bulgaria over the Macedonian language in 2020–2022 points to the same direction, as Bulgarians consider Macedonian to be only a dialect of their own national language. In that case, too, the dispute provided fodder for the canons of populists in North Macedonia. Finding scapegoats is a pattern of discourse which populist leaders keep using. Even after being in government for ten years, Gruevski, who won parliamentary elections and formed a government for the first time in 2006, looked for external enemies. For example, on the 31st of January 2015, in a speech to the nation he announced that foreign intelligence services, supported by the SDSM, had plans to stage a coup against his government. One year later, on the 31st of January 2016, in his resignation speech, Gruevski identified himself with the fate of his country. He characterized the wiretapping affair of 2015 as a “dirty campaign against Macedonia, led by different methods over the past year and a half”. Further on, in the same speech and in a typically populist manner, Gruevski underlined the personal, unmediated relation binding him with the people: “You, the people of Macedonia, are our main support. I do this for you, because I believe in you and in your decision and judgment….We are moving forward, shoulder to shoulder, every day until the end of the elections, when we will again stand firm with our heads held high and say—we

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did it, Macedonia did it, and we are part of this major victory” (Pajaziti, 2016). The VMRO-DPMNE Populist Party and Government Organization In terms of organization, the populist party is usually hollow. Party structures are thin. In North Macedonia, the VMRO-DPMNE party was in the hands of Gruevski and his close associates. There was of course a party organization, including local cells around North Macedonia, but the intermediate levels separating party voters from the party leader were usually sidelined. As a party, VMRO came alive not so much by following the party’s statutes and convening scheduled meetings of party organs, but through populist mobilization. The leader mobilized the party to respond to the opposition’s attacks in the parliament and through pro-government activities in the streets of Skopje. A typical example of such mobilization was the pro-government rally which took place on the 18th of May 2015. It was organized by VMRODPMNE in front of the parliament’s building in Skopje and came as a response to the anti-government rally of parties of the opposition, NGOs and students. The anti-government rally had been organized one day earlier, on the 17th of May 2015 and had taken place in front of the government’s seat in Skopje. The internal organization of VMRO-DPMNE government was extremely top-heavy, a feature also indicative of populism in power. All problems of governing, large and small, were carried over to the top of the government, i.e., to Gruevski himself, and he intervened in person to resolve them. As a Member of Parliament who belonged to the opposition noted: “Gruevski pays visits to various areas of the country, is briefed on local problems and solves them by picking up his mobile phone and giving instructions to the appropriate persons” (interview 1). As already noted above (Chapters 1 and 2), populism has little faith in institutions and prefers to keep them under control, since in a populist’s mind institutional legitimacy is not based on the rule of law, but on the popularity and proven electoral success of the populist leader. Indeed, VMRO-DPMNE’s leadership aimed and to a large extent succeeded in subjugating North Macedonia’s institutions to the will of the government. Once it assumes power, the populist party tends to overextend itself and throw a net over almost all political and administrative institutions.

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In fact, it was commonly accepted even by people close to the VMRODPMNE that in 2006–2017, the government completely controlled not only the parliament and the public administration, but also the judiciary, the prosecuting authorities, the police, state-owned and most of private mass media and—to a large extent—the independent regulatory and administrative authorities, too (interviews 2 and 3). Local observers from different sides of the political spectrum converged on rejecting the government’s control of almost all the media. Such control by the government and personally by Gruevski and his entourage was not just one more problem of democracy in North Macedonia. It was a “core problem, because the government controls everything” (interview 2). It was “a destruction of the public sphere” (interview 4), effected through imposing “a system of control” (interview 5) and already leading to the demise of “checks and balances among democratic institutions” (interview 6). The Social Bases of VMRO-DPMNE’s Populism Moving from organizational to social aspects of contemporary populism in North Macedonia, we start from the hypothesis that populism does not enjoy equal support across all social strata. Populist parties have a very varied social base in many West European countries (Rooduijn, 2018). There are no reliable published studies of the electoral pool of the major competing parties in North Macedonia. Some assessment may be made through field research which I have conducted in that country. While the VMRO-DPMNE and SDSM appealed to similar social strata, it can be said that the VMRO-DPMNE exerted stronger electoral influence over the poorer ones. In field research, opinions of informed interviewees varied on who actually voted for Gruevski’s party, but there was general agreement that his party did not appeal to the educated urban strata of North Macedonia. According to one opinion, Gruevski’s party drew disproportionately more votes from among pensioners, farmers and civil servants. The VMRO-DPMNE party did not draw as many votes from urban elites, e.g., students, the higher educated residents of Skopje, Kumanovo or Strumica, and the members of the former communist elites (interview 3). The social groups supporting Gruevski’s party had either become alienated from the SDSM in the early 2000s or benefited from social policies, measures and

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subsidies which the VMRO-DPMNE government handed out to them after coming to power in 2006. According to a similar opinion, Gruevski’s voters par excellence were workers and low-paid employees of the private sector, pensioners, civil servants and to an extent some nationalist intellectual circles (interview 7). Workers and low-paid employees were attracted to the VMRO-DPMNE because through its open-door policy for Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), it succeeded in creating job opportunities and thus lowering the total unemployment rate from “an all-time high 37.3 in the fourth quarter of 2005 to 25.5 percent in the third quarter of 2015” (Trading Economics, 2016). Admittedly, as far as the plight of the unemployed was concerned, the policies of the VMRO-DPMNE were helpful. It must be noted, however, that job growth in North Macedonia’s private sector meant growth of insecure and short-term jobs. More secure jobs were available in the public sector. Indeed, the VMRO–DPMNE increased the number of civil servants over time (see Chapter 6 on clientelism). While in government, the party also adopted additional measures for various sections of its preferred electoral pool. Examples were free access to spa services and tourist weekends for pensioners (The Independent, 2015). To sum up this section, the combination of social policy measures of the VMRODPMNE party with its organizational structure and the noted discourse of the party leader help classifying it as a typical populist party.

5.4

The Case of Serbia

The Overall Political Context Since 2008, when Tomislav Nikoli´c, accompanied by Aleksandar Vuˇci´c, split from the far-right Serbian Radical Party (SRS) to form their own, nationalist but ostensibly pro-European Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), Serbian politics has changed. After the elections of May 2012 which brought it to power, the SNS party started building a political regime of its own. In detail, in the parliamentary elections of March 2012, the SNS was ushered into power because of large-scale disappointment of the popular strata with the way the Democratic Party (DS), under Boris Tadi´c, had managed the economic crisis, misused state institutions to party benefit (Teokarevi´c, 2019, 149–151) and created a web of less-than-transparent

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relations with businessmen. The SNS had promised to the electorate that it would reverse the austerity policies of the DS. It would restore the international prestige of Serbia, which had suffered blows in the conflict over Kosovo, which declared its national independence in 2008. Without completely abandoning its nationalist profile, the SNS set itself apart from the ultra-nationalist SRS and promised Serbs that it would work towards Serbia’s integration into the EU. This was a delicate move performed by Vuˇci´c. In 2008, while defending Serbia’s position on Kosovo, he declared that creating a Greater Serbia was not a viable strategy anymore. He assumed the post of Deputy Prime Minister in the coalition government of 2012–2014 led by Ivica Daci´c, the leader of the SPS party. Vuˇci´c became leader of the SNS and led it to a resounding victory in the parliamentary elections of May 2014, in which the SNS obtained 158 out of 250 seats in the Serbian parliament. He repeated his victory in the parliamentary elections of April 2016, in which his party obtained 131 seats, 27 fewer seats than before, because many more opposition parties were able to pass the threshold of 5% and obtain parliamentary representation in 2016 than in 2014. In the parliamentary elections of 2020, the SNS secured an even larger victory, but that time most opposition parties boycotted the elections. In the parliamentary elections of 2022, the governing party’s electoral influence fell to 44%; however, it won the elections with a vast margin of 30 percentage points more than the second party (Table 5.3). Finally, the Serbian leader consolidated his power and raised it to the highest symbolic level by winning the presidential elections of 2017 already in the first election round. He repeated this accomplishment in the presidential elections of 2022 (Table 5.4). Strengthening SNS Rule As already noted, along with Tomislav Nikoli´c, who went on to become President of Serbia between 2012 and 2017, Vuˇci´c astutely organized a split off from the extreme right-wing nationalist party SRS in 2008. At the time, the leader of SRS, Vojislav Šešelj, was in the Hague and was implicated in trials at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) for committing war crimes during the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Vuˇci´c had been a government minister in SPSled governments in the late 1990s, an ardent supporter of nationalist

73

44 –

21 19 16 0 67

–

25.2

15.2

–

7.2

6.5

5.5

4.6

23.1

–

Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) UZPS (coalition of V. Jeremi´c, D. Ðilas, the DS party, etc., led by M. Tepi´c) Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS) LDP (C. Jovanovi´c) United Regions of Serbia Serbian Radical Party (SRS) Democratic Party (DS, led by B. Tadi´c) Enough is Enough (DJB, S. Radulovi´c)

Seats in parliament

% of votes

2012

2.1

6.0

2.0

3.0

–

4.2

–

13.5

48.4

% of votes

2014

0

19

0

0

–

0

–

44

158

Seats in parliament

6.0

6.2

8.4

–

–

–

–

11.3

48.3

% of votes

2016

16

16

22

–

–

–

–

29

131

Seats in parliament

2.3

–

2.1

–

–

–

–

10.4

60.7

% of votes

2020

0

–

0

–

–

–

–

32

188

Seats in parliament

Results of the 2012, 2014, 2016, 2020 and 2022 parliamentary elections in Serbia

Party

Election year

Table 5.3

2.3

–

2.2

–

–

–

14.1

13.9

44.3

% of votes

2022

0

–

0

–

–

–

38

32

120

Seats in parliament

148 D. A. SOTIROPOULOS

– 0 –

– – – 10 250

4.4 –

– –

– 8.3

100.0 58.0

Seats in parliament

–

% of votes

2012

100.0 53.1

– 11.4

– 0.1

3.6 –

5.7

% of votes

2014

250

– 11

– 0

0 –

18

Seats in parliament

100.0 56.1

– 8.8

– 0.7

5.1 –

5.2

% of votes

2016

250

– 10

– 0

13 –

13

Seats in parliament

100.0 48.9

4.0 19.1

– 1.4

– –

–

% of votes

2020

250

11 19

– 0

– –

–

Seats in parliament

100.0 58.5

– 3.5

4.8 3.8

3.9 5.5

1.7

% of votes

2022

250

– 12

13 10

10 15

0

Seats in parliament

Note The table covers the period of the SNS domination of the Serbian party system. The parliamentary elections of 2020 were boycotted by most parties of the opposition. The electoral threshold in Serbia was 5% until 2020, when the SNS government lowered the threshold to 3% Sources Election Guide (various years), https://www.electionguide.org/elections/id/1628/, http://www.electionguide.org/elections/id/2710/, http://www.electionguide.org/elections/id/2908/, and https://www.srbija.gov.rs/vest/en/158391/final-results-of-parliamentary-elections-in-erbia-ann ounced.php

New Democratic Party (B. Tadi´c) Dveri National Democratic Alternative (NADA) We Must Serbian Party Oathkeepers SPAS Other small and ethnic parties Total Voter turnout

Party

Election year

5 POPULISM AS A TYPE OF STATE-SOCIETY RELATION …

149

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D. A. SOTIROPOULOS

Table 5.4 Results of the 2017 and 2022 presidential elections in Serbia

Presidential candidate Presidential elections of 2017 Aleksandar Vuˇci´c (SNS) Saša Jankovi´c (Independent, backed by the DS party) Luka Maksimovi´c (Independent) Vuk Jeremi´c Vojislav Šešelj (SRS) Other candidates Total Voter turnout Presidential elections of 2022 Aleksandar Vuˇci´c (SNS) Zdravko Ponoš (UZPS) Milos Jovanovi´c (DSS-POKS) Bosko Obradovi´c (Dveri-POKS) Other candidates Total Voter turnout

% of votes in the first round

55.06 16.37 9.43 5.66 4.48 9.00 100.00 54.4 60.0 18.8 6.1 4.5 10.6 100.0 58.4

Note The POKS party is the “Movement for the Restoration of Monarchy in Serbia”. It is split into two factions before the presidential elections of 2022 Sources Election Guide (2017), http://www.electionguide.org/ele ctions/id/2709/ and Election Guide (2022), https://www.electi onguide.org/elections/id/3801/

causes even after the fall of Miloševi´c and an opponent of the proWestern Serbian coalition governments of the 2000s (Radelji´c, 2019, 164). However, …since leaving the SRS and joining the SNS in 2008, Vuˇci´c has re-modeled himself as a pro-Europeanist of sorts. He publicly declared his commitment to Serbia’s EU future; he negotiated the agreement with Kosovo; he embarked on a ‘war on corruption’; he arranged multiple foreign investments in Serbia’s failing public companies, such as, for example, the Abu-Dhabi-based Etihad Airlines’ purchase of the struggling Air Serbia airlines (former JAT). He has, most significantly, presented himself to the Serbian public, as well as to the EU and the larger international community as someone who can, finally, get things done. (Suboti´c, 2017, 173)

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In other words, the creation of a new party, the SNS, after splitting off from the SRS, provided Vuˇci´c with the opportunity to re-enter politics on a new organizational base while also putting forward a new political profile for himself (Radelji´c, 2019, 163–164). He also benefited from the parliamentary opposition’s fragmentation and weakness (Table 5.3) However, the things which the party leader “can finally get done” included taking big steps away from the normal operation of democratic processes and institutions. For example, undemocratic patterns of Serbia’s regime transition period after 1989 and the late 2000s were repeated under SNS rule, which effectively became one-man’s rule. After 2012, the Serbian leader took upon himself the task to manage Serbia’s secret services through his chairmanship of the National Security Council (of which he became the “Secretary”; Suboti´c, 2017, 174). Vuˇci´c controlled the banking and media sectors and personally exerted pressure against journalists critical of his actions (Kmezi´c, 2019, 103). Vuˇci´c also used the anticorruption mechanisms of the Serbian state against business tycoons whom he considered allies of former DS governments, while protecting SNS-friendly tycoons (Suboti´c, 2017, 174). Moreover, under SNS rule the unfair conduct of elections was evident, e.g., in the 2017 presidential elections (Chapter 8). The OSCE mission, invited to monitor the conduct of elections, explicitly noted regarding the candidacy of Vuˇci´c and the actual conditions of electoral competition that the “Prime Minister… benefited from the effectively blurred distinction between campaign and official activities. Unbalanced media coverage and credible allegations of pressure on voters and employees of state-affiliated structures and a misuse of administrative resources tilted the playing field. Regulatory and oversight mechanisms were not effectively utilized to safeguard the fairness of competition” (OSCE/DHIR 2017, 1). Failures of the Local Opposition to the SNS The local government elections in Belgrade in March 2018 confirmed the strength of the SNS and the fragility and incoherence of the opposition. The SNS candidate for the post of Mayor of Belgrade, Zoran Radojiˇci´c, obtained 45% of the vote, while his main opponent, Dragan Ðilas, a DS politician and former Mayor of Belgrade (2008–2013), trailed far behind with only 19% of the vote. Other opposition candidates obtained lower

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than 10% of the vote in that municipal election. In brief, the opposition was fragmented and unsuccessful in mobilizing voters. The same pattern of opposition failure was shown in the case of the brave anti-government citizens movement Ne Davimo Beograd (“Let’s not drown Belgrade”). This citizens’ initiative was organized to stop gigantic new construction, including 6000 new apartments, 2000 offices and seven hotels, on the banks of River Sava, which the SNS planned to carry out. Between 2015 and 2019, the civic initiative had been a protagonist in city-wide social protests against the “Belgrade Waterfront” and other government-sponsored and legally debatable projects of urban construction in the city. However, this anti-government dynamic did not gain enough momentum to become an organized political party opposition against the SNS government. And the gigantic project went on. In the local government elections in Belgrade in April 2022, the SNSbacked candidate Aleksandar Šapi´c, whose party had merged with the SNS in 2020, won most votes (39%). This was another large-scale electoral victory for the ruling SNS. The candidate of the liberal, pro-European opposition (the UZPS) obtained 22% and the movement Ne Davimo Beograd, which ran under the rubric Moramo (“We Must”), only 11%. The electoral result of the Belgrade city elections reflected the hegemony of the SNS party at the national level and also the inability of opposition parties to present a single candidate instead of various different ones. Constraints on Freedom of Expression and Media Freedom The weak performance of the parliamentary opposition and social movements at both national and local government levels may be put in the context of limited freedom of expression. In Serbia press freedom has declined, as documented in assessments of international observers and reactions of Serbian journalists. The position of Serbia was dramatically downgraded by the “Reporters without Borders”. The country dropped from the 76th rank in 2018 to the 90th rank in 2019 among 180 countries. By 2021, it had been downgraded to 93rd rank and was categorized as “unsafe” for practising journalism (Reporters Without Borders, 2019, 2021). The deteriorating state of media freedom created reactions from journalists who in 2017 addressed Vuˇci´c with a list of demands (which he never met). In October 2018 the informal Media Coalition, a coalition of

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Serbian associations and media which monitor press freedom, addressed the international community to raise the issue of government control of the media (Media Coalition in Serbia, 2018). In addition, the European Commission in its 2019 Report on Serbia stated that “results have yet to be achieved on the thirteen most pressing issues for media freedom identified by media associations gathered in the ‘Team for Dialogue’” (European Commission, 2019, 26). Moreover, under SNS rule, government officials sued journalists who were critical of the government and called them enemies of society or “foreign agents” (Media Coalition in Serbia, 2018). The Independent Journalists’ Association of Serbia (NUNS, a participant in the Media Coalition) keeps a database of threats as well as verbal and physical attacks against journalists in Serbia. Reports based on that database show that the number of such attacks, which had fallen from 31 in 2012 to 23 in 2013, rose every single year afterwards, reaching 92 in 2017 and 102 incidents in 2018 (NUNS, 2019). Serb authorities sanctioned culprits of such attacks in only 12 such incidents (N1 website, 2019). In view of all the above, it was not surprising that in 2019 the Freedom House downgraded Serbia’s status from Free to Partly Free. This was “due to deterioration in the conduct of elections, continued attempts by the government and allied media outlets to undermine independent journalists through legal harassment and smear campaigns, and President Aleksandar Vuˇci´c’s de facto accumulation of executive powers that conflict with his constitutional role” (Freedom House—Serbia, 2019). The Freedom House retained the same assessment in 2020 and added that “the SNS has steadily eroded political rights and civil liberties” (Freedom House—Serbia, 2020). The FH did the same in the years that followed. Given these restraints in the exercise of rights, it was no surprise that the SNS sailed through the national elections in 2020 and in 2022. Populist Discourse, Party Organization and Social Bases of the SNS The consolidation of political power achieved by Vuˇci´c and the SNS party was manifested in victories in successive elections culminating in his election as President of the Republic of Serbia in April 2017 and his victory in the parliamentary elections of 2020. The SNS went on to win both the parliamentary and presidential elections of 2022, as already noted (Tables 5.3 and 5.4). However, successive elections were not accompanied by a further democratization of political life in Serbia. Instead,

154

D. A. SOTIROPOULOS

further concentration of power in the hands of the SNS party leader was observed. Drawing on and expanding on the legacies of populism, clientelism and corruption, the SNS over time became unassailable, as shown in the successive elections discussed above. Vuˇci´c’s Populism: Political Discourse If one takes “discourse” to mean not only texts but also strategies and actual practices of power holders (Foucault, 1980, 100–102), then the populist character of the politics of the SNS leader becomes evident, as shown by the following example. Vuˇci´c, as a typical populist, cultivates a personal image of an all-powerful leader, able to solve problems on his own. This is a strategy that can reach extremes, as happened just before the March 2014 Serbian parliamentary elections which signalled his rise to the post of Prime Minister. In February 2014, Vuˇci´c, in his capacity as Deputy Prime Minister in the SNS-SPS coalition government, was transferred by helicopter to an area of Serbia which had suffered a snowstorm. A TV crew, which was called in from the government-controlled state TV (the RTS), filmed him saving a child from the snowstorm and carrying the child to safety with his own hands (Biddle-Roberts, 2014). A similar image is painted by the speeches of the Serbian leader. For example, on the 17th of October 2015, addressing a large party gathering in the Sava Centre in Belgrade on the seventh anniversary of the foundation of the SNS party, Vuˇci´c used an interesting rhetorical device. He contrasted himself to an imaginary group of Serbs who would sit at a drinking bar and claim that nothing works in Serbia. Then he commented on the situation: “unlike them, I am proud to be able to say in front of you, here, that I am the first who comes to my office and the last who leaves it. And I know no vacations, going outs and chitchatting with a drink in hand. But… I absolutely support those people. And I’ll buy them a round. Let them continue, as long as they do it that way, we’ll be better off. And Serbia will be better off. It suffered enough with those before us who were pretending to work” (Vuˇci´c, 2015). The SNS Populist Party and Government Organization The SNS party and the Vuˇciˇc government itself have a top-heavy organization, where power is concentrated in the hands of the Serbian populist leader. Such power is not mediated by management structures and

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processes one finds in modern complex organizations, such as contemporary parties and governments. His power is undisputable. In the words of an insider of Serbian politics: “Today in Serbia a single person can circumvent the parliament and eliminate institutions, restrict freedoms, control the mass media, engage in dark, non-transparent business deals, and even control elections at the local level through the distribution of goods and services to local electorates as well as the use of political patronage and violence” (interview 8). All this amounts to the fact that “criticism against Vuˇci´c is interpreted by him and his close associates as conspiracy. There is a personality cult of Vuˇci´c” (interview 8). The populism of the SNS entails not only a personality cult of the party’s leader and a rather thin party organization, but also active political party mobilization against democratic institutions. Full control obtained by Vuˇci´c and his party in Serbia’s parliamentary elections has been combined with the populist propensity to sideline oversight institutions. This combination has threatened the survival of such institutions. The European Commission claimed in its 2015 Report on Serbia that “parliamentary debates should not be used to undermine independent regulatory bodies and the Ombudsman’s role” (European Commission, 2015, 6). Subsequent reports repeated similar observations in a diplomatic language. For instance, in October 2020, the European Commission noted in its 2020 Report on Serbia: “The scope for continued political influence over the judiciary under the current legislation is a serious concern” (European Commission, 2020, 5). Regarding the Ombudsman in particular, a campaign was launched by the Serb police authorities and the pro-government press against Saša Jankovi´c, who served as Ombudsman, in April 2015 (Andri´c, 2015). In the previous year, 2014, the Ombudsman had questioned the role of military officers on two instances, namely concerning the violence exerted against participants in the Pride parade in Belgrade and the interception of communications by military security staff. The SNS government reacted with open hostility against the Ombudsman. The government’s move against Jankovi´c in 2015 concerned the suicide of a friend of his in Jankovi´c’s apartment a very long time ago (in 1993). The personal attack against the official serving as Ombudsman fizzled out after a while, reminding everyone, however, that the SNS government can corner even independent authorities or keep them at arm’s length. The European Commission’s Report again summarized the problem aptly: “Independent regulatory bodies and the Ombudsman play an essential role in

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ensuring that the executive is accountable. It is a matter of concern if members of the government act in such a way as to undermine their work” (European Commission, 2015, 7). Political interference in the administration of justice is also commonplace in Serbia. There was such interference before, under the rule of the DS party and President Tadi´c (2004–2012), when, in a drive to purge the judiciary of pro-Miloševi´c elements, there was a destabilizing overhaul of the justice system. So, interference is not a new pattern associated with populist rule, but it has become more blatant over time (Dalara, 2014; Kmezi´c, 2017, 2019). The parliament was entitled to appoint high ranking judges and prosecutors, such as the President of the Supreme Court and all court presidents, the State Prosecutor and all prosecutors. Yet, as the European Commission has noted, the two top management bodies of justice, namely the High Judicial Council and the State Prosecutorial Council, “have failed to react publicly in protection of judicial independence in cases of political interference in the work of judges and prosecutors”. Moreover, “government ministers (and Members of Parliament/party members) continue to criticize ongoing corruption investigations and court rulings” (European Commission, 2015, 12, 14). The government also influenced mass media through a means commonly used in other post-Yugoslav successor states, namely the channelling of public advertisements to selected media. Again, this was not a new pattern, as it also had occurred before 2012. However, under populist rule in Serbia after 2012, the government’s drive to control the media became more systematic, while it remained informal rather than explicit. “The most common informal pressure on editorial policy is through advertising. Funding of media from state sources at all levels continues to be a problem” (European Commission, 2015, 18). The Social Bases of SNS Populism The SNS primarily caters to the interests of low-income groups, for example, by offering pension increases without regard to the long-term fiscal effects of such a policy measure. The SNS government repeatedly used the populist electoral weapon of handing out one-time cash payments to prospective voters. The most recent examples of such practice date back only to 2020–2022. In May 2020, the government handed out 100 euros to citizens who would just ask for this sum of money; in 2021, another 50 euros to whomever applied; in June, an additional

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unemployment benefit of 60 euros to all unemployed; and in June 2021, an additional benefit (approximately 25 euros) to each person who was vaccinated. Old-age pensioners (about 1.7 million in a population of 6.9 million) were again the favourite target group of the government. Having received 70 euros each on top of their pensions in 2021, they were also destined to receive 20,000 Serbian dinars (approximately 170 euros in mid-2022 prices) in early 2022, before the elections scheduled for the spring of that year. These amounts may seem small, but we have to reckon that the average monthly pension in 2021 in Serbia was 29,000 dinars (Mariˇci´c, 2021). Of course, not every governing party which adopts such policies is populist. Conservative and social democratic parties have done the same in the past in the four corners of Europe. Thus, it is the combination of the social policy aspect of the governing policies of SNS with its noted discourse and organizational aspects which make the SNS populist. However, there is a crucial difference between the populism of the SNS and right-wing populism, which is on the rise in Western and Eastern Europe: “SNS does not practice right-wing populism, because it has a socially inclusive ideology, in the sense that it takes care of its voters. It is clientelistic populism” (interview 9).

5.5

The Case of Montenegro The Overall Political Context

The case of Montenegro differs from the above two cases because its ruling party, the DPS, which was in power between 1991 and 2020, is not a populist party (Bieber, 2010; Džanki´c & Keil, 2017, 405, 409). However, while in government the party, which relied heavily on political clientelism, engulfed the state, identified with the state mechanism, and employed tools reminiscent of populism in order to cultivate ties with its clientele. The DPS framed its political competitors as forces external to the body politic of Montenegro, changing the content of the “Other” against which the party was fighting. During the Yugoslav wars, the “Other” were Croats and other enemies of Serbia, but after 1997, the enemy became Miloševi´c and his declining regime in Serbia. After the referendum on Montenegrin independence (2006), the DPS painted Serbia

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and the Serbs as opponents, while critics of the DPS inside Montenegro were labelled “terrorists”. In typical populist fashion, the DPS party programme included numerous and vague political values, so as to address as many voter groups as possible and adjust to the party’s aforementioned changing targets. Among the themes of DPS political discourse, right-wing populist and left-wing populist themes stand out. The party emphasizes Montenegro’s national independence and external risks which the country faces. On the other hand, it also emphasizes the importance of the state in protecting the people from the perils of globalization and liberalization of the economy. Moreover, the DPS was and still is led by a charismatic political leader, which is another usual, but not a necessary, characteristic of populism. For all these reasons, it is possible to set the case of Montenegro apart as a case of “state-sponsored populism” (Džanki´c & Keil, 2017, 409–415). Admittedly then, the DPS did not employ populism to rise to power, nor did it become a populist party while governing. However, it relied on populism to the extent that it identified for three decades with the Montenegrin state and, in that capacity, the DPS put itself forward as protector of the Montenegrin people from domestic and external challenges. Populist Opposition Populism in Montenegro is more noticeable among the parties and politicians opposing the DPS which were successful in ousting it from power (Chapter 9 of the book). In the parliamentary elections of August 2020 in Montenegro, the ruling DPS came first-past-the-post but was unable to obtain a majority of parliamentary seats. Three coalitions of opposition parties joined forces against the DPS. Indeed, the pro-Serbian “For the Future of Montenegro” coalition (led by the DF party) won 27 seats, the coalition “Peace is Our Nation” (led by the Demokrate and other pro-EU parties) won ten and the liberal United Reform Action (URA) party won four seats. These three opposition blocks won a total of 41 out of 81 seats of the Montenegrin parliament and thus the DPS was left in opposition; small ethnic parties (e.g., the Bosniak party and two Albanian parties) did not want to side with the DF, which they considered hostile to ethnic minorities.

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After protracted negotiations, the three coalitions formed a government in December 2020 under Zdravko Krivokapi´c, an academic associated with the Serbian Orthodox Church in Montenegro and the DF party, as Prime Minister. It stayed in power until April 2022, when it was replaced by another coalition under Dritan Abazovi´c, the head of the URA party, as Prime Minister who however suffered defeat in a vote of no-confidence in August 2022, but remained as serving Prime Minister into 2023. While it cannot be argued that the three-party government coalition ruling in 2020–2022 in Montenegro was a populist government similar to those of Vuˇci´c and Gruevski, both Prime Ministers of that period (Krivokapi´c, Abazovi´c) and their parties periodically used populist discourse. They sought to legitimize their rule by resorting to a political rhetoric against the corrupt elites and foreign powers negatively affecting the people of Montenegro. Even before participating in government, the DF party was a nationalist/populist party that employed populist discourse. For instance, in a typical populist manner, the DF waged its electoral campaign in 2016 by using the slogan “Us or Him”, meaning Ðukanovi´c (Darmanovi´c, 2017: 124). The “Movement for Changes”, a small party which used to be part of the DF-led coalition and also supported the Krivokapi´c government in 2020–2022, had constructed for itself an anti-globalist, anti-elite, right-wing populist profile (Lavrelashvili, 2020: 3). Prime Minister Krivokapi´c “was always talking about the people”, while government ministers claimed that they were in support of the poor. Ministers insisted that “established structures in Montenegro impeded them. Moreover, the URA party, leading a government coalition after April 2022, was a party strongly counterposing the people against the elites and urging them to fight against the elites” (interview 47). Still, regarding populism in government, the case of Montenegro cannot be placed on par with those of Serbia and North Macedonia. In the case of the latter two countries, one witnesses examples of authoritarian populism. In the case of Montenegro, however, until 2020 populism was more traceable in parties of the opposition than in the DPS government. Since 2020 populist discourse has become part of the usual government pronouncements, but it does not characterize the government as a whole, as it does in the cases of the SNS government in Serbia and VMRO-DPMNE in Macedonia.

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5.6

Conclusions

In this chapter, I have argued that in North Macedonia between 2006 and 2017 and in Serbia after 2012, but less so in Montenegro, power was exercised through populism. In both countries, a democratically elected governing elite used populism in ways which were marginally democratic, if not wholly anti-democratic, in order to prolong its term in government and consolidate its political power. Along the way, populist governing elites engineered the backsliding of democracy. I have analysed populism as a type of state-society relation, i.e., as something broader than an ideology or a type of discourse. Certainly, at the level of discourse populism is characterized by sharp contrasts between friends and foes, anti-establishment rhetoric, blanket-like statements and the search for external threats to a political community. However, populism also has organizational and social traits which set populist parties apart from other political parties. Rarely do populist parties exhibit an organizational structure which is not emaciated, since the relations between the party leader and the masses following the party remain personal, unstructured and unmediated by political party organs. Moreover, it is difficult to find populist parties appealing to a country’s elites or the educated urban strata. The social bases of populism, primarily but not exclusively, are the popular strata including pensioners, public sector employees, farmers and small and very small business entrepreneurs. These social strata and groups relate to the state by rallying around the elected populist leader. Drawing on their popularity and repeated electoral successes, Vuˇci´c and Gruevski periodically sidelined the democratic institutions of their countries, undermining the checks and balances that such institutions provide. Ðukanovi´c was not a typical populist leader, but he and his party employed populist themes and certainly practices. All these leaders spoke and behave in ways that bolstered their own personality cult. In a typical populist manner, their political parties have become organizations primarily serving the career of the party leaders in government. The ruling populist elites formulated and implemented social policies catering to the interests of popular strata. These were populist and also patronage policies, which should be distinguished from the familiar—in other European democracies—universalistic or meanstested social policies based on the corresponding principles of redistribution. In the countries under study, redistribution took place, if at

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all, only in favour of selected groups such as the governing party’s supporters—hired en masse in the public sector—and pensioners. The most important feature of populism in government, which is the central theme of this chapter, is the repertoire of tools which populist elites use once they ascend to power. This repertoire may include the rekindling of nationalism; smear campaigns against the opposition which has already been defeated in elections; the undermining of independent authorities which are not controlled by the government; the mobilization of government supporters to counter anti-government protests; and last but not least, the use of the state’s secret services in the political conflict between government and opposition, in order to promote the aims of the former and upset the plans of the latter. I will return to this repertoire of government strategies, which were implemented to control democratic institutions, when I discuss Serbia, Montenegro and North Macedonia in more detail (Chapters 8, 9 and 10 of the book). After two decades of painfully slow and timid progress towards unachieved democratic consolidation in these countries, what has happened is another shift in the pendulum of democracy. Travelling aboard populist rule, unconsolidated democracy has moved since the early 2010s closer to the semi-authoritarian end of the pendulum. While in the aforesaid countries populism was a type of state-society relations which facilitated the pendulum’s movement away from the democratic end, an additional aggravating factor was clientelism, which I discuss in the chapter that follows.

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CHAPTER 6

Political Clientelism as a Type of State-Society Relation Eroding Democracy

Political clientelism (in this book used interchangeably with “political patronage”) has been practised since the earlier stages of transition to democracy from state socialism and continues to be practised unabated in post-Yugoslav successor states today (Gjoksi, 2015; Kmezi´c & Bieber, 2017, 73–88; Schenker, 2012; Sotiropoulos, 2002). Theoretically, political clientelism involves a set of exchanges between political patrons and their clients (Kitchelt & Wilkinson, 2007; Piattoni, 2001) which take different forms across the world. After the fall of Miloševi´c in 2000, democratization in Serbia and Montenegro went hand in hand with the patronage-ridden recruitment of employees to the public sector. In Serbia, this pattern was influenced by government instability in the first half of the 2000s and the patronage practices of the Koštunica, Cvetkovi´c, Daˇci´c and Vuˇci´c governments that have followed since. In Montenegro, it was propelled by the propensity of successive coalition governments, led by Ðukanovi´c, to populate all state institutions with governing party supporters (Lukic, 2013, 575; Morrison, 2009, 229). In North Macedonia, clientelism became rampant through appointments and transfers of public employees made not only by the main party of coalition governments, i.e., either the SDSM or the VMRO-DPMNE (alternating in power since 1991), but also due to the same practices being applied by Albanian parties, as minor government © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 D. A. Sotiropoulos, The Irregular Pendulum of Democracy, New Perspectives on South-East Europe, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25609-7_6

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Table 6.1 Public sector employment in post-Yugoslav successor states, 2008– 2009 and 2016

Albania Bosnia-Herzegovina Croatia North Macedonia Kosovo Montenegro Serbia

Public sector employment as % of total population, 2008–2009

Public sector employment as % of total employment, 2016

11.4 12.4 12.8 18.6 13.3 23.0 13.4

16.6 30.2 N.A. 22.4 32.6 30.4 28.4

Sources For 2008–2009: Cohen and Lampe (2011, 123, Table 3.2); for 2016: Vladisavljevi´c et al. (2017, 4, Table 2)

Table 6.2 “If you are employed, is it a private or a public sector employment?” (% share of respondents, region-wide opinion survey)

Albania Bosnia-Herzegovina North Macedonia Kosovo Montenegro Serbia

Public employment

Private employment (%)

23 27 35 19 27 24

77 73 65 81 73 76

Source Regional Cooperation Council (2019, 42, Figure 29)

coalition partners. There was extensive patronage in municipalities of Albanian-populated areas of North Macedonia (Irwin, 2010, 347; Lukic, 2013, 494). In Serbia and North Macedonia, government turnover was almost always followed by purges of public employees who had not supported the winner of the elections. In Montenegro, the long rule of DPS-led coalition governments built a solid, pro-DPS civil service. Eventually, in the 2000s and the 2010s the public sectors of the three countries became quite large (Tables 6.1 and 6.2). In post-Yugoslav successor states, the processes of democratization and Europeanization have not been accompanied by a decline of rampant

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patronage relations. This adverse outcome may have been the result of clientelism being a type of state-society relation forged between successive office-holders and the people over a period of a few decades before and after the fall of state socialist regimes. Preconditions related to transition to democracy and the market system in the post-Yugoslav successor states have facilitated the emergence of this type of state-society relation, as I argued in Chapter 4. After the start of the disintegration of Yugoslavia (1991), these preconditions were unregulated capitalism, fragmented and polarized party systems and a divisive political culture anchored not only in polarized party systems, but also in family, clan-based and ethnic cleavages. Starting with statistical information data on public employment in post-Yugoslav successor states, in this chapter I will discuss three facets of clientelism, namely, clientelism at the top, in the middle and at the bottom of the state organization. Clientelism at the top level involves the selective distribution of spoils of large economic value to preferred business entrepreneurs. This is a type of clientelism or patronage which can develop into a paradoxical type of state capture, as I will argue further in this chapter. Clientelism at the middle level involves the appointment of unqualified governing party cadres at management positions and posts of advisors in ministries, public bodies and state-owned enterprises. And, finally, clientelism at the bottom level refers to the recruitment to the public sector of supporters of a governing party or a politician who is influential at the national, regional or local level. Throughout this chapter, I will use data drawn from regional public opinion surveys, national statistical services, secondary sources and my own personal interviews conducted in Belgrade, Podgorica and Skopje (list of interviews at the end of the book).

6.1 Public Employment in Post-Yugoslav Successor States Official data on public employment is sometimes difficult to obtain and compare across countries (Table 6.1), since different states in the region measure public employment in variable ways (e.g., it is difficult to find reliable data on employment in state-owned enterprises). Moreover, official statistical sources rarely distinguish between employees of private enterprises and state-owned enterprises in the same sector (e.g., between

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private clinics and state hospitals in the health care sector). Thus, statistical information, while accurate, may not help construct the whole picture. For instance, according to official sources in Montenegro, in 2021 only 11.6% of all employees worked in the public administration (21,961 out of a total of 188,964 employees; Zaposleni 2010–2022 za sait. Statistical Office of Montenegro, 2022). Such figures exclude the usually large numbers of public employees in state-owned enterprises. However, there is approximate data drawn on sample surveys in which respondents reply whether they work in the private or public sector (Table 6.2). To the extent that responses to such surveys are accurate, it turns out that among the post-Yugoslav successor states, the largest employers are Kosovo, Montenegro and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

6.2 Clientelism as a Type of State-Society Relation As Petr Kopecky, Peter Mair and Maria Spirova argue, patronage may be an exchange between parties and voters which links the former to the latter, but it equally fulfils another function: patronage benefits the involved political party organization because, upon the party’s rise to government, party supporters populate state institutions (Kopecky et al., 2012). Patronage thus becomes an organizational resource in a number of ways: by creating a new mode of state-society link, particularly when the ideological and class-based identification of voters with parties is on the decline; by recruiting party supporters to government-controlled public sector jobs; and by constructing communication channels between the party and its political clients. In short, by exercising patronage, political parties on the one hand attempt to survive organizationally in a period of widespread political alienation of citizens from the political system and parties. On the other hand, governing parties also control and manage state institutions by appointing party cadres and loyal professionals to management posts and even middle-ranking posts of such institutions. By way of such repetitive practices over time, patronage networks emerge. Through their engagement in patronage, patrons and clients and their relatives and co-workers are politically socialized in such non-meritocratic, non-transparent ways of managing the state organization. Both sides also share a cognitive framework: they see their patronage link as an instrument of value.

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Patronage may signify an unequal exchange, bringing one side (the patrons) to positions of political power and perhaps temporarily lifting the other side (the clients) from a condition of powerlessness. Patronage is a very selective exchange that is useful for both sides. Obviously, it is useful only to the sides involved in the exchange. This is plainly clear to the rest of the people who are left out and do not participate in such informal networks of political inclusion. In post-Yugoslav successor states, in addition to recruiting governing party supporters to the public sector, clientelism’s repertoire involved other kinds of outlays and opportunities. It involved the dispensing of material benefits, such as cash transfers, food and other welfare state benefits to political clients; promotions and transfers of civil servants supporting the government in the civil service hierarchy; and state-owned bank loans on favourable terms and awards of public contracts to favoured businessmen without an open public call for tenders. Using clientelism, a governing party or coalition of parties in government builds a solid electoral base. It forms a malleable body of public sector workers and shapes a docile business elite, while keeping the opposition at bay. The opposition’s supporters are usually discriminated against by the authorities. Non-aligned officials and technocrats are excluded from policy formulation and businessmen with no ties to the government see their chances of winning public tenders or contracts dwindle. None of the above phenomena would have been crucial in an economy with a robust private sector, as job opportunities and investment opportunities would not depend as much on the government’s whims. However, the post-Yugoslav economies are characterized by strong state intervention in the market, high unemployment, an uncompetitive export sector and grossly fluctuating foreign direct investment. In such economies, the rise and fall of households and private companies may depend on whether a household or a company plays along with (or at least is not neglected by) governing elites and governing party organizations. Furthermore, clientelism is a wider concept than the politicization of state institutions, such as public administration or the judiciary. First, clientelism may be based on a person-to-person or a political party-toperson long-term relation between a patron and a client. By contrast, politicization focuses on how political criteria are employed to affect human resources management in state institutions. Second, in contrast to politicization of senior posts of the civil service and politicization of public policy formulation, clientelism may have a collective and even

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organized beneficiary. Examples of such beneficiaries may be members of an interest group, an occupation or a profession which a patronagepractising government selects out. The government then treats them more favourably than members of other interest groups, e.g., with regard to subsidies or welfare benefits. All these patterns were familiar to the people of post-Yugoslav successor states. Political party-led clientelism was also extensive in Tito’s Yugoslavia. Indeed, as it is well known, before the transition from communism a very hierarchical and thus bureaucratic system of patronage existed in the one-party states of Southeastern Europe. In former Yugoslavia, the League of Communists catered to the needs of its members to the point that a new, state-driven social class emerged (Djilas, 1957). Moreover, patronage networks not only linked the party as a whole with its members, but permeated relations between higher party officials and the party’s rank-and-file. Thus, ministerial, ambassadorial and higherranking party and administrative posts in state institutions (known by the collective term “nomenklatura”), were filled by candidates backed by members of Tito’s party elite, army generals and other top state officials. These patrons, then, created their own patronage networks and protected their clients by appointing them or transferring them to posts of their choice. In exchange, a patron could count on the loyalty of such a client, something which was useful in the power struggles at the top echelons of the party and the state (Georgiev, 2008, 69–70). After 1991, clientelism survived in post-Yugoslav successor states, e.g., in Serbia, Montenegro and North Macedonia. Tito’s party was revamped in all three former Yugoslav republics and presented itself in elections under different names (SPS in Serbia, DPS in Montenegro, SDSM in North Macedonia) while retaining intact its pre-1991 regional and local party organizations. Relying on such organizational bases, revamped communist parties were able to win the first round of parliamentary elections. They preserved their patronage networks, went on to win successive elections in the three countries and colonized the public bureaucracies with their party cadres and supporters. Over time, governing party control of the bureaucracy made the civil service weak in post-Yugoslav successor states, i.e., incapable of steering itself autonomously. Civil servants, hired on grounds of political affiliation rather than educational credentials or administrative skills, were

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dependent on governing party linkages. Civil servants did not have organizational resources of their own or a professional ésprit de corps to resist successive intrusions of post-1991 governing party elites into the central and local party administration. Obviously, all these practices negatively affected the state capacities of the countries under study. This was a fact that became painfully obvious later on, when the three countries embarked on the demanding process of integration into the EU. Governing parties in the post-Yugoslav successor states today are more or less able and prone to infiltrate not only the central public administration and public bodies supervised by ministries, but also institutions such as the judiciary or formally independent regulatory and administrative authorities, public media and business enterprises in which the state owns a larger or smaller share of stock. Governing parties have an obvious interest in colonizing and even fully capturing such institutions in order to implement their policies. They also want to win multiple points of advantage over parties of the opposition. Such strategies of governing parties differ by country, as analysed further in the book (Chapters 8–10).

6.3 Clientelism at the Top Level and Public Policy Capture Policy capture may be understood as the decisive influence which powerful private groups or even entire social strata exercise on public institutions or public policies. Capture mostly occurs at the stage of policy formulation, when policy-makers ignore the public interest and instead serve the groups’ interests. This may be a phenomenon that occurs in various democratic states. It is, in fact, a derailment of the otherwise legitimate process of lobbying that normally takes place, for instance, in the US Congress in Washington DC or in the headquarters of the European Commission in Brussels. In this book, I understand policy capture in a narrower sense: it is the exercise of unwarranted influence not of various social interests, but of specific private business interests in public policy areas in transition countries such as the post-Yugoslav successor states (Peši´c, 2006). This is in line with the original conception of this phenomenon, namely the tendency and ability of private business firms to formulate “the rules of the game to their own advantage” to the extent that “public officials and politicians privately sell underprovided public goods and a range of

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rent-generating advantages à la carte to individual firms” (Hellman et al., 2000). Policy capture also includes the formulation of tailor-made policies and the blocking of decisions which could constrain the involved business interests. While policy capture has been documented in other countries of Southeastern Europe, e.g., for Bulgaria (Ganev, 2007) and Romania (Mungiu-Pippidi, 2005), in post-Yugoslav successor states the situation is less well-studied. In fact, what is observable is the reverse of typical policy capture: instead of businessmen capturing public policy sectors, politicians in charge of policy sectors in their capacity as ministers start capturing parts or the whole of selected business sectors. Government ministers reach out to businessmen of their choice, sidelining all others. The selected businessmen thus become high-level clients of the government. In that form or variety, clientelism at the top is exemplified by the cases of Miroslav Miškovi´c and Milan Beko in Serbia, Marko Knezevi´c in Montenegro and Dimitris Kontominas in North Macedonia (a deceased Greek businessman who used to have close ties to the Gruevski government in 2006–2017; Popovi´c, 2012). The governing party selects a few from among different businessmen who are willing to cooperate with the governing elite. It may also happen that a governing elite attempts the “invention” from scratch of pro-government businessmen who act as front men representing the business interests of government officials. Individuals with no record or experience in a business sector suddenly become major players in the sector after being handed out business permits and loans from state-controlled banks. The selected businessmen work with the governing elite for mutual benefit. Politicians in power offer the chosen businessmen opportunities for profit-making, such as selective awards of public contracts and sale of state-owned assets. The Prime Minister or ministers responsible for specific policy sectors, such as industry, trade or agriculture, have public services, such as the services of the Ministry of Finance or the Privatization Agency, treat the chosen businessmen favourably. In such circumstances, favourable treatment is accomplished through by-passing regulations which may require open public tenders or through exploiting legal loopholes in the relevant public procurement processes. Controlling the judiciary and neutralizing any independent regulatory authorities which may want to monitor the awarding of public contracts

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or a privatization process is a vital prerequisite for successfully practising clientelism at the top. In other words, paradoxically and in contrast to the well-documented phenomenon of state capture by business elites in Bulgaria and other Southeast European states (Ganev, 2007), in the case of post-Yugoslav successor states clientelism at the top seems to be the reverse of typical state capture: it is not so much pre-existing business tycoons who “capture” entire public policy sectors and the corresponding ministries and state agencies, as it is state officials who reach out to tycoons or create businessmen out of governing party cadres and thus “capture” policy sectors with the help of such private entrepreneurs. In typical cases of state capture (Hellman et al., 2000), politicians may accept business proposals by entrepreneurs or co-shape such proposals with them. The phenomenon of state capture usually entails businessmen who bribe their way into looting state assets. For instance, businessmen acquire disproportionate influence over policy-making in public policy sectors where they want to invest their capital or to increase their business turnover. In a different vein, in the case of clientelism at the top, it is politicians in power rather than entrepreneurs who conceive and implement an alliance with businessmen. In state-dominated economies with few, if any, checks and balances (independent judiciary, independent regulators), it is politicians who chose which businessmen to approach and “work with” than the other way around. Thus, in all three countries under study, politicians in power do not pursue the construction of a competitive market as economic development policy. Rather, politicians employ clientelism to shape a business environment which looks different from a level-playing field (Cohen & Lampe, 2011, 405, 468). Empirical evidence of “clientelism at the top” is available for Serbia, Montenegro and North Macedonia and is briefly presented below. Clientelism at the Top and Policy Capture in Serbia The above patterns are very visible in Serbia under SNS rule. As a wellinformed observer of Serbian politics has put it, “you have a full-blown kind of clientelism, linking selected businessmen to ruling politicians, which is something larger and worse than corruption” (interview 9).

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Clientelism at the top occurs in Serbia’s agricultural, industrial and service sectors. In agriculture, the SNS government dispenses subsidies to selected large landowners instead of focusing on the crisis-hit small farmers (interview 10). In the industrial and service sectors, the reverse of state capture is also often observed. Whereas in cases of state capture, private businessmen influence decision-makers and curb policy-making to their interests in the sector in which they engage in business, in Serbia it is often the case that “tycoons are created by the political regime itself. This was a practice started by Miloševi´c, to the point that politicians and tycoons became inseparable, but it is also reproduced today under the rule of SNS” (interview 11). Further on, ruling party elites instrumentalize specific policy sectors (e.g., public works) to help the rich, which “amounts to a new redistribution of the—by now—scarce wealth. Along the way, members of the SNS party elite want to enrich themselves” (interview 12). In Serbia, such practices date to the pre-SNS period but became exacerbated after 2012. Before the rise of SNS to power (2012), strong private interests, e.g., the companies of Serbian tycoons Milan Beko and Miroslav Miškovi´c, who were close to the government coalition partners, the DS and the SPS parties, controlled the policy agenda of some ministries (interview 27). After the government change of 2012, there was a gradual shift of government practices, as the SNS party “used anti-corruption as a new basis of legitimizing government” (interview 28). The new SNS governing elite marginalized the business associates of previous governments and offered business opportunities to new business associates in a patron-client fashion. In the words of a leading member of a Serbian, pro-European NGO, the government “accused tycoons associated with the previous DSdominated coalition government of corruption, while it continued the corrupt practices of DS now in alliance with its own tycoons” (interview 29). As another Serbian NGO director put it, “Vuˇci´c won national elections by blaming Miškovi´c” (interview 11). Nevertheless, some powerful Serbian businessmen survived the initial strategy of SNS to clear out the field of private business associates. They mended their relations with the new government and continued their business endeavours under the SNS. Moreover, foreign interests, including Western and Russian interests, started playing a larger role after 2012. There were government-fostered oligopolies and monopolies in some sectors such as energy, information and communication technologies (ICT) and agribusiness, while a process

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of a shifting of allegiance of “Serbian tycoons towards the SNS governing elites was still under way” (interview 30). As a Professor of History of the University of Belgrade summarized the situation, we saw “not private interests, but governing party (SNS) interests, capturing the state” (interview 21). Or in the words of a former Serb diplomat, today “the ruling party elite instrumentalizes policy sectors in order to help the rich. What takes place under SNS rule is a new redistribution of scarce wealth, while the majority of people are preoccupied with their daily survival” (interview 31). In brief, “in Serbia we do not have an elected government, but a regime controlling state-owned enterprises, banks and media in the public and the private sector” (interview 21). Clientelism at the Top and Policy Capture in Montenegro In Montenegro, the same phenomenon acquired immense proportions in 1991–2020. It has been claimed that Ðukanovi´c “presides over a regime that is made up of a tightly-knit clan of only his closest political (and business associates) who collectively control many aspects of Montenegrin society” (Morrison, 2009, 229). The historian Srdja Pavlovi´c explained in 2005 (quoted by Kenneth Morrison): With the absence of any kind of control mechanism, the desire of the ruling elite in Montenegro to preserve and maintain power could easily lead to the creating of an authoritarian model of governing. Warning signs are already visible. The guarding and enlarging of personal financial empires inevitably produce an oligarchy, whose primary interests are personal. The process of privatization in Montenegro clearly shows the primacy of personal over national financial interests. (Morrison, 2009, 229)

Until the DPS party fell from power in 2020, in Montenegro the personal entourage of Ðukanovi´c used to take business-like decisions about investments and proceeded to forge alliances with businessmen. The DPS government officials or their relatives themselves became businessmen through private companies which they established and parachuted in selected market sectors. This was not a capture of the economy by private interests such as business elites but by state elites serving their own private interests.

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In the words of a Montenegrin academic, “there is no policy capture in Montenegro” (interview 22). As a foreign diplomat observed, “the economy of Montenegro is controlled by the governing party, the DPS, which, for example, places its own party cadres at the boards of directors of domestic or foreign business companies investing in Montenegro” (interview 23). Control of the economy was accomplished in numerous ways, including privatizations and public procurement contracts in which government members or members of Ðukanovi´c’s family won the relevant tenders; and through the government’s bailing out of indebted private banks owned by relatives, friends or close business associates (Bardos, 2020). The Montenegrin government’s business associates were not only local businessmen. Often, they were businessmen from other countries, interested in benefiting from the privatization of state assets. They invested capital in order to secure a dominant position in a certain market niche and expected to obtain quick profits. To illustrate, Montenegro’s state telecommunications company was sold to the Norwegian Telenor in 2004, while the oil company Jugopetrol was sold to Greece’s Hellenic Oil (Bechev, 2017, 69). In Serbia, Abu Dabi’s air carrier (Ethihad) bought off the former Jugoslav air carrier JAT, while since 2013 two small-sized but well-connected Russian banks, the Vneshtorgbank (VTB) and the Sperbank, have been doing business in Belgrade with the Serbian government (Bechev, 2017, 66). Moreover, the DPS put pressure on selected private businesses to hire government supporters. It also exerted pressure on business companies which did not cooperate with the governing party through targeted inspections of disfavoured companies by tax authorities. In brief, for approximately three decades (1991–2020), Montenegro differed from other post-Yugoslav successor states, where the government’s control of the economy was not uncommon. What set Montenegro apart is the fact that a single family, namely the family of Milo Ðukanovi´c, largely exerted control over the economy. Several examples attest to this fact. A first concrete example is the buying of a bank, the Prva bank (formerly Nikši´c bank) by Ðukanovi´c, his two siblings and a close friend. The bank later came very close to bankruptcy and was bailed out by the government of Ðukanovi´c (Patruci´c et al., 2009). A second example is the privatization of the state-owned “Institute for Urban Planning

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and Design”. This was bought by the Prime Minister’s brother, Aco Ðukanovi´c, who obtained 75% of the institute’s shares. He then used this privatized entity to make large-scale investments, apparently with the government’s blessings, on the coast of Montenegro on the Adriatic Sea. He is reported to possess land, building and cultural monuments in the location of Dorota on the coast (Perovi´c-Kora´c & Tadi´c-Mijovi´c, 2011). A third example is the concession of state-owned landed property on the Montenegrin coast to Edin Kolarevi´c, the son of Ana Kolarevi´c who is the sister of Milo Ðukanovi´c. The firm of Edin Kolarevi´c, “Sublime Developments”, owned 11,797 square metres on the coast but was also heavily indebted to the Prva Bank which, as noted above, was owned by the Ðukanovi´c family (Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, 2012; Perovi´c-Kora´c & Tadi´c-Mijovi´c, 2011). A fourth example is the establishment of a private university, the University of Donja Gorica, on landed property in Podgorica, 25% of which belongs to Ðukanovi´c himself (personal visit by the author in May 2016). The land is allegedly under mortgage, since the Montenegrin leader used this land in order to raise credit on two Montenegrin Banks, i.e., the CKB and the Montenegrin Bank and thus become able to finance the foundation of the private university. It could be argued that the above instances should be understood as instances of corruption, not clientelism. However, corruption entails violations of the law. By contrast, in the cases of policy capture, discussed in this section, government officials and their relatives did not necessarily trespass the law. They used legally available opportunities to engage in business, while also following a political career. Evidently, there was flagrant conflict of interest in all these instances where Ðukanovi´c himself and members of his family did business with the state over which he presides. Of course, all this does not preclude the possibility that private businessmen also approached DPS government officials, forged patronage linkages with them and obtained favourable treatment regarding their business initiatives. However, it is the governing elite which primarily had the initiative and the power to direct private investment in sectors which strengthened its own political power and enrichment.

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Clientelism at the Top and Policy Capture in North Macedonia In North Macedonia, clientelism at the top involves forging ties with foreign businesses and offering them favourable terms to invest in the country, securing minimal labour costs and low flat tax rates. It also involves penetrating the private media sector and marginalizing or shutting down private channels which refuse to serve the interests of the governing party. A typical example is the private television channel A1, which was raided by the financial police of North Macedonia in November 2010 (Maruši´c, 2010a, 2010b). As wiretapped records of telephone conversations revealed in 2015, high-ranking members of the VMRO-DPMNE party had engaged in private business deals. Such deals were not reminiscent of typical state policy capture, but indicative of the capture of selected market niches by government officials. In the words of a North Macedonian journalist, “the state and governing party are more powerful than businessmen. The latter do not have a choice but to cooperate with the government” (interview 4). As in the case of Montenegro, in North Macedonia under VMRODPMNE rule, businessmen had ample room for starting business initiatives and connecting themselves with the government, but they came upon limits: “there is a mutual connection between business and government, but essentially it is the government which controls everything” (interview 26). The state captured selected business sectors to the benefit of the governing elite (interview 18). A different view would be that there is typical state capture by private business interests in some sectors as well as government-driven capture of other sectors. As a North Macedonian journalist and NGO official put it: “some sectors such as energy and telecommunications are captured by foreign business interests. For example, Greeks control oil distribution, textile production and telecommunications, while Austrians control the banking and electricity sectors. Foreign investors are not required to pay insurance contributions for their workers and they give them the minimum salary” (interview 25). On the other hand, Gruevski’s government (2006–2016) clearly controlled private media in North Macedonia, including most newspapers, TV and radio stations. According to a former Member of Parliament (SDSM party), the same was true for the construction sector, where the government “hands out public contracts to selected companies which

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later return part of the received state budget funds to the VMRO party” (interview 1). A typical manner in which government officials or trusted business associates used to control segments of the market was through companies registered not in North Macedonia but in remote countries which are “tax-heavens”, such as Belize. For example, Gruevski’s best man in his first marriage, Risto Novachevski, was reported to be the manager of the Belize-registered company “Sirah Limited”, which bought large plots of wooded land in Vodno, the most expensive neighbourhood of Skopje (Meta.MK News Agency, 2016). Further on, according to telephone conversations leaked in March 2015, Gruevski himself was interested in doing real estate business and acquiring landed property. He discussed such plans on the phone with government ministers and government officials and was seen visiting landed property to be bought. The opposition brought evidence in the form of telephone tapes to that effect (Zaev, 2015). In short, there was strong indication of government capture of lucrative opportunities in the real estate sector in North Macedonia.

6.4

Clientelism at the Middle Level

Middle-level clientelism entails the hand-picking and promotion of tenured civil servants whose basic qualification is that they are supporters of the governing party. They are lifted up to the top echelons of the civil service hierarchy in a manner typical of post-Yugoslav state bureaucracies (Rabrenovi´c & Verheijen, 2005). It is almost impossible to pursue a career in the public sectors of the states under study without becoming politically affiliated with the government of the day. As Table 6.3 shows, respondents claim that factors other than hard work propel one’s career in the public sector forward. This is obviously a trend that negatively affects administrative capacities and dampens efficiency. Economic modernization and inclusion in today’s competitive global economy require the functioning of a reliable and competent state. An efficient state organization would steer a nation’s economy and society out of the murky waters of economic stagnation or decline. Even though one would make the hypothesis that on the road to EU integration, post-Yugoslav successor states would gradually shed patterns of “clientelism at the middle level”, in practice such phenomena persist over time in a variety of ways.

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Table 6.3 Perceptions of factors affecting a successful professional career in the public sector. “To what extent do you agree or not agree with the following statements?”

Albania Bosnia-Herzegovina North Macedonia Kosovo Montenegro Serbia

“…for most people it is more a matter of connections” (2017) On average agreement with the statement

“…for most people it is more a matter of connections” (2018) On average agreement with the statement

6.5 7.1 7.1 6.8 6.1 7.7

7.0 7.0 6.9 6.8 7.7 7.3

Note Scale 1–10, where 10 means “a matter of connections”; average score given by respondents for each country shown; region-wide opinion survey Source Regional Cooperation Council (2019, 103, Figure 103)

A few examples from Montenegro and Serbia may suffice to shed light on “clientelism at the middle level”. Between 1990 and 2020, Montenegro’s public administration primarily worked to support the DPS in prolonging its stay in power. The DPS government ministers used to hand-pick middle and top-ranking civil servants. However, in the context of Montenegro’s accession negotiations, a law to modernize the civil service was passed in 2017 (European Commission 2018, 10–12). Still, the modernization of the civil service did not progress sufficiently. While government ministers were not allowed to select new employees anymore, directors general of ministries were assigned to do so. Such high-ranking civil servants in Montenegro were party members of the DPS. Moreover, in contrast to the past, when as a rule the government minister used to select the top-ranked candidate (the one with most credentials), the new law allows “large room for discretion, as the selection is now made among the top three ranked candidates” for a public sector job (personal communication with Montenegrin political analyst, February 2019). In late 2020, the new coalition government started intervening in the public administration. As already noted, senior civil servants were close and long-term associates of the DPS party, which was now in opposition. “Some changes to the civil service law were initiated with an aim of relaxing eligibility criteria and widening the scope for termination

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of the mandate of senior civil servants” (personal communication with Montenegrin political analyst, 16 December 2020). Indeed, in January 2021 the tripartite coalition supporting the Krivokapi´c government passed a law which led to the reorganization of public administration and particularly affected the senior posts of the civil service. As a result, 65% of higher civil servants in the central public administration were dismissed or resigned (European Commission, 2021b, 16). In view of the above, it is not surprising that in Montenegro the politicization of the public administration continues unabated. The managerial capacity of ministries and state agencies remains low, while employees routinely function in a procedure-oriented rather than results-based environment. A recent example of clientelism at the middle comes from the government coalition led by Krivokapi´c. Instead of introducing a meritocratic system of appointments at the public sector, the three governing parties (the DF, the URA and the “Peace is Our Nation” coalition of the Democrats and DEMOS parties) agreed on quotas with regard to appointments to managerial posts. A typical example of this practice was the firing of principals and deputy principals of about 450 state schools in Montenegro by the Minister of Education Vesna Brati´c in the summer of 2021. The minister replaced them with school heads according to a “key”, i.e., a pre-determined analogy of posts granted to the three parties governing in coalition (interview 47; Sofranac, 2021). As under DPS rule, Montenegrins saw through the government’s claims about applying meritocracy under the coalition governments of 2020–2022, too: in an opinion poll conducted by the MNE polling company in July 2022, 63% of respondents claimed that for appointments at the public sector “party membership was the de facto most important criterion” (Center for Civic Education, 2022). There is a similar assertion about the public administration in North Macedonia, regardless of the party in power: “If you are not linked to the governing party, you cannot be promoted in the civil service” (interview 46). Another recent example is the way in which senior civil service posts are filled in Serbia. Normally, the posts should be occupied by civil servants selected through merit-based processes. In practice, ministers of the SNS government have followed a pattern of appointing “acting” heads of directorates for a term of six months that may be further extended for three months. In June 2021, among all appointments to senior posts 62% were “acting”, up from 56% in March 2020 (European Commission,

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2021a, 15). Moreover, even though the law forbids it, those appointed as “acting heads” are not necessarily civil servants and in fact over 50% of such appointments in 2019–2021 were to “acting positions” (European Commission, 2021a, 15). The reasons for the persistence of the trend, although differing by country, are several. First, there is long-term distrust of citizens and political parties towards the state and suspicion among ethnic groups. Second, there is a historical legacy of political control of the bureaucracy, inherited from the period of state socialism. Third, there is a conceptualization of the civil service as a depository of low-skill, redundant labour rather than as a guardian of legality, which in modern democracies ideally should bound all administrative acts. Lenard J. Cohen and John R. Lampe summarize the situation at multiple levels of the public administration: “The ‘spoils system’ mentality throughout the Western Balkans has generally meant that each victorious incoming political party, or more typically a coalition of parties, not only changes the head of each ministry but also treats its entire administrative staff as its patrimony and as an opportunity for rewarding its supporters with patronage appointments” (Cohen & Lampe, 2011, 132). It is to such recruitment of party supporters to the lower echelons of the public administration and state-owned enterprises that I now turn.

6.5

Clientelism at the Bottom Level

This type of clientelism means the distribution of spoils to favoured individuals or to selected occupational categories of the population or interest groups which constitute the favoured electoral pool of a party’s voters. “Clientelism at the bottom” involves the recruitment of voters of the governing party to public sector jobs, either in tenure-track posts or more frequently on temporary, fixed-term or project-based job contracts. This type of clientelism also involves exerting influence on public services, such as public hospitals, welfare services, state-owned banks and the personnel departments of central and local public administration. The political patron knits informal nets of personal influence in all these state agencies. The political client enjoys the support of a minister or a local organization of a governing party and benefits from better or quicker or more generous treatment. For example, the political client may be accepted earlier to a hospital, receive a little-known state university

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stipend or, if he or she is already a public employee, be transferred to a more relaxed public sector job. On the other hand, clientelism at the bottom also means that a group of people who share the same status, e.g., war veterans or farmers from a favoured region of the country, receive resources such as pensions or allowances not distributed to other groups of similar status. In times of economic adversity, such favoured groups may be shielded from public spending cuts. This is a set of governing strategies which stand at the crossroads between clientelism and populism (Chapter 5). Both types of state-society relations feed each other in the context of post-Yugoslav successor states. Family Networks and Political Party Networks In these states, contacts or affiliation with a political party in government as well as family connections count a lot for job seekers. In fact, it is difficult to distinguish between these two types of linkage to the labour market. As Table 6.4 shows, when it comes to selecting assets which are most useful for finding a job, most respondents choose “personal contacts” and “networks of family and friends in high places”. In the three countries under study, amidst periodic wars, ethnic conflict and economic failure the wider family is one of the few, if not the only, institution that stays intact. Indeed, clientelism at the bottom is embedded in family networks. For example, when discussing the case of Table 6.4 “In your opinion, which two assets are most important for finding a job today?” Personal contacts Network of family Level of one’s (%) and friends in high qualification/education places (%) (%) Albania Bosnia-Herzegovina North Macedonia Kosovo Montenegro Serbia

24 52 38 33 50 52

27 30 39 35 33 31

Note % share of respondents, region-wide opinion survey; maximum two answers Source Regional Cooperation Council (2019, 53, Figure 43)

40 19 19 32 26 22

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Kosovo, Cohen and Lampe cite the news item that in 2005 in the then state-owned Prishtina airport, employees used to call each other not by name or by their job title (e.g., “chief”), but by their kin role: “uncle”, “nephew”, “cousin” (Cohen & Lampe, 2011, 146). When it comes to obtaining a job, it is difficult to disentangle the “purchasing power” of family connections from party loyalty. Both matter a lot. Clientelism at the Bottom in Serbia In Serbia, the transition from the semi-authoritarian regime of Miloševi´c to the democratic regime inaugurated by Ðind-i´c and Koštunica in 2000 did not mean abandoning clientelism at the bottom. By contrast, the previously employed criterion for recruitment to the public sector, namely loyalty to the single governing party between 1990 and 2000, the SPS, was perpetuated. It was now supplanted by the criterion of loyalty to the parties forming successive, unstable coalition governments, e.g., the DS and the DSS. Party supporters were channelled to the ministries which each government coalition partner was assigned to manage. If a minister and a deputy minister, appointed at the same ministry, came from different parties, then different and opposing teams of newly hired public employees were formed within that ministry. The consequence for the government and administration of Serbia was very evident. The country did not have a set of coordinated ministries co-operating within a coalition government, but “a confederation of fiefdoms” (Cohen & Lampe, 2011, 133). Patronage in Serbia was a long-term phenomenon. It has been practised by successive parties in government (Ramet, 2006; Suboti´c, 2017, 172). In fact, when more than one party participated in a coalition government (a frequent phenomenon in post-Miloševi´c Serbia), the number of available public sector jobs at various levels would grow to accommodate for the pressures by partners of coalition governments to obtain their share of the pie of public sector job opportunities (Dragojevi´c & Konitzer, 2013). After 2012, the SNS imitated and expanded on the clientelist practices of previous governing parties. The cumulative outcome result of all these practices was that in 2014, Serbia was reported to have a civil service force of 558,000 (including defence but excluding local public administration personnel and the personnel of state-owned enterprises). Tony Verheijen notes that this is almost double the number of civil servants in other European countries

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with a population of similar size, such as Bulgaria, Belgium or the Czech Republic (Verheijen, 2014). Moreover, in Serbia SNS government officials instructed state-owned pension funds to increase pensions, thus “buying” off the support of pensioners (interview 13). This type of particularistic, rather than universalistic, distribution of income to selected low-income groups (a populist pattern) is combined with the unnecessary recruitment of new employees to the public sector, particularly in municipalities controlled by the SNS (interview 14). It turns out, then, that this is a kind of practice in which the logic of clientelist state-society relations overlaps with the logic of populist state-society relations (Chapter 5). Clientelism at the Bottom in Montenegro Among the three countries under study, the foremost example of clientelism at the bottom is Montenegro, where one party, the Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS) under Milo Ðukanovi´c, ruled for three decades, until August 2020. In Montenegro, about one-third of total employment posts were public sector posts and they tended to be filled by supporters of DPS (Sosi´c & Marovi´c, 2014, 32). “Almost one-third of all legally employed people in the country work in public administration” (Komar, 2019, 71). This was the result of increased hiring over a long period of time. Indeed, based on official government data, the personnel of Montenegro’s public administration increased by 11.8% between 2010 and 2016 (there were 18,793 employees in 2010 and 21,320 in 2016; Statistical Office of Montenegro, 2016). Moreover, among post-Yugoslav successor states, Montenegro had the fastest growing public employment: “compared to last years’ results (2017), Montenegro has recorded a sizable increase in public sector employment, i.e., +7 percent” (Regional Cooperation Council, 2019, 42). It can be argued that in Montenegro not just the higher-ranking but most of public employees are pro-government, a pattern resulting from the prolonged hold of the DPS party on power. Consequently, the public administration is heavily politicized. The onus for such politicization of the central public administration rested with the DPS party, although at the local government level, “opposition parties also appointed their own people in municipalities which they controlled” (interview 41).

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Moreover, opinion poll results point in the same direction. In a public opinion survey conducted in 2018 by the IPSOS polling agency, only about 25% of respondents replied that education, merit, and experience play a critical part in recruitment to Montenegro’s public administration. By contrast, 62% of respondents claimed that social or family connections are important for the purpose of being hired in the public administration, while 56% responded that political connections matter (multiple replies were possible in the relevant question; Institut Alternativa, 2018). As the well-known historian and analyst of Montenegrin politics, Kenneth Morrison summarizes the situation in Montenegro: The problem, ultimately, remains that the lines between the DPS, the government they lead and state institutions are blurred. To some extent, the party is the state, and the DPS’ well-established control over the instruments of it awards them a significant advantage over the opposition. Their budget for election campaigns alone significantly outstrips their closest competitors, and in elections voters continue to support the DPS because they are likely victors and because they understand that to function outside the system of patronage may not be in their best interests. The patronage of those in power is crucial to employment (particularly those who work in the public sector) and social advancement. (Morrison, 2018, 172)

As the above quote implies, under the DPS governments Montenegrins may have learned, i.e., may have been politically socialized into living with political clientelism as a fact of life and have probably strived to strategically use clientelism to their own ends. The same could be argued for the post-DPS era. The fall of DPS from power in late 2020 created hopes for a reversal of patronage. However, such hopes were soon dashed. The new, threeparty based government coalition also practised clientelism at the bottom in 2020–2022. “Under the tripartite government there was a massive influx of new employees in the public administration and the state-owned enterprises” (interview 47). The tendency to hire party supporters was unrestrained and led to the near financial collapse of state-owned enterprises such as, for instance, CEDIS, the Montenegrin state-owned power grid operator responsible for energy distribution in the country. In 2021, the company suffered a 9.8 million Euro loss. In a public statement, the CEDIS company denied that the loss was largely owed to over 2 million Euro increase in salaries, wages and severance payments to CEDIS personnel (Ralev, 2022), which

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is actually what probably happened (interview 47 and personal communication with political analyst and public opinion researcher, Podgorica, 26 July 2022). Clientelism at the Bottom in North Macedonia Similar phenomena occur in North Macedonia. The VMRO-DPMNE government used to practise clientelism at the bottom in the sense that it opened the gates of public sector jobs to its party voters (interviews 3 and 5). Indeed, as official data of the Macedonian State Statistical Office show, there was a sharp increase in the size of public employment between 2008, the year VMRO-DPMNE obtained the absolute majority of parliamentary seats, and 2014, a year in which the same party won national elections again. In 2008, among those employed in sectors other than the private sector 24.2% were employed in the public administration, defence and compulsory social security (State Statistical Office of the Republic of Macedonia, 2008, 30). Six years later, in 2014, that share was 30.4% (State Statistical Office of the Republic of Macedonia, 2014, 56). Among those employed in the public sector in North Macedonia, most were not civil servants but temporary public employees hired on the basis of their patronage links with the governing coalition of parties (VMRODPMNE and the Albanian party DUI). Towards the end of 2011, out of 120,000 public employees only one-sixth had been hired and were regulated by Civil Service and Public Servants’ legislation. Thus, the majority were hired on various job contracts (OECD, 2013). These patronage phenomena, however, did not appear suddenly with the ascent of VMRO-DPMNE to government in 2006. The SDSM party extensively practised patronage in the 1990s and the 2000s until ceding power to a VMRO-DPMNE-led government coalition. Nor did political clientelism eclipse after the fall of that party from power in 2017 and its replacement by an SDSM-led government coalition. “After 2017 the Social Democratic Union (SDSM) practiced political clientelism at entry-level posts of public administration. The whole public administration is clientelist, including appointments of teachers at elementary and high schools” (interview 45). Albanian political parties in North Macedonia, too, have been involved in sustaining patronage for a long term and certainly since the Ohrid Framework Agreement (2001) which provided for the participation of the Albanian minority in national and local government structures. As other

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Southeast European voters do, Albanian voters in North Macedonia identify with political parties not on a programmatic but on a patron-client basis (Cohen & Lampe, 2011, 265). “Albanian parties and specifically the DUI party are the masters of political patronage. The party has strengthened the culture of political patronage” (interview 44). Moreover, “the DUI have their own people appointed not only in government, but also in all courts” (interview 46). Other analysts agree too: In reality clientelism is a practice to which all political parties resort, regardless of whether they are Macedonian or Albanian. It represents a grave problem which affects society as a whole, Albanians as much as Macedonians. The allocation of investments and the recruitment of personnel into municipal authorities depends not on ethnicity, but on political party affiliation. (Lukic, 2013, 493–494; my translation from the French original)

Finally, one analyst even claims that there are no real political parties in North Macedonia. Each party is just a constitutive part of a large patronage group, and three or four such groups compete for power (Schenker, 2012). Another analyst claims that although after the government change of 2017, political clientelism was not as extensive as beforehand, it was still practised widely. In North Macedonia, “political patronage is a systemic error” (interview 44). This may mean that there is no variation in the extent of clientelism depending on party or ethnic origin ties. As a journalist put it, “clientelism is practiced across the board, by all parties” (interview 45).

6.6

Conclusions

In the analytical approach of this book what the above phenomena amount to is a reinforcement of pre-existing state-society relations. These are relations traditionally built along patronage lines. Political clientelism at the bottom, if not also the middle and top levels, reflects repeated practices through which networks between state and society have been woven. Over time, a clientelist cognitive framework has arisen and it is difficult to alter, let alone dislocate it, regardless of which party or coalition of parties is in government.

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In this chapter, my main argument has been that clientelism in the post-Yugoslav successor states is a type of state-society relation, which reflects asymmetries of power. Clientelism is a three-fold type of statesociety relation. First, there is clientelism at the top, meaning the relations forged between the head of government and government ministers on the one hand and representatives of the business world on the other. This often entails an unusual kind of state capture in which the protagonists are not businessmen approaching politicians in power. The protagonists are government officials selecting out businessmen to do business with and enrich themselves for as long as they remain in government. Then there is clientelism at the middle, meaning the recruitment of political party supporters to the higher echelons of ministries, public bodies and state-owned enterprises. And, finally, there is the most common form of clientelism, namely clientelism at the bottom. This entails the recruitment of party voters to entry-level positions of the public sector as well as the preferential treatment of such voters. Clientelism affects their horizontal mobility, i.e., transfers across public services, and vertical mobility, i.e., their rise up the career ladder. Patrons also favour their political clients when the state hands out social transfers to the population (e.g., ad hoc distributed sums of money, allowances in-kind). In all these cases, clientelism does not imply a fair patron-client exchange where the patron hands out tangible protection (jobs, benefits) and the client offers political support, but rather unequal relations. The patron has the power to elevate or downgrade a client. This is true even if the client is not an unemployed person seeking work in the public sector but a businessman seeking investment opportunities. A point to retain is that the first of the three types of clientelism, i.e., clientelism at the top, has to do with the government’s distribution of state assets, bank loans and government-controlled investment opportunities to selected business circles. Instead of a typical state capture, we have capture of business sectors by government officials turned into businessmen or doing business through their own relatives or front men. In other words, in Serbia, Montenegro and North Macedonia, where governing elites use clientelism in state-business relations, we observe the reverse of the phenomenon of state capture: it is not business companies which capture state sectors, but rather state elites themselves which select business companies or create such companies anew and help favoured companies to increase their market share and profits. Of course, none of

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the above phenomena of the clientelist politics-business nexus is unrelated to corruption, the topic of the chapter that follows.

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CHAPTER 7

Political Corruption as a Type of State-Society Relation Eroding Democracy

While research on corruption is usually hampered by the lack of evidence, in post-Yugoslav successor states there are periodic outbursts of publicity about corrupt acts. Hands-on documentation of corruption is made available to the public. Well-known examples are the cases of allegations for corruption against the leaders of Montenegro and North Macedonia, namely Ðukanovi´c and Gruevski, and their respective political parties, the DPS and the VMRO-DPMNE (Morrison, 2017, 357–358; Ramet, 2017, 297–299). Regarding Montenegro, in the 2000s revelations about Ðukanovi´c, the country’s then Prime Minister (PM), caught the interest of international media. At least since 2001, Croatian, Italian and international newspapers have highlighted “links between local mafia and the Montenegrin government. The then Italian President Ciampi in a visit to the region in January 2002 declined to meet Ðukanovi´c” (Roberts, 2007, 462). In 2003 Italian prosecuting authorities accused Ðukanovi´c of having used Montenegro and particularly the country’s ports on the Adriatic Sea as points of transit for the smuggling of cigarettes towards other European countries. The Montenegrin leader initially claimed diplomatic immunity, but in 2008 surrendered himself to the authorities in Bari to be questioned. Criminal investigations furnished no proof, and charges against him were dropped in 2009. “Nevertheless, accusations have since persisted on the links © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 D. A. Sotiropoulos, The Irregular Pendulum of Democracy, New Perspectives on South-East Europe, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25609-7_7

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between Ðukanovi´c and his party with the mafia” (Luki´c, 2013, 574). The Montenegrin leader continued to be dogged by persistent allegations of links to the Italian mafia, the Balkan underworld and alleged criminals such as Andrija Draškovi´c and the Swiss-based Serbian businessman, Stanko’Cane’ Suboti´c” (Morrison, 2018, 145–146). There is a comparable case of public revelations on corruption in North Macedonia. In the spring of 2015, an unprecedented series of revelations was made owing to the opposition party’s (SDSM) gradual release of twenty thousand (20,000) wiretapped confidential telephone conversations, including conversations of government ministers and officials of the then ruling VMRO-DPMNE party. Except for evidence on rigging elections and abusing state resources, the tapes revealed plans of cabinet members, including PM Nikola Gruevski, to engage in murky business deals, arbitrarily arrange public procurement and illegally seize landed property (Bieber, 2015; Ramet, 2017, 299). Not all corruption involves politicians. It may involve illegal exchanges in the private sector, such as the paying of bribes to obtain insider information about a business company. While corruption in the private sector, which is not necessarily related to the conduct of national politics, may be indicative of the larger issue of unregulated or “wild” capitalism characterizing the post-Yugoslav successor states, my focus in this chapter is specifically on political corruption. And even though when looking at Southeastern Europe, analysts may tend to discuss organized crime and corruption together (e.g., Van Ham, 2014). In this chapter I will focus on political corruption, on which there is more reliable information regarding the post-Yugoslav successor states. Combining quantitative assessments of the extent of perceived corruption with qualitative reports on corruption, one can claim that the post-Yugoslav successor states stand out for a specific reason: corruption is observed in other European countries, but in post-Yugoslavia corruption has spread over time and has overflowed national territories. Generally the fight against corruption in Southeastern Europe has started only recently and has borne few fruits (Bratu et al., 2017; Cohen & Lampe, 2011, 143–148; European Parliament, 2015; Sotiropoulos, 2017; Teichmann & Falker, 2020). What I argue in this chapter is that these patterns reflect a type of statesociety relations and that governing elites in the three countries are to an extent able to shape these relations to their own benefit. The relations I am writing about do not involve all classes and strata of society, but only

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a part of it with which political elites engage in business. Of course, this is not news, as corrupt state-society relations preceded the rise of the current post-Yugoslav political elites to power. Corruption and the meagre results of the fight against corruption may be traced back to preconditions such as the emergence of unregulated capitalism in the Western Balkans after 1991 and the spread of a divisive culture of mistrust relying on family and ethnic bonds (chapter four of the book). A main point of this chapter is that political corruption includes not only the use of public office for private benefit (World Bank, 2022), i.e., personal enrichment, but also the use of public office for private benefit so as to consolidate political power. In other words, a government-business nexus is built to serve two social functions. As I explained in the second chapter of the book, the first function is to facilitate the personal enrichment of involved politicians and businessmen, while the second one is to foster and prolong the involved politicians’ grip on power. I have drawn these ideas from Max Weber’s celebrated essay “Politics as a Vocation” (Weber, 1919). Weber did not conceptualize his idea of politicians’ living “for” and “off” politics in order to analyse political corruption. However, I argue that this is possible and substantiate it with reference to the behaviour of corrupt politicians in North Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia. As I show further in this chapter, in these three countries the extent of corruption is quite large. I proceed to discuss the forms of corruption and the failure of anti-corruption policies in the three countries under study, including the lack of institutional buffers to corruption in each of them. In the end I analyse the political and economic functions of corruption.

7.1 Political Corruption as a Type of State-Society Relation In North Macedonia, as the wiretapping affair of 2015–2016 has shown, the role of secret services in corruption cannot be underestimated. The secret services of that country have played a vital role in creating a corruption network with positive political benefits for the VMRO-DPMNE governing coalition. In North Macedonia, “the head of the secret services has forged the ties which bind mass media, the government and businesses” (interview 4; list of interviews at the end of the book). As a matter of fact, the head of the secret services under VMRO-DPMNE rule, Sasho Mijalkov, was tried for the aforementioned wiretapping and on various

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counts of corruption in February and April 2021. He was condemned to lengthy prison sentences. Commenting on that coalition government, a former trade unionist noted that the “coalition government ruling the country is a kleptocratic government” (interview 15). Elected officials only formally defended the public interest and in practice used their position for personal benefit. The desired benefit is not necessarily economic, as in typical cases of corruption. It is also political, defined in the sense of prolonging one’s stay in power by all possible legal and illegal means. In doing so, elected officials forged relations between the government and segments of the business elites by selecting out businessmen with whom they created informal networks. Such informal networks involved high-profile businessmen and top politicians who were rarely apprehended. In post-Yugoslav successor states, under the rule of governments eroding democracy, success in the fight against corruption has been rather small. Rare examples were the conviction to imprisonment of the Montenegrin former President of the “State Union of Serbia and Montenegro”, Svetozar Marovi´c, in May 2016 (Tomovi´c, 2016) and a similar conviction of one of the biggest businessmen of Serbia, Miroslav Miškovi´c, in June 2016 (Pantovi´c, 2016). Infrequent successes in the fight against corruption reflect the fact that corruption and the fight against it are not major issues on which electoral campaigns are fought. For instance, political corruption may be a recurrent instance in Montenegro’s political system, but at the same time it does not figure prominently in the country’s political agenda. There are reasons for this paradox. In 2005 Kenneth Morrison interviewed Vanja Calovi´c, a leading activist of the Podgorica-based NGO MANS, who claims that “issues of identity are used as a smokescreen”: The main problem in Montenegro are organized crime and corruption. Issues of ethnicity and identity are frequently used to cover real problems, as they have been in the past 17 years since the introduction of multi-party elections. However, following the referendum [of 2006] we thought the government would no longer be able to hide behind these issues. Instead, they would have to address social issues, dirty privatization, economic issues, corruption and economic crime. But still they are talking about whether we are Serbs or Montenegrins, about the Montenegrin language, the Montenegrin church and so forth. (Morrison, 2009, 228)

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Post-Yugoslav successor states today are widely considered to be very corrupt. Comparatively speaking, they are seen as more corrupt than other European democracies, including East European ones. This is a pattern emerging on various counts, such as the Corruption Perception Index (CPI) of Transparency International (Tables 7.1 and 7.2), the Control of Corruption indicator of the World Bank “Worldwide Governance Indicators” (Table 7.3), the opinion surveys of the Regional Cooperation Council (Table 7.4) as well as the reports issued by the DG Enlargement of the European Commission. As Tables 7.1 and 7.2 show, compared to other states across Eastern Europe, North Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia are ranked rather low. The same holds for the rest of West Balkan states. These observations Table 7.1 Extent of Change in Perceived Corruption (CPI) in Southeastern Europe in Comparative Perspective, 2009 and 2015 (Transparency International)

Albania Bosnia-Herzegovina Croatia North Macedonia Kosovo Montenegro Serbia Bulgaria Romania

2009

2015

32 30 41 38 28 39 35 38 38

36 38 51 42 33 44 40 46 41

Change + + + + + + + + +

4 8 10 4 5 5 5 8 3

Source Transparency International (2016), https://www.transpare ncy.org/cpi2015/, last accessed on 13 August 2022. The average CPI (=Corruption Perception Index) of these five countries is shown in the last row. The highest the level of CPI, the less corrupt a country is perceived to be

Table 7.2 Extent of Perceived Corruption (CPI) in Three Post-Yugoslav Successor States, 2009–2021 (Transparency International)

Serbia Montenegro North Macedonia

2009

2015

2016

2017

2018

2019

2020

2021

35 39 38

40 44 42

42 45 37

41 46 35

39 45 37

39 45 35

38 45 35

38 46 39

Source Transparency International (various years), CPI index of Transparency International, https:// www.transparency.org/en/cpi, last accessed on 26 July 2022. The highest the level of CPI, the less corrupt a country is perceived to be

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Table 7.3 Control of Corruption in Southeastern Europe in Comparative Perspective (World Bank’s Worldwide Governance Indicators)

Albania Bosnia and Herzegovina Croatia North Macedonia Kosovo Montenegro Serbia Bulgaria Romania

2003

2015

2020

26 47 60 31 23 40 41 55 47

40 45 63 54 37 56 51 49 58

32 29 62 37 37 56 38 46 55

Source World Bank (2022), http://info.worldbank.org/govern ance/wgi/Home/Reports, last accessed on 26 July 2022. The higher the figure shown, the better a country is in terms of controlling corruption in comparison with all other countries in the World Bank’s list

Table 7.4 Perceptions of Extent of Corruption in Various Political Institutions in Western Balkan Countries, 2019 “To what extent do you agree or not agree that the following categories in your country are affected by corruption?”

Albania Bosnia-Herzegovina North Macedonia Kosovo Montenegro Serbia

Political parties (%)

Public officials/civil servants (%)

Parliament (%)

Judiciary (%)

87 85 69 69 80 74

75 81 60 67 70 64

85 79 68 55 73 5

85 81 67 65 79 69

Source Regional Cooperation Council, 2019, 102, Fig. 11. The table shows % share of respondents, several responses allowed; region-wide opinion survey

are based on the most commonly used indicator to measure corruption, the Corruption Perception Index (CPI) of Transparency International (TI). Although disputed by critics (Heywood, 2017), the CPI provides a rough measure of the perceived extent of corruption in each country. Based on numerous opinion surveys, this index is sensitive to shifts in the

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patterns of criminal investigations for corruption and in the mass media’s fluctuating attention towards or away from corruption. More concretely, if a country takes measures to fight corruption (i.e., anti-corruption measures) and new scandals or illicit affairs are publicly revealed, then the impression that this country is ravaged by corruption spreads. Chances are that, as a consequence, this country will appear to be more corrupt than other countries which have not undergone similar policy changes strengthening the fight against corruption. A typical example is offered in Table 7.2. It shows that in terms of CPI levels in 2015–2018, North Macedonia, where extensive new criminal investigations were under way, performs worse than Serbia and Montenegro. In the latter two countries in the same period, very little was done in the way of anti-corruption. The CPI provides only a very rough idea about where a certain country stands on the extent of perceived corruption relative to other countries. The CPI is not based on uniform attitudinal surveys in all countries. Rather than being a reliable cross-national measure of corruption, the CPI is thus an indicator which is probably more useful for registering national trends over time, if one concentrates on long-term trends and does not take year-by-year estimates at face value. As Table 7.1 shows, there are three sub-groups of West Balkan countries as far as perceived corruption is concerned. Kosovo, BosniaHerzegovina and Albania are perceived as the most corrupt among West Balkan countries, while Croatia the least corrupt. North Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia fall in between these two “extremes”. This tripartite pattern has remained more or less the same since 2007, i.e., the first year after the separation of Montenegro from Serbia (2006). In 2016, 15 per cent of respondents in Serbia stated that they had given bribes to a public official in the previous 12 months. In Montenegro, 10 per cent stated that they had done so (Transparency International 2016; no data for North Macedonia). The fact that the extent of corruption is quite large is also corroborated by another indicator, namely “control of corruption”, which is used by the World Bank as part of Worldwide Governance indicators’ database. According to the World Bank, “control of corruption captures perceptions of the extent to which public power is exercised for private gain, including both petty and grand forms of corruption, as well as ‘capture’ of the state by elites and private interests” (World Bank, 2022). Based on World Bank data (Table 7.3), we see that over time no Balkan country

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has made progress in fighting corruption and that in most countries there may have been a deterioration in that front between 2015–2020. The assessments of external observers (e.g., Transparency International, the World Bank), however meticulously crafted, should be complemented by views from the field, namely perceptions of victims or observers of corrupt acts. There are opinion surveys on corruption following the model of “victimization studies” of criminology to assess the extent of crime occurrence. The Regional Cooperation Council (RCC), an international organization based in Sarajevo and funded by the European Commission and participant countries, namely the countries of Southeastern Europe, conducts such studies (e.g., Regional Cooperation Council, 2015, 2019). On the basis of relevant opinion surveys, it turns out that citizens of West Balkan countries perceive political corruption to be rampant (Table 7.4). Among political institutions, political parties are perceived as the most corrupt institutions, followed by the judiciary. Among the Western Balkan states, Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Montenegro stand out as the countries in which a very high proportion of citizens perceive corruption as affecting political institutions and political and administrative officials. The impression that corruption is extensive in the three countries under study, as indicated by Tables 7.1, 7.2, 7.3 and 7.4, is corroborated by qualitative assessments of international organizations. This becomes evident if we examine the three countries one by one. For instance, the otherwise reserved diplomatic language of the European Commission’s annual reports changes when discussing the fight against corruption in 2015 in North Macedonia: “The country has some level of preparation in the fight against corruption. No progress has been achieved in the past year on the outstanding issues identified. Corruption remains widespread” (European Commission, 2015c, 15; italics in the original). “Montenegro has achieved some level of preparation in the fight against corruption. Corruption remains prevalent in many areas and continues to be a serious problem” (European Commission, 2015b, 14). “Serbia has some level of preparation in the fight against corruption. Some progress has been achieved in the past year…However, corruption remains widespread.” (European Commission, 2015a, 13; italics in the original). Subsequent European Commission reports reiterate similar points. The European Commission’s Reports for 2019, covering the period March 2018—March 2019, indicate that the situation had not changed in Serbia

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and Montenegro, but had improved in North Macedonia (after the resignation of Gruevski in January 2016 and the government turnover of May 2017). In detail, in Serbia “little progress has been made…. Law enforcement and judicial authorities still need to establish a credible track record of operationally independent prosecutions and of finalized highlevel corruption cases. Overall, corruption is prevalent in many areas and remains an issue of concern” (European Commission, 2019a, 3–4). In Montenegro “there was some limited progress during the reporting period. However, corruption is prevalent in many areas and remains an issue of concern…An initial track record of investigation, prosecution and final convictions in high-level corruption cases has been established, but the criminal justice response against high-level corruption remains too limited” (European Commission, 2019b, 4). And in North Macedonia in the fight against corruption “good progress has been made through further consolidating a track record on investigating, prosecuting and trying high-level corruption cases and through changes to the legislative framework…. The authorities have to further step-up efforts to demonstrate that fight against corruption is a national priority at all levels of powers. However, corruption is prevalent in many areas and remains an issue of concern” (European Commission, 2019c, 4). The same issues are reiterated in the reports on each of these countries in the years that followed (in 2020–2022, as discussed below in this chapter). The main point is that in each of the three countries the anti-corruption effort has left a lot to be desired (chapters eight, nine and ten of the book).

7.2

Forms and Explanations of Corruption

Corruption can take different forms such as petty (or low-level) corruption involving under-the-table informal exchanges between street-level bureaucrats and individuals or businesses, and high-level or grand corruption. In the latter case, high-level state officials such as politically appointed heads of administrative units and state agencies and government ministers are involved and typically engage in unlawful exchanges with businessmen. Corruption may be on a small scale or a grand scale, depending, among other things, on the size of bribes. The scale of political corruption at the level of a small municipality, even when non-negligible, is obviously different from that at the level of the national government.

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The different forms and scale of corruption are obviously neither an exclusive problem of North Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia nor more generally of Southeastern Europe. Corruption today surfaces in various advanced capitalist economies and consolidated democracies and it is quite widespread in some EU Member States, such as Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Italy and Romania. Across-the-board explanations of corruption in the modern world such as highlighting the corruptive side of today’s globalized capitalism tell only part of the story. We need to put the understanding of corruption in context. In the three countries under study, corruption may be attributed to several preconditions. These are historical, geographical, economic and cultural preconditions which have made corruption a recognizable type of state-society relations in the post-Yugoslav successor states. First, these states bear a historical legacy of state socialism which before 1991 favoured the conflation—rather than the careful distinction of and balance among—political, administrative and economic realms. This was so because state socialism had put the law in the service of larger social transformation, such as the transition to communism. Former socialist regimes did not adhere to the rule of law and even impeded the development of civil society which could have limited the spread of corruption in the period of socialist rule. Second, the geographical position of the Western Balkans in an area located between the East and the West facilitates the emergence of corruption (and organized crime). In the region of the Western Balkans, there are transit routes for illegal goods, human trafficking and the flow of unrecorded payments across newly demarcated or porous national borders. A third precondition is the variety of capitalism which emerged in the region after 1991 (Bartlett, 2007). The market economies of postYugoslav successor states could be understood as a sub-variety of the type of liberal export economies of East Central Europe (Bohle & Greskovits, 2012). Without having the scale of the domestic market of such economies (e.g., Poland) or the industrial base and exporting capabilities of other ones (e.g., the Czech Republic), the post-Yugoslav successor states are also characterized by low corporate taxes as well as unregulated and very flexible labour markets. Post-Yugoslav successor states also have comparatively low levels of unit labour costs and social spending, large enclaves of informal economy as well as strong presence of state-owned enterprises and uncontrollable foreign corporations. The web

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of ties between such enterprises and corporations on the one hand and political elites on the other is sustained through corruption in a context of a runaway type of capitalism. A fourth precondition favouring corruption is an amalgamated culture of ethnic and religious bonds tying small and larger West Balkan communities together. Such an ethnic community may constitute a national majority in a West Balkan nation (e.g., Albanians in Kosovo) while being part of a minority in a neighbouring state (e.g., Albanian minorities in North Macedonia or Serbia). As it happens in other areas of the world, local norms may be in conflict with national norms. For example, norms of exchanging gifts and favours to serve relatives, friends and other community members may clash with norms related to modern state administration, such as rule of law, due diligence and transparency. Traditions of honourable behaviour in a village community may be incompatible with meritocratic standards applied in a national modern public bureaucracy. In other words, corruption is also facilitated by the type of social capital prevailing in the Western Balkans. Negative social capital involving the strengthening of intra-communal ties at the expense of the possibility to bridge gaps with other communities and the nation as a whole is quite common in the countries under study (Mungiu-Pippidi, 2005; Sotiropoulos, 2005). These four preconditions for the rise of corruption as a type of statesociety relations in post-Yugoslav successor states are worth remembering and could perhaps be useful for explaining corruption elsewhere in the world where similar preconditions apply. However, what is often forgotten is the role of human agency in corruption. A legacy of state socialist rule, age-old values and norms, and structures of untamed capitalism may provide the ideal environment for seeding corruption, but it takes purposeful human action for corruption to grow. Corruption unfolds because individual actors such as politicians and collective agents like governing parties or well-oiled governing elites, consistently and in full conscience engage in corrupt acts. Moreover, political parties and particularly governing ones are major veto players, inhibiting reforms which, if implemented, would limit corruption (Dalara, 2014, 101, 112). In other words, as I will argue below, what is particular about corruption in the countries under study is, first, the involvement of the peak of the government in corruption; second, the systematic use of corruption as a weapon of the governing elites in political competition

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against the opposition; and third, the failure of anti-corruption measures, which allows the reproduction of corruption over time.

7.3 The Failure of Anti-Corruption Policy in Post-Yugoslav Successor States In North Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia, under pressure from international organizations such as the European Commission and the Council of Europe, the fight against corruption has ostensibly become a major policy priority. In the 2010s national governments adopted new anti-corruption legislation and established new anti-corruption agencies. Moreover, in February 2020 the EU launched its revised enlargement methodology to streamline the EU accession process, including the process of controlling corruption. The methodology provided for stronger political steering, i.e., engaging EU leaders with governments of the candidate countries. The methodology grouped negotiation chapters together (in six groups) and made the whole process more predictable through a more precise monitoring progress in various policy sectors (Directorate-General for Neighbourhood & Enlargement Negotiations, 2020). The results of the above national and EU initiatives differed by country but were usually meagre. The proper institutions were in place but did not deliver anti-corruption results. Serbia For example, Serbia has ratified all international anti-corruption conventions and has an Anti-Corruption Agency entrusted with the task of preventing corruption by collecting and analysing data, and an AntiCorruption Council which has a policy-advice role (European Commission, 2015a, 14). Some progress in fighting corruption was made between 2014–2022. However, Serbian authorities accomplished very little with regard to investigating, indicting and convicting law violators, while anticorruption agencies were neither properly overseen nor coordinated in the fight against corruption. Such problems persisted due to a lack of political will to fight corruption. In the words of the European Commission: “…strong political impetus has yet to be translated into sustained results” (European Commission, 2015a, 13). The Serbian Parliament voted a new law on the organization of anti-corruption authorities which started

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being implemented in March 2018 and passed another law on the reorganization of the Anti-Corruption Agency in May 2019. Still, the fact of the matter is that the track record of law enforcement in that country has not been credible (European Commission, 2019a, 4). Later, the SNS government used anti-corruption measures to corner political opponents: in July 2020, an administrative unit of the Ministry of Finance titled “Administration for the Prevention of Money Laundering” turned against political dissenters in Serbia. It asked banking institutions to provide data for 20 individuals and 37 NGOs on accounts dating from January 1, 2019. Individuals and organizations active in protecting human rights and investigative journalism were included among the government’s targets (Stojanovi´c, 2020). Following recommendations by the Council of Europe’s Group of States against Corruption (GRECO), Serbia passed a new law on preventing corruption in 2020 and amended it in 2021. However, in 2021 the government still had no specific anti-corruption strategy, while compared to the previous year the number of indictments and convictions for high-level corruption was on the decline (European Commission, 2021a, 26). The pressure from the EU and the Council of Europe on the SNS government to fight corruption was ineffective to the extent that individual EU leaders meeting with President Vuˇci´c preferred to make praising speeches instead of demanding results in controlling corruption. It had not escaped EU leaders that Russia and China were also building close relations with Serbia. Thus, EU officials preferred to give credit to the SNS government even if it never sincerely sought transparency in Serbia. Moreover, on the ground the benchmarks set by the new EU enlargement methodology were neither specific nor sensitive to the country’s context, rendering the measuring of anti-corruption policy results very difficult (Suboti´c, 2022, 40). Nevertheless, the primary reason for Serbia’s limited, if any, progress in fighting corruption in the larger context of rule of law implementation lies not with the EU, but with the country’s governing elites: “The key difficulty in establishing and maintaining the rule of law in Serbia is the establishment of the system of political and legal accountability of the elite. Mechanisms which should enable this…. have been controlled by the government for the whole decade [2010–2020]” (Vukovi´c, 2015, 37). Compared to the other two country cases discussed below, the case of Serbia was one of very high corruption.

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North Macedonia North Macedonia has also been equipped with anti-corruption agencies, although mobilization to fight corruption has been very uneven. There are competent judicial authorities, such as the 15-member Judicial Council (the JC) which was established in 2006. Formally, the JC was independent in managing the justice system, but in practice, under VMRO-DPMNE rule the independence of the Council’s members was undermined by their lack of tenure. The European Commission reports that between 2007–2014 there were “59 dismissal proceedings, resulting in 44 dismissals” (European Commission, 2015c, 13). As for the country’s prosecuting authorities, they suffered from the quasipermanent lack of resources, such as their own budget, personnel and digital infrastructure. Regarding specialized anti-corruption agencies in the same country, such as the State Commission for the Prevention of Corruption (SPSC), a pattern of “selective passivity” was observed. According to the European Commission, “serious allegations against government officials have yet to trigger thorough investigations” (European Commission, 2015c, 16). All of the above was crucial in the period during which the VMRODPMNE ruled North Macedonia virtually unchallenged (2006–2016). The situation with regard to the fight against corruption improved after the Pržino agreement between the government and opposition of North Macedonia. The agreement was signed in July 2015. In the late autumn of that year, a new agency, the Special Prosecution, assumed the task of examining evidence for corruption and other crimes which surfaced during the evolution of the wiretapping affair (Deutsche Welle, 2016). By March 2016, approximately six months after its establishment, the new agency had started investigations into 30 cases of high-level crime and had probed 80 suspects (Maruši´c, 2016). However, the governmentcontrolled judiciary was recalcitrant to facilitate the new agency to carry out its tasks and did not proceed with judicial action as quickly. North Macedonias track record on law enforcement was “weak on high-level political corruption. Important allegations against senior government officials have yet to trigger thorough investigation. This selective passivity raises concerns over the independence of the police, the Public Prosecutor’s Office and the State Commission for the Prevention of Corruption (SPSC)” (European Commission, 2015c, 15).

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Clearly, under VMRO-DPMNE, a large shadow was cast on the political will of the government to fight corruption in 2015, after the revelation about 20,000 intercepted telephone communications and the leaking of the content of these communications. Higher-standing VMRO-DPMNE government officials were implicated in corrupt practices in public procurement, urban planning, the financing of political parties and public employment. As already noted, the agreement signed in Pržino facilitated the establishment of a special prosecutor to investigate the extensive wiretappings. However, the appointed prosecutor, Katica Janeva, discovered that multiple impediments were placed in her way. For instance, in October 2015 the Council of Public Prosecutors rejected Janeva’s list of candidates for members of her prosecuting team and accepted it with delay about a month later. Moreover, owing to the lack of considerable progress in clearing the wiretapping affair and continuing problems with the unreliable electoral registers of North Macedonia, the national elections of June 2016 were postponed. A caretaker government remained in place until May 2017, when a government turnover took place, with the SDSM and DUI parties forming a new coalition government (Dimishkovski, 2017; see also chapter ten of the book). Eventually, in June 2017 Janeva was able to indict 90 persons involved in illegal acts revealed in the wiretapping affairs, including Gruevski and former Interior Minister Gordana Jankulovska (Radio Free Europe, 2017). Anti-Corruption Under the Zaev Government, 2017–2022 After the government turnover of 2017, there were high hopes that authorities would pursue the control of corruption more intensively. However, EU authorities prioritized keeping the political system of the country stable over fighting corruption, while the anti-corruption effort of the Zaev government proved to be very uneven. Compared to the previous period, between 2017–2021 the drive to anti-corruption in North Macedonia was intensified (European Commission, 2021c, 20–23). In 2019 the Zaev government appointed a “State Commission for the Prevention of Corruption” and in 2020 it appointed a Deputy Prime Minister responsible for anti-corruption, sustainable development and human resources. In 2021 the government drafted “Action 21”, an anti-corruption strategy adopted by the parliament for the period 2021–2025.

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However, while the Zaev government was in power, there were flagrant setbacks in anti-corruption policy. The revelations that Katica Janeva, the Special Prosecutor, was herself implicated in corruption dealt a blow to the fight against corruption. Ironically, the anti-corruption drive backfired when she was caught red-handed. Accused of misusing her office and more specifically striking a back-door deal with a businessman under investigation (in the so-called “Extortion case”), she was investigated herself. She was arrested in August 2019 and put to trial. Eventually, in June 2020 Janeva was sentenced to seven years in prison for abuse of office (Dimeska, 2021; Maruši´c, 2020). There were numerous convictions in 2021–2022 for high-level corruption, including convictions in high-profile cases in which former VMRODPMNE government ministers had been implicated. For example, as already mentioned in the beginning of this chapter, in February 2021 Sasho Mijalkov, the former head of North Macedonian secret services under Gruevski, and Gordana Jankulovska, the former VMRO-DPMNE Minster of Interior were convicted to imprisonment for the wiretapping of the telephones of 20,000 citizens between 2008–2015 when the VMRO-DPMNE was in government (META.MK, 2021a). In April 2021, Mijalkov and the former VMRO-DPMNE Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Interior, Nebojsha Stajkovik, were convicted to imprisonment for the illegal appropriation of electronic communications equipment through a private company owned by the Deputy Minister’s brother (META.MK, 2021b). In March 2022 the former VMRODPMNE Minister of Transport and Communications, Mile Janakieski, was convicted for the procurement of 200 red-coloured London-style double-decker buses, which he had his ministry procure from a Chinese investor in 2010 (META.MK, 2022a). However, the Zaev government was not as effective in controlling corruption among its own officials. In fact, the government’s reputation was severely tainted by at least two cases of corruption. In April 2021 Dragi Rashkovski, the General Secretary of the Government until the summer of 2020 and top political adviser to PM Zaev, was arrested. He was accused of rigging a public tender to procure computer software for traffic violations that he had owned and patented. North Macedonia’s Minister of Interior had bought the software from a company with which the former General Secretary was associated (META.MK, 2021c). A year later, in April 2022, Muhamed Zekiri, another General Secretary of the same government (and successor to Rashkovski in 2021–2022),

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was also arrested on charges of corruption. He was accused of abuse of office and embezzlement, also in the context of public procurement. What is more, it seems that criminal investigations in these two cases made progress only after Western governments had exerted pressure on North Macedonian authorities through their foreign embassies in Skopje (interview 44 and interview 46). To interpret the lack of further progress in anti-corruption, it is useful, first, to look at the management of anti-corruption under the Zaev government, and second, to offer a more general view of the EU’s and North Macedonia’s policy priorities. Under this government a Council for the reform of the judicial sector was established. Yet two members of the Council who were professors of law resigned in 2018, protesting the lack of information and decision-making powers of the Council. Meanwhile, successive Ministers of Justice also resigned or were fired at various time points, after assuming political responsibility for the mishandling various cases. The ministers were Bilen Saliji who resigned in March 2018 and Renata Deskoska who resigned in September 2020. Until the aforementioned affairs of the two General Secretaries broke out, judicial and prosecutorial authorities were mobilized to fight corruption “only in cases in which they had political backing by the government. Moreover, if you have enough money, you can always bargain with the judiciary” (interview 44). Regarding the larger picture of relations of the Zaev government with foreign actors, the EU hoped that after the fall of Gruevski from power, this new, pro-EU government would improve on control of corruption. At the same time, given the strategic position of North Macedonia in the centre of the Balkan peninsula and the country’s long record of inter-ethnic conflict, the EU probably sacrificed the priority of control of corruption to the higher priority of North Macedonian government stability. The EU’s new enlargement methodology neither significantly altered the specifics of the old approach of EU officials nor did it prevent EU Member States from unilaterally blocking the accession, as it happened with Bulgaria’s veto against North Macedonia in 2020 (Abazi Imeri, 2022, 37). “The case of North Macedonia demonstrates that without a comprehensive, expert diagnosis of corruption problems in relevant institutions, rushed reforms get stuck and remain largely ineffectual” (Zweers & van Loon, 2021). The lack of effectiveness should primarily be attributed to the fact that the Zaev government (2017–2022) also had other priorities. On the

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domestic front, it prioritized the cleansing of the state apparatus from pro-Gruevski elements, the creation of a foreign investment-friendly environment and—above all—the removal of blocks on the road of North Macedonia’s integration into the EU. Anti-corruption policies were not a top priority, if one is to judge from the slow pace at which criminal investigations and trials evolved. Trials against officials of the VMRODPMNE government took place, but took a long time to complete. Defendants had enduring links with the state apparatus, while newly appointed anti-corruption officials were not beyond reproach, as the Janeva affair showed. So, for instance, a trial against Gruevski in which he received in absentia a seven-year long sentence, was completed in April 2022, four years after he had secretly left his country and sought political asylum in Hungary (November 2018). This last conviction concerned Gruevski’s abuse of donations to his own party (1.3 mil Euros), which he used in order to buy private property for himself (Marusi´c, 2022b). In the same trial, the aforementioned former head of the Secret Police, Saso Mijalkov (who was a cousin of the ex-PM), was sentenced to jail for assisting in Gruevski’s money-laundering scheme. And in May 2022, still in absentia, Gruevski received a nine-year prison sentence because in 2011 he had illegally ordered the demolition of a multimillion-dollar residential and business complex. The complex was owned by a former political ally of his who had become an opponent and on whom Gruevski sought revenge (Associated Press, 2022). Montenegro Montenegro has also ratified all relevant international legislation and in December 2014 it passed comprehensive anti-corruption legislation but used it in distorted ways. On the basis of this legislation, a new Anti-Corruption Agency was founded. In addition, in February 2015 the government established another agency, the “Special Prosecutor’s Office for the fight against corruption, organized crime, war crimes, terrorism and money laundering” (Montenegro Ministry of Foreign Affairs & European Integration, 2015). The “Special Prosecutor” acts before Montenegro’s High Courts, directs the Police and is responsible for all pre-trial proceedings in the fields of competence mentioned in the institution’s title. However, these Montenegrin institutions, including the

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Anti-Corruption Agency, have never been independent from the DPSled government coalitions. They have never been “shielded from any undue influence and encouraged to fully use their powers” (European Commission, 2019b, 4). Tellingly enough, on occasion, the Special Prosecutor’s Office made moves against friends or foes. It turned against pro-govermment politicians and also against the opposition to then governing party (the DPS; Muk, 2022, 31–32). For instance, in Montenegro in the so-called Zavala and Kosljun cases, two former Mayors and one Deputy Mayor of the city of Budva as well as a former parliamentarian of the ruling Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS) party were charged with corruption and convicted to prison sentences ranging from 3 to 6 years of imprisonment (European Commission 2015b, 54). Moreover, the Special Prosecutor’s Office prosecuted Svetozar Marovi´c, the former President of the “State Union of Serbia and Montenegro”. Marovi´c was tried on charges of corruption and, after two plea bargains, he was convicted to three years and ten months imprisonment in September 2016. However, as the European Commission stated, “Montenegro’s track record on effective investigation, prosecution and final convictions in corruption cases, in particular regarding high-level corruption, remains limited” (European Commission, 2015b, 14). After all, in 2016, the aforementioned convicted former President was somehow allowed to leave the country and seek refuge in Serbia. He is a fugitive to this day, as Serbia does not respond to Montenegro’s call for his extradition. Moreover, anti-corruption measures did not affect the business of the very top political leadership. Close relatives of Ðukanovi´c, such as his sister, his brother, his son and his nephew are said to be personally involved in privatizations of state-owned enterprises, acquisitions of banks and statefacilitated private business projects in the fields of energy and tourism (Bardos, 2020; Santora, 2019). Compared to extensive corruption in Serbia at many different levels of governance, it could be argued that in Montenegro high-level corruption is large scale, but involves a small elite of family members and associates of the DPS party around the party leader. The above failure to effect anti-corruption policies does not only reflect a lack of political will to fight corruption. It also reflects the fact that in post-Yugoslav successor states there are few institutional buffers to corruption. For example, in Montenegro, despite the establishment of a new independent Anti-Corruption Agency and the aforementioned

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new Special Prosecution Office for corruption and organized crime, the government can reign in the administration of justice, because higher judges are hand picked by the government. A Montenegrin academic, commenting on the DPS’s rule, claimed that in 2015–2016 “the Montenegrin judiciary was more independent than in the past” (interview 19). However, other interviewees, such as local journalists and seasoned observers of Montenegrin politics, disagreed. A retired higher-ranking diplomat of Montenegro, who had closely followed the politics of his country between 1991–2015, explained that “the judiciary has been constructed under party control” (interview 16). This means that while the DPS governed, the justice system could delay, altogether abort, or selectively process cases of corruption, depending on the government’s will. In Montenegro, government supporters who want to underline the independence of the judiciary from the ruling DPS party (1991–2020) point to the conviction of Marovi´c and imprisonment of three former mayors who were close to the governing party (interview 16). However, these developments may have simply meant that the DPS has “handed over” selected former government officials to the justice system in order to show progress to the European Commission in the context of Montenegro’s accession negotiations which started in June 2012. In fact, under DPS rule the justice system was not sufficiently detached from the government, even after the constitutional amendments of 2013 which were meant to reform the judiciary ahead of opening relevant negotiation chapters in the process of joining the EU (chapters 23 and 24 of accession negotiations). The Prosecutorial Council did not operate in an accountable manner. The destructive impact of corruption as a legacy of state-society relations on Montenegro’s democracy was once more revealed in January 2019. At the time, a bribery scandal, known as the “envelope affair” (the Koverta affair), was leaked (Kajoševi´c, 2019d). Duško Kneževi´c, owner of the private group of companies “Atlas group”, is one of the most successful businessmen in the country and has been a long-time supporter, if not business associate, of DPS government officials. For unknown reasons the under-the-table understanding which he had forged with DPS did not hold after a certain time point in the mid-2010s. The central bank of Montenegro revoked the license of two banks belonging to Kneževi´c. He was officially accused by the government-controlled

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prosecuting authorities of certain criminal acts, including money laundering. His two banks had probably been on the brink of collapse since 2015, but the central bank of Montenegro did not impose administration on the two banks until 2018 (Kapor & Tadic-Mijovi´c, 2019). In retaliation, Kneževi´c started disclosing information on illegal financing of the DPS, of which he was aware and on which he had evidence. After all, as he asserted, he had been one of the party’s financial supporters, a claim which the ruling party apparently did not deny (Savi´c, 2019; Total Montenegro News, 2019). Kneževi´c, who sought refuge to London, leaked to the press a video, made by himself, in which he was shown handing an envelope, containing 100 thousand Euros, to Slavoljub Stijepovi´c, the Mayor of Podgorica and a senior DPS party official. This incident took place prior to the electoral campaign of the 2016 parliamentary elections and revealed the illegal financing of the ruling party. The affair indicates that Montenegrin anti-corruption institutions, such as the Special Prosecutor’s Office and the Anti-Corruption Agency, were not immune to government influence, including the appointment of DPS government-associated officials to the leadership of such nominally independent authorities (Kajoševi´c, 2019c). While ostensibly founded as independent authorities, these agencies exhibited very poor performance over time (interview with Montenegrin political analyst through e-mail, February 3, 2019). Societal reactions to revelations about the envelope affair in Montenegro were similar to reactions in North Macedonia when the wiretapping affair occurred. In the wake of the “Koverta” affair, a demonstration took place in central Podgorica in February 2019 to protest against the government and the lax functioning of the oversight institutions mentioned above (Stjepˇcevi´c, 2019). Other protests against the government’s inability or reluctance to control corruption were sporadically organized in 2019. Meanwhile, when Kneževi´c openly accused Montenegro’s President of the Republic of having received bribes from him (but failed to produce evidence), Ðukanovi´c sued him and also sued the Podgorica daily newspaper Vijesti which had published the claims of Kneževi´c. Protests in Podgorica continued to take place in early 2019 but eventually petered out, as protest organizers, supported by parties of the opposition, were divided. By April 2019, two anti-government movements supported by the opposition had emerged. One was titled “Resist”

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(Odupri Se) and did not want to be associated with the accused businessman and former ally of Ðukanovi´c, while the second one, titled “To Freedom” (Do Slobode), wanted to invite Kneževi´c as a speaker in rallies (2019b; Kajoševi´c, 2019a). Regarding the anti-corruption policy, it turned out that the DPS government did not even try to save face. For example, in June 2019 the government appointed Zoran Lazovi´c, a former intelligence officer, with alleged ties to organized crime, to a senior post in the police, tasked to fight corruption and organized crime. Lazovi´c was among 70 members of the Montenegro’s National Security Agency who had been forced into retirement in 2015, under NATO’s pressure, i.e., “after NATO decision in mid-2014 to postpone Montenegro’s accession” (Kajoševi´c, 2019c). However, the DPS rule could not be upset without political party mobilization. Pressures from below, i.e., from social movements and civic associations, even if combined with pressures from abroad, i.e., reports of international organizations, remained fruitless unless a strong opposition party or a coalition of opposition parties stepped in (chapter nine). Opposition parties succeeded in defeating the DPS in the parliamentary elections of August 2020 in the sense of forming a coalition that excluded that party from the government. Corruption and Anti-Corruption in Montenegro After the Fall of the DPS Government Following these elections, the DPS lost its parliamentary majority. After a transition period and the government turnover of December 2020, the three-party coalition that had opposed the DPS was very slow to shape its own government policies. However, inside Montenegro in 2020–2021 there was limited progress in fighting corruption. Convictions for high-corruption cases and asset confiscation were minimal. The Anti-Corruption Agency was more mobilized than in the past but remained selective in its approach to corruption and sensitive to political interference (European Commission, 2021b, 24). To understand why, we have to look at the larger political context of Montenegro in 2020–2022. The Krivokapi´c and Abazovi´c governments which ruled after the government change of December 2020, were pre-occupied with mending the state’s relations with the Serbian Orthodox Church. They were also more interested in holding their fragile political party coalition together than in implementing anti-corruption

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policies. More concretely, the government coalition did not intensify the anti-corruption effort, but rather neglected it. For instance, owing to intra-government disagreements, it took the new government a lot of time to appoint new heads at police and security institutions. Even worse, when the term of the higher judges staffing the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court was over, there was no replacement with new court members for a long time. The government coalition partners could not agree on appointments to these courts (interview 47). Moreover, against the advice of the Venice Commission, an institution of the Council of Europe, the coalition partners agreed to pass new legislation that changed the Prosecutorial Council, effectively terminating the mandate of all the Council’s members. After all, the Krivokapi´c government considered the Council as pro-DPS (Muk, 2022, 32). In other words, decisions on institutional reform were made on purely short-term political criteria. The same doubt may be cast on the anti-corruption investigations which followed in 2022, in the sense that there was a delicate balance between rule of law implementation and political exploitation of the relevant arrests. In brief, in April 2022 the Montenegrin police, on orders of the Special Prosecutor’s Office, arrested the Ex-President of Montenegro’s Supreme Court, Vesna Medenica, and her son, Milos Medenica, on charges of creating a criminal organization and abuse of office. In May 2022 the Montenegrin police arrested the President of the Commercial Court, Blazo Jovani´c, and ten other persons on similar charges (Marusi´c, 2022a). In July 2022 the police arrested six members of the board of directors of “Plantaze”, a state-owned wine producing company, on charges of abuse of official positions. The evidence on which these latter arrests were made was not clear. The Abazovi´c government rushed to claim credit for the arrests to the extent that “it diffused the impression that the whole process was completed; Abazovi´c boasted about the whole judicial process as his personal achievement” (interview 47). Meanwhile, pressure exerted from external actors to intensify the anti-corruption effort mounted with the move of the US Treasury to “designate” seven individuals from West Balkan countries in April 2022. The US treasury department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced that politicians, such as North Macedonia’s former PM Nikola Gruevski and former head of the secret services of North Macedonia Saso Mijalkov as well as the former President of the Union of Serbia and Montenegro (2004–2006) Svetozar Marovi´c, once a close ally of

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Ðukanovi´c, posed “serious threat to regional stability”. The US blocked their assets and prohibited Americans from engaging in business with these persons (Sinoruka, 2022). However, such pressure has not been effective since corruption continues to perform political and economic functions in the countries under study.

7.4 The Political Function of Corruption: Corrupt Practices as a Means to Consolidate Political Power Corruption’s political function is manifested in several ways. Typically, in the post-Yugoslav successor states, political corruption starts with a move in the field of party financing: a business entrepreneur contributes undeclared funds to the finances of the governing political party. Afterwards, the entrepreneur receives favours such as obtaining a low-interest loan by a state-controlled bank or winning a tender for public works. Then, in exchange for the government-related favours he (or she) has received, the entrepreneur influences or even presses his company employees to vote for the party of his preference. Alternatively, if the entrepreneur owns a mass media outlet, then he supports the electoral campaign of the political party with which he has made back-door agreements. Using corruption as a means of prolonging one’s stay in power can be done in more than one way. For example, in North Macedonia some businessmen had a small niche in the market before the VMRO-DPMNE party rose to power and chose them as business partners. Then, their business flourished. Moreover, other businessmen became convenient foreign business partners, such as Greece’s Dimitris Kontominas. The latter had ties not only to the VMRO-DPMNE government, but also to the preceding SDSM government, which was in power until 2006. Significantly, according to Transparency International (Popovi´c, 2012), in the context of the large public works project “Skopje 2014” Kontominas bought land in the centre of Skopje with the aim of constructing two buildings in the neo-baroque style favoured by the Gruevski government. Kontominas (who died in 2022) was also active in telecommunication enterprises doing business with the government of North Macedonia. According to a testimony given in late 2014 to a US court by Slobodan Bogoevski, former Deputy Secretary for State Security in North Macedonia, by 2006 Kontominas had already been involved in the bribing

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of SDSM and DUI politicians in exchange for barring the access of his competitors to the mobile phone market in the country. There were never any charges pressed against politicians of North Macedonia for this case. Charges were pressed against foreign citizens allegedly involved in illicit business deals; but the case was dropped in 2008 (Maruši´c, 2015). After the fall of SDSM from power in 2006, the business-politics nexus became even more significant, with a focus on the media sector. Business entrepreneurs who flourished due to the VMRO-DPMNE’s preferential treatment financed the governing party and diffused government propaganda to the people. The active role of the governing party included the systematic marginalization in or even expulsion from North Macedonia’s market of those entrepreneurs who were reluctant to cooperate with the government or openly opposed it. The example of the TV station A1 is telling. The station’s owner Velija Ramkovski and some journalists had criticized the VMRO-DPMNE. After that, the financial police (tax revenue officers) raided his TV station in November 2010 (2010b; Maruši´c, 2010a). In July 2011 the TV station declared bankruptcy and its owner was escorted to prison. Essentially, this station, which had been broadcasting since 1993, was silenced after the government decided that it could not fully control it. If the case of A1 TV shows how unwanted entrepreneurs are excluded from the market, how is the government-business nexus created in the first place? Essentially, in each major sector of the market the government favours one or more companies and makes them dependent on state funds in at least two different ways. First, dependency is created through the distribution of state funds to more than one business competitors at a time or in sequence. As a former diplomat of North Macedonia put it, “the government distributes works to companies which become dependent on state funds channeled to them on a piecemeal basis” (interview 17). Second, dependency is reproduced through purposeful delays in paying arrears to private suppliers of goods and services to the state. More concretely, the government does not pay suppliers of goods and services to the state in any predictable manner. Government outlays are overdue and haphazard (interview 18). Such tactics makes business companies wait for the whimsical decisions of office-holders to open the state coffers or not and to hand out overdue payments. As a pro-government NGO director admitted, “in the process of implementing public contracts, government-controlled state-owned enterprises delay arrears in order to

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hold private enterprises hostage” (interview 2). In other words, more than one companies benefit from government outlays at unpredictable intervals, while no company is allowed to become too large as to free itself of government control. It would be wrong to assume that in North Macedonia all private companies are mere puppets of the government and have no room for manoeuvre. Depending on the business sector in question, there are local businesses as well as local affiliates of multi-national companies which closely monitor shifts in the political scene of North Macedonia. In other words, businesses adapt their business strategies to shifts of the political game. From time to time, businesses attempt to stay neutral towards large parties or abandon their alliance with a declining political party and take sides with a rising party: “at times of political change the big fish in business switch sides or remain neutral for a while. Yet even strong companies can crumble without links with the government or at least cannot become leaders in their business sector without establishing links to the government. In pre-election periods, businesses support large and small parties and this is true for both ethnic communities, the Macedonian and the Albanian” (interview 2). A similar view is that “private business companies may be strong, but without links to political power, they can easily crumble; without such links they cannot be leading companies in their business sector” (interview 18). This is why businesses tend to support not one but many parties, including parties representing the majority of the population living in North Macedonia as well as parties representing the Albanian minority. Most of the above situations, i.e., purposefully making private businesses dependent on the government, concerned domestic businesses which, however, were not as large as foreign companies. The balance of power between the government and large foreign investors was delicate, even though the government was investment-friendly and did not tend to alienate foreign investors. For example, in 2006 the Austrian utility company EVN acquired 90 per cent of the North Macedonia’s electricity distribution company and has operated it under the name EVN since 2008, thus obtaining large-scale policy leverage in the energy sector. The Austrian company was a private distributor that dominated the electricity distribution sector. However, the company had to face sudden government-driven cuts of the tariffs it charged customers and increases in the prices it paid to the

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electricity generator (Kester, 2013). As an EBRD report put it in 2012, “Macedonia [was] addressing the growing pains of its relationship with the privatized distributor” (EBRD, 2012, 132). In Montenegro, the political functions of corruption were evident in the drive of Milo Ðukanovi´c himself, who has companies of his own, to control the banking sector and the tourism sector. As noted in the previous chapter, he was a large shareholder of Prva Banka and has invested in tourism on the Montenegrin coast through his relatives. He has also allowed the creation of foreign monopolies in other sectors, such as the oil industry (distribution network) and tourism. Major foreign companies are the Swiss—Egyptian company ORASCOM, which has invested in Lustica Bay, the Azeri state-owned oil company SOCAR, which has invested in banking and high-end tourism and the Greek company EKO, which prevails in the oil and gasoline distribution network (interview 19). Montenegro’s former President has also collaborated with Montenegrin businessmen such as Veselin Pejovi´c, who through his company UNIPROM has multiple investments in aluminium production and the hotel sector (Garaca, 2015). In 2013 Pejovi´c bought from the Montenegrin government the country’s largest industrial company, the Kombinat Aluminijuma Podgorica (KAP), which the government had acquired from a Russian private investor, Oleg Deripaska (who in turn had bought the then state-owned KAP from the Montenegrin government in 2005). Essentially, through deals with domestic and foreign businessmen, Ðukanovi´c and his family controlled Montenegro’s economy. They thus created political support for his continuous re-election at the leadership of the governing party and the government. In Serbia there is a long tradition of interlocking networks of politicians and businessmen dating back to the 1990s. “Serb tycoons were created in the era of Miloševi´c and today practically politicians and tycoons are inseparable” (interview 11). There are closely knit informal networks of political officials and private businessmen. A Serbian blogger said that the government “selectively blackmails private businesses by threatening them with the imposition of taxes” (interview 14). A long-time civic activist agreed that the Serbian government has the upper hand, as the “private sector is controlled by the state through inspections of private enterprises, engineered by the government-controlled tax administration and through the imposition of taxes” (interview 8). The governing SNS elite thus creates a circle of private businesses which purposefully support the

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government and another circle of businesses which reluctantly support the government or at least are afraid not to collaborate with it.

7.5 The Economic Function of Corruption: Corrupt Practices as a Means for Personal Enrichment Corruption’s second function, which cannot always be disentangled from the first, entails a politician using corruption not so much to prolong his or her stay in power, as to acquire wealth. Such a person may have been a businessman before entering politics. Then he or she decides to become a politician to obtain access to the state coffers and benefit from any opportunities (e.g., public procurement calls for tender) in which holders of government authority are involved. The politician who is in politics to make money receives kickbacks from business enterprises competing for public contracts. In this manner the politician can become a rich businessman, depending of course on the role of the state in the economy and also on the presence or absence of checks and balances in a country’s political system. In post-Yugoslav successor states, it is sometimes difficult to distinguish the role of a politician from the same person’s role as a businessman. First, if a politician exits politics much richer than when he or she first entered politics, then this person at some point must have swapped the identity of a politician for that of a businessman. It is all a matter of degree, of course, as after a certain time point in one’s political career and depending on how lax law enforcement is, one may hold both roles, i.e., be a businessman and a politician (e.g., Ðukanovi´c in Montenegro). Second, shifts in public policies or changes in legislation may not be the result of public deliberation but of personal calculations reflecting the interests of legislators. In the words of a politician who is an insider of government circles in Skopje, “government officials are themselves businessmen and make laws suitable to them” (interview 5). In Montenegro, the personal enrichment of politicians occurs through their personal involvement in domestic and foreign private investment projects. Government officials may enrich themselves by weaving very complex informal ties with domestic and foreign businessmen. Such ties are often difficult to unravel. For example, as already noted in this chapter, in 2003 Italian prosecutors accused PM Ðukanovi´c of involvement in

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cigarette smuggling in Italy and filed charges against him in 2008 (the charges were later dropped and the case was closed). However, it has been claimed that he “has been able to establish a network in which his family members own substantial property and control major parts of the private sector in Montenegro, while he keeps tight control over the public sector” (Džanki´c & Keil, 2017, 406). There are many corruption cases pointing in the same direction. In March 2014, US officials of the Securities and Exchange Commission of the USA dropped charges against three former managers of Hungary’s Magyar Telekom and Germany’s Deutsche Telekom that they had bribed government officials in Montenegro. The withdrawal of charges by the aforesaid US Commission resulted from the fact that the use of evidence and relevant criminal procedures were extremely complicated and involved the cooperation of several countries. Meanwhile, in December 2011 the parent company, Deutsche Telekom, and its subsidiary, Magyar Telekom, had agreed to pay $ 95 million to settle the case. At the same time, Magyar Telekom had acknowledged the bribery charges. It acknowledged that unnamed DPS government officials had received bribes in order to regulate the telecommunication sector in Montenegro in such a way as to prevent competition to Telekom (Schectman, 2014). The importance of personal business for top politicians was underlined by the publication of the so-called Pandora Papers. The Freedom House reported that the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) had revealed that Ðukanovi´c and his son Blazo had placed money in two offshore accounts through “irrevocable trusts”, which protect them even in case of criminal prosecution (Freedom House, 2022). In North Macedonia, the revelations of Slobodon Blagoevski to a US official of the aforementioned Commission in December 2014 were eyeopening: Magyar Telekom had bribed Macedonian government officials in order to have them edge out business competitors. The informant admitted being personally involved in one of the briberies. Following another deposition he made to the SEC on the same case in February 2015, Blagoevski was taken to prison by his country’s police (Dockery, 2015). The government officials who allegedly received the bribes noted above remain unknown. Similarly, Albanian party officials have personally profited from their term in the VMRO-DPMNE government. In general, in North Macedonia, “the ruling parties and those close to them

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have profited greatly from their power over public-sector jobs, state funds, public lands, and business permits” (Ceka, 2018, 149). In Serbia the situation is similar although, in contrast to Montenegro and North Macedonia, the private benefit which politicians reap through corrupt practices does not seem to be distributed mainly among family members or members of an inner circle of political associates. Private funds are siphoned to the coffers of political parties. Since the 1990s private businessmen have contributed to the finances of almost all parties (interviews 20 and 21). “Leaders of parties take money directly from businessmen, keep some of it for themselves and pass the rest to officials of their party” (interview 14). In addition, typical situations of conflict of interest arise. For instance, in 2020 allegations surfaced against Ana Brnabi´c, who in 2017 had been appointed PM of Serbia by Vuˇci´c just after the latter had won presidential elections and had abandoned the post of PM for that of President of Serbia. The new PM’s brother had done business with an office overseen by the PM, the “Office for Information Technologies and Electronic Administration” (the “Asseco” affair; Bjelotomi´c, 2020). In a parallel story, the father of Nebosja Stefanovi´c, Serbia’s Minister of Internal Affairs, did business with a state-controlled ammunition plant. And the husband of Nela Kuburovi´c, the Serbian Justice Minister, is revealed to have won “lucrative contracts with several state companies and ministries” (Angelovski et al., 2020). Essentially, in Serbia, as in other post-Yugoslav successor states, instead of soliciting funds from private businesses and individual supporters in order to participate in elections and win power, political parties compete for political power in order to have access to funds not only before, but also after they ascend to power, and in the case of the SNS party, to divert state funds to relatives too.

7.6

Conclusions

In this chapter I have argued that political corruption, another type of state-society relation, has an economic function and a political function and that some higher-ranking government officials in North Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia often behave in corrupt ways suitable to preserve their political power. If they win elections, they may enrich themselves as other corrupt politicians have done, but their priority is to not only to become rich, but also to win power and stay in power. In order to stay

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in power, they employ various strategies and tools and purposefully use corruption to their own political benefit. In other words, it is by enriching themselves and even by enriching their relatives, friends and business partners, that governing elite members consolidate the bases of their political power. The post-Yugoslav successor states are fraught with political corruption, but the benefits which corrupt political officials reap from corruption are not limited to personal enrichment. They extend to consolidating their political power. The extent of corruption in the societies under study is large. It involves different groups implicated in various forms of corruption. The fact that corrupt governing elites are returned to power through elections sets the stage for analysing corruption as something larger than a temporary pathological symptom or a side effect of a dysfunctional democratic regime. Regarding corruption as a type of state-society relation, corrupt governing elites create a power base among business entrepreneurs who are involved in informal networks of corruption. Participants in the networks are government ministers and heads of state agencies, if not the head of the government himself or herself. The government builds linkages with established entrepreneurs in exchange for services which the latter provide to the governing party. Such services by pro-government businesspeople often include influencing private employees working for them; selectively hiring the most pro-government ones among job candidates; contributing to government-sponsored local development in selected provinces, where voters are loyal to the government, instead of other provinces; and financing the electoral campaign of the governing party. A crucial role which pro-government business elites play involves controlling private mass media, such as newspapers and TV stations. Ostensibly out of the reach of government and managed in a manner formally autonomous and different from the government-controlled state media, such private pro-government media can serve two tasks: first, the task of transmitting to the electorate the government line on disputed issues; and, second, the task of discrediting the opposition through hostile press coverage or even smear campaigns against the government’s opponents. The power base woven through such a government—business nexus of relations is extended to the middle and lower ranks of public administration and local government, including street-level bureaucracy. Thus,

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middle- and low-income earners groups whose primary source of income is a public sector salary can look forward to additional income. This is income either directly obtained through bribe-taking in the public employees’ encounters with citizens, or income trickling down to the middle and lower ranks of public bureaucracy from the higher echelons of government. At these echelons, private businessmen hand out large sums of money to government officials and in exchange they receive awards of public contracts. Nothing of this sort can be smoothly carried out without the involvement of public employees at different levels of the administrative hierarchy. Such necessary involvement explains the need of corrupt business entrepreneurs and politicians to win over these employees, to involve them in less than transparent citizen-administration relations and to keep doing so at least until the following elections. Thus, what may have been a narrow power base gradually becomes a social base for corrupt governing elites. Further on, governing elites use the tool of anti-corruption to legitimize the government and delegitimize the opposition as well as to subdue disloyal party cadres and uncooperative businessmen and media, as indicated by the cases of Marovi´c in Montenegro, Miškovi´c in Serbia and the A1 TV channel in North Macedonia. By now it must have become evident to the reader that under these circumstances, corruption is something larger than the use of public office for private gain; it is a type of a state-society relations woven mostly through extensive informal networks. To sum up, corruption in the three cases under study shows that in addition to obtaining personal benefit, corrupt practices can be used as a strategy to consolidate a governing elite’s own political power. Corruption then serves two social functions, namely, first, the use of public office for private benefit; second, the prolonging of a governing elite’s term in power through the creation of strongholds among business elites and public officials of various ranks who are involved in webs of corruption. The governing elite also uses anti-corruption institutions and policy measures to neutralize dissidents and political opponents. In the three countries under study, mechanisms of controlling corruption are only skeletal and there are few, if any, checks and balances against the executive. All these instances of failed anti-corruption policy are not symptoms of technical inefficiency or inadequate resources dedicated to controlling corruption. The spread of corruption is the result of the strategy of governing elites to retain power. In brief, high-level (or

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grand) political corruption in North Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia is socially embedded in an enduring business-politics nexus and extends beyond a periodic side benefit for some of those who exercise government authority.

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CHAPTER 8

How Elected Governments Make Democracies Backslide: The Case of Serbia

As noted in the first chapter, in 2019 Freedom House (FH) downgraded Serbia’s status from “free” to “partly free” and has since then kept this label (Freedom House -Serbia, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022). Based on FH estimations, between 2011–2021, Serbia’s aggregate “freedom score” fell by 16 points. Among countries in Europe, only Hungary and Turkey showed a larger decline in freedom (Freedom House, 2022, 16). There is increasing evidence of erosion of democracy in Serbia, which I cite and analyse in this chapter, starting with elections, the primary process which any anti-democratic government may want to control. Although negative assessments by international agencies (e.g., FH) are based on estimates and impressions of domestic and foreign observers, one cannot help but recognize signs indicating a persisting reversal of democracy in Serbia. For example, how elections are perceived and how they are conducted constitute a vantage point from which one may understand much about democracy’s backsliding. As a former anti-Miloševi´c activist and member of Serbia’s Parliament noted on democracy under SNS rule: “People do not expect anything from elections; they have low esteem of corrupt politicians” (interview 8; list of interviews at the end of the book). In this chapter, I will analyse how the SNS government, which has been in power since 2012, has treated democratic processes and institutions in © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 D. A. Sotiropoulos, The Irregular Pendulum of Democracy, New Perspectives on South-East Europe, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25609-7_8

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the context of populism and clientelism which characterize state-society relations. The Serbian government’s control strategy pertains to multiple institutions and policy sectors. Such institutions and sectors are briefly analysed one by one below, in order to understand how Serbian democracy is pushed to the brink of collapse without, however, becoming an open dictatorship. In what follows, I start from the premise suggested to me by a former Serb diplomat: the defective functioning of democratic institutions and processes is driven by, but also contributes to, “the undemocratic political culture and the disruption of social solidarity, two crucial problems which Serbia faces today” (interview 31). There is now doubt that the SNS party and its leader currently possess almost complete control of the “political and media landscape” (European Commission, 2022, 4). The processes and institutions analysed below include national elections, the parliament, the judiciary, the independent authorities, mass media and civil society, as well as a short note on the political effects of managing the COVID-19 crisis (at the end of the chapter). I place my analysis in the historical perspective of the immediate post-Miloševi´c era (2000—today), bearing in mind that processes and institutions may only superficially be perceived as functioning properly. In practice, they are eroded by the fact that they are embedded in populist and clientelist state-society relations.

8.1

Elections

The quality of elections in Serbia has not evolved in a linear fashion but has frequently fallen below minimum requirements for a contemporary democracy (Boduszynski, 2010, 226–230, 240; Cohen & Lampe, 2011, 52–56; European Commission, 2018; Suboti´c, 2017, 171; Teokarevi´c, 2019, 132–135; US Department of State, 2017; Vachudova, 2014, 130). As all these sources note, in the first phase after the disintegration of Yugoslavia and up until the fall of Milosevic from power (2000), elections were not free, fair and open. In the period after 2000, associated with the rule of prominent anti-Miloševi´c politicians, i.e., leaders of the DS and the DSS parties, the conduct of elections was improved. However, the party system was extremely fragmented and the clash of political personalities (Boris Tadi´c, leader of the DS after 2003 vs. Vojislav Koštunica, leader of the DSS) was almost without limits. Moreover, elections were frequently

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called, the outcome of elections was inconclusive, new elections took place and government stability was in constant peril. A third phase started with the ascent of the SNS to government in 2012. Since that year, elections have become a tool in the hands of the SNS and its leader, Aleksandar Vuˇci´c (former government Minister of Information in 1998–2000 in the government of Miloševi´c). In other words, in the conduct of elections one can observe a back-and-forth movement from less free and unfair elections to freer and more fair elections and back, which is another indication of the movement of democracy’s pendulum. Democracy, which normally is celebrated through and manifested in elections, may in fact also be controlled and constrained through elections. Informal controls and constraints may be imposed through the asymmetry of the limited economic power of citizens confronting strong business interests and by the latter’s influence on governments. Similar constraints can also be placed by political parties elected to government, if upon ascending to power they face no checks and balances or if they proceed to destroy opposition to government. At times, in Serbia government-sponsored attempts to destroy the opposition turned physical. Since 2012 supporters of the SNS government have used physical violence against their opponents during electoral campaigns on various occasions. Moreover, the SNS has tolerated “organized local far-right groups exercising violence against liberal voters or minority members in the provinces of Serbia” (interview 29). However, violence has not been necessary for the SNS to win elections. The reason is that “whole factions of the formerly governing party DS have shifted to supporting the SNS. This is because the latter party is clientelist, it takes care of its voters” (interview 31). Clientelism is an essential element of the story of successive SNS victories in elections and is not only organized at a national scale (chapter six of the book) but applied locally as well. The SNS leadership mobilizes local party organizations before elections to weave patronage networks. “Without committing plain electoral fraud, local SNS party officials systematically influence voters through pressure and patronage—exchanging votes for benefits—and also influence the local government” (interview 27). Another similar means of control through elections is the frequency of launching elections. Holding the weapon of calling snap elections, the SNS government has called snap parliamentary elections too frequently. It called elections in 2014 and 2016, just a few years after coming to power

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in 2012. It called fresh parliamentary elections in 2020 after which the winner, the SNS leader Vuˇci´c, announced that a new round of parliamentary elections was envisioned for 2022 (they indeed took place in April, along with the presidential elections of that year). By repeatedly calling elections, the SNS has kept its electoral base on its feet without leaving the opposition parties time to first re-organize and then fight back. What is more, the SNS never stops running an electoral campaign, even after it has won elections. The SNS government has at times appeared less concerned with defending its own government policy choices than attacking past policy choices of previous governments. This is a typical populist strategy of focusing on alleged enemies of the people and calling upon the people to fight the enemies, instead of focusing on the government’s performance. It is a strategy that fits the pre-existing populist state-society relations well. This strategy of the SNS has created a political atmosphere of uninterrupted electoral contest in between elections. It entails, first, continuous attacks by government officials against opposition leaders; second, the government’s mobilization of judicial and prosecutorial authorities against leading opposition party officials and Members of Parliament; and third, political and mass media campaigns against other, non-political, enemies such as private businessmen who had won public tenders under previous governments (e.g., against businessmen Miroslav Miškovi´c and Milan Beko, who once were the richest persons in Serbia). It would have been surprising if the case had been different. It is typical of populist parties in government to start a new campaign against the defeated opposition from the first day they ascent to power. To put it otherwise, under populists in power, the electoral competition never ceases. This is a type of political competition which differs from the typical debates, however acrimonious, between government and opposition when non-populist parties govern. Under SNS rule, the populist government continuously attacked the opposition on the basis of accusations of corruption. The SNS government aimed to identify opposition politicians with foreign powers or economic oligarchies or both. Not only the government, but also the ruling SNS party has used the above repertoire, namely violence, pressures, patronage, persecutions and campaigns, on multiple occasions since 2012. The repeated use of that repertoire has become very evident. For instance, regarding the presidential elections of April 2017, through which Vuˇci´c, the SNS leader, moved from the post of Prime Minister to the post of President of Serbia, the

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European Commission concluded that there was a “genuine choice of contestants, but the playing field was tilted by several factors” (European Commission, 2018, 5). In the electoral campaign, the ruling party (SNS) constructed a context in which opposition parties were clearly disadvantaged. In detail, first, the candidate of the ruling party did not keep separate the discharging of his duties as Prime Minister of Serbia from his electoral campaign activities for the Presidency of his country. In the presidential electoral campaign of Vuˇci´c in 2017 and 2022, his public appearances and speeches functioned as pre-electoral appearances and speeches. In practice, there was a confusion of electoral campaign and government activities (US Department of State, 2017). Second, in the presidential elections of 2017 but also in other elections under SNS rule, the political party and campaign financing were nontransparent (European Commission, 2018, 5), while state funding was channelled to pools of prospective voters. And third, there were reports of pressure put on public employees, e.g., employees of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) to support the governing party candidate (European Commission, 2018). The governing party’s strategy was multi-faceted, as it did not only limit itself to informal pressure on employees of SOEs. The party also offered such employees more targeted incentives, such as the provision of job security and comparatively higher salaries which were in high demand in an otherwise fragile Serbian labour market (interview 30). These targeted offers by the governing party should be understood in the context of clientelist state-society relations which create expectations for both the patrons and the clients. In this context of give and take, electoral processes worsen as time goes by, while ordinary “people are pre-occupied with their daily survival” (interview 31). The same patterns were observed in the parliamentary elections of 2020 which, however, took place without real opposition. Most parties abstained from the elections, reacting against the unfair, if not rigged, conduct of elections which was briefly summarized above. Large-scale anti-government protests shook Serbia in 2018–2020. More concretely, in 2018–2019 a debate took place among parties of the opposition on whether to participate in the clearly biased process of elections or not. Eventually, in 2020 the majority of parties to the right and the left of SNS chose to boycott elections. The SNS government had tilted the playing field too much and media freedom and civil liberties were constrained. The abstaining parties included the Alliance for

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Serbia coalition of parties, the Civic Platform, and other smaller parties and movements. The variety of parties constituting the Alliance for Serbia was large: the Democratic Party (DP), Dveri, People’s Party, Party of Freedom and Justice, Movement for Reversal, Fatherland and the United Trade Unions Sloga. In other words, this coalition of parties looked like the DOS coalition which overthrew Milosevic in 2000, but was far more varied, as it included parties of the Center Left (e.g., the DP) and the nationalist Right (e.g., Dveri). Only a handful of opposition parties participated in the parliamentary elections of 2020: the SPS (a usual partner of the SNS in government), a new minor personalistic party, (the SPAS party led by a famous athlete Aleksandar Šapi´c, who later joined the SNS) and very small national minority parties. On the other hand, by not participating in the elections, the united opposition hoped that the majority of voters would follow its lead. Eventually, the voter turnout was 48 percent, i.e., lower than before or after the parliamentary elections of 2020; but it was not so low as to signal a victory for the opposition’s strategy of boycotting elections. In 2020 the SNS, leading a pro-Vuˇci´c coalition of parties, won the elections with over 60 percent of the total vote. The SNS coalition obtained an absolute majority of parliamentary seats (188 parliamentary seats for the coalition out of a total of 250 seats). It was an expected victory for which the SNS had prepared the ground. Prior to elections, which were postponed from to April to June 2020 owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, there was misuse of state resources. Voters were pressured, while any independence of the Regulatory Authority for Electronic Media was curtailed. Any conditions for free and fair elections were violated again. “Most major TV channels and newspapers promoted the policies of the government and gave it extensive editorial coverage, limiting the diversity of views” (OSCE/DHIR, 2020, 1). The same conclusions were reiterated by the European Commission in its 2020 report on Serbia (European Commission, 2020). In 2022, the SNS called parliamentary elections early so that they would coincide with the presidential elections due that year. Even though the conditions of electoral competition were no different, the political parties opposing the SNS opted for a different strategy. They formed a large, albeit heterogeneous coalition, the United for the Victory of Serbia (UZPS), and put forward a presidential candidate, the former diplomat and retired general Zdravko Ponoš. He competed with Vuˇci´c,

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the then serving President, for the Presidency of Serbia. The same coalition competed in the parliamentary elections under a well-known opposition politician, Marinika Tepi´c. The SNS won both elections with a very large margin over the united opposition. In the 2022 presidential elections, Vuˇci´c won 60 percent of the vote, while his opponent only 19 percent. In the parliamentary elections of the same year, the SNS party obtained 44 percent of the vote, while the UZPS only 14 percent. Although this time the SNS won only 120 parliamentary seats, short of the necessary 126 for an absolute majority in the 250-seat Serbian parliament, it formed a coalition government with its usual coalition partners, namely the SPS and smaller parties, such as the Democratic Alliance of Croats in Vojvodina. As usual, the playing field was once more uneven. International observers of the elections in 2022 reported that “the combined impact of unbalanced access to media, undue pressure on public sector employees to support the incumbents, significant campaign finance disparities and misuse of administrative resources, led to unequal conditions for contestants” (OSCE/DHIR, 2022, 1). Similar comments were made by two other election observers, the Delegation of the European Parliament and the Delegation of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (Euractiv, 2022). Political Protests Elections consist one of the malfunctioning processes in Serbia. They have created an insurmountable obstacle impasse for the opposition in 2012–2022. Experiencing that impasse, the opposition turned to other democratic processes, such as the organization of political protests, briefly discussed below. Populism, clientelism and corruption created a context favourable to the SNS to win elections, but were not as effective in blocking other channels of political participation. The repeated conduct of anti-government protests constitutes a sign of democracy, albeit an unconsolidated one in the case of Serbia. It is not a sign of consolidated competitive authoritarianism, the type of political regime one finds in many post-Soviet republics where protests are non-existent or violently suppressed. In Serbia there is room for democratic political participation not encountered in competitive authoritarian regimes. It is in this context that one should perceive the waves of antigovernment protest which periodically shook Belgrade for many years.

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For instance, there were large such protests in 2016 after the presidential elections which the opposition considered unfair. Protests also erupted in 2018–2019 after the beating of Borko Stefanovi´c, a leader of a small left-wing party. He suffered beatings by unknown, dark-clad men in November 2018 in Kruševac (Esor, 2019). This event sparked protests by opposition parties, which interpreted it as the apogee of the SNS-led coalition government’s drive to suppress dissident voices. They also protested because the government pursued a multi-pronged strategy to control the functioning of Serbia’s political system from above. Intermittent protests continued into 2019–2020 and led to the opposition’s decision to boycott the parliamentary elections of 2020, as noted above. Additional protests led by environmentalist groups erupted between September 2021 and February 2022. The government had agreed with a foreign company, “Rio Tinto”, to allow it to explore mines in the Jadar Valley (Western Serbia) among other similar investments which may have been detrimental to the natural environment. The government also planned to abolish the 50 percent threshold of voter turnout, which was required for a national referendum to pass. The opposition considered that amendment as undermining direct democracy and eroding the legitimacy of referenda. The amendment of the law on referendums was passed in November 2021 (Radio Free Europe, 2021), but the government, under pressure for protesters, eventually annulled plans which had a debatable environmental impact. Do the multiple instances of relatively free anti-government protests sampled above indicate that democracy in Serbia has not backslid over time? The answer is negative. Democracy in Serbia has backslid, but the SNS government has tolerated and on occasion has positively responded to protests. This is not as surprising as it may seem. In lieu of elections, which they control, non-democratic governments count on protests as information tools, i.e., collect information on popular discontent (Lorenzen, 2013). In short, tolerating and even succumbing to protests does not render a regime democratic. It renders a democracy that is backsliding more controllable on the part of the government. In such a democracy, governing elites control elections and the rest of democratic institutions (e.g., parliaments) but tolerate protests, which allow them to fine-tune their controlling strategies. By influencing the conduct of elections and tolerating protests for ten years (2012–2022), the political hegemony

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of the SNS proved to be unassailable. Nowhere was this hegemony more manifest than in the operation of the parliament, Serbia’s National Assembly.

8.2

Parliament

Since 2012, when the SNS won parliamentary elections for the first time, the government has steered the National Assembly away from its mission to hold the executive accountable. The government was further enabled in this effort by the fact that since that year parliamentary opposition has been divided, if not practically destroyed. The formerly strong pro-reform and pro-Western DS party was split into the (original) Democratic Party (the DS), the Social Democratic Party and other small parties. Meanwhile, an ultra-nationalist party, the Dveri, emerged to the right of the SNS. Among the non-right-wing opposition parties which have won parliamentary representation since 2012, most have been loose circles of politicians. The only party, besides the governing SNS, which has a recognizable typical modern party organization is the socialist party, the SPS (interview 11). The socialist party had been revamped by Miloševi´c in the early 1990s, but never won an election after his fall from power in 2000. Led by Ivica Daˇci´c (a former Miloševi´c party cadre), the SPS has been a coalition partner of successive governments of Serbia, including DS- and SNS-led coalition governments. It also participated in the elections of 2020, which the majority of other parties boycotted. In other words, except for a short period (2001–2007), the SPS was never in the opposition. In view of the above, the parliament does not exercise oversight over the government. There are “question and answer” sessions in which the government is supposedly held accountable and there are periodic debates on reports prepared by third parties, such as Serbia’s State Audit Office or independent authorities. However, under the circumstances briefly described above, all these are cosmetic exercises. After all, there are no annual work plans for the parliament. It is impossible to plan ahead if an institution is as malleable as Serbia’s National Assembly. The parliament does not really discharge its duties of controlling the government or contributing to and debating the formulation of new policy measures for an additional reason, summarized by a former Serb diplomat:

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The majority of pieces of new legislation are voted through the emergency procedure and thus mechanisms of parliamentary control are not implemented. Legislation is not debated in parliament. Moreover, parliamentary committees are sidestepped in the sense that no substantive debate takes place within their auspices. The SNS-led majority has ‘invented’ a Serbian ‘filibuster’ mechanism of preventing substantial parliamentary debate: parliamentary deputies supporting the government submit hundreds of – as a rule identical – amendments to draft bills. They thus consume the debate time allocated, with the aim to preventing opposition politicians from taking part in the discussion. (personal communication, 19 February 2019)

Finally, extraordinary urgent procedures to pass new legislation consisted 44 per cent of the total legislation voted in 2017 (European Commission, 2018, 6–7). In other words, the government allowed little time for parliamentary scrutiny of a large share of new legislation. Later, there was some improvement, as the share of urgent procedures decreased to 9 percent (European Commission, 2021, 10). Yet, Serbia’s National Assembly has not been allowed to play its role in a system of checks and balances required of any contemporary democracy. The parliament was even less capable of playing that role after the extensive boycott of the 2020 elections. The phenomenon of a parliamentary democracy without a real parliamentary opposition in Serbia alerted foreign institutions. Initially, the Open Society Foundation tried to play the role of an intermediary, bringing government and opposition to the same table for talks. After that project failed, the European Parliament (EP) intervened. Since October 2019, the EP has conducted rounds of “inter-party dialogue” among Serbian political parties of the government and the opposition (Alatsiatanou, 2021; European Commission, 2021, 9–10). The dialogues continued into 2022, in lieu of the absence of any other trustworthy institution of communication between government and opposition. But they did not alter the crucial fact that the SNS government systematically sidestepped, if not practically undermined, the parliament. In fact, after the parliamentary elections of April 2022, the final results were announced with great delay and the parliament was convened only in August of that year. Its only activity was the President’s inauguration. In 2022, the parliament effectively remained inoperative for five months (European Commission, 2022, 4).

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In fact, in the context of state-society relations characterized by populism it is probably expected that representative institutions will be downgraded. Populist leaders and their parties claim to authentically express the will of the people. Such leaders claim to know best, so people entrust them with the task of steering the country. For populists, the parliament, as other democratic institutions such as the justice system, which is briefly discussed below, are mere impediments to the government’s implementation of the will of the people.

8.3

The Justice System

There is a long historical legacy of subjugation of the Serbian justice system to the Serbian executive. Between 1991–2000, the judiciary was completely subservient to the ruling SPS party. The transition from that rule involved reorganization of the justice system as a whole after the fall of the SPS from power (2000), but the situation did not improve dramatically. The judiciary (the sum total of judges and prosecutors) is controlled by the governing elites and puts the justice system to the service of the government. Since the judicial reforms of 2001 in Serbia, the judiciary has been nominally governed by two bodies, the High Judicial Council (HJC) and the High Prosecutorial Council (HPC), while the role of the Supreme Public Prosecutor of Serbia has also been prominent. These bodies and posts are staffed on decisions of the National Assembly. Based on the Constitution of Serbia, the “Law on Judges” and other laws of 2001, the National Assembly initially selects and may (or may not) renew the term of judges (upon proposals made by the HJC; article 147 of the Constitution). Thus, by law the parliament’s largest political parties, for instance the governing SNS party and its coalition partners, play a decisive role in judicial appointments, while in practice the principle of life-long appointment of judges is not implemented. International observers also acknowledge that despite constitutional and legal provisions to the contrary, the government exerts a disproportionate influence over the judiciary. The HJC and the HPC do not actually govern the administration of justice in Serbia (European Commission, 2018, 3; US Department of State, 2017, 6). The European Commission has noted the lack of progress in reducing the heavy political influence which the government exerts over the judiciary (European Commission, 2020). Regarding the independence and accountability of

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the judiciary, the Commission noted some promising developments after the constitutional reform of February 2022 (European Commission, 2022, 19). Still, the most visible instances in which the judiciary and prosecutorial authorities follow the government’s line are cases of investigations in and extraditions requested for alleged abuses of human rights committed in the wars of dissolution of former Yugoslavia and Kosovo. For example, human rights activists have faced prosecutorial harassment in cases in which they tried to check on public activities of convicted war criminals (US Department of State, 2017, 21). In other words, the judiciary is “perceived as a potential political weapon” (Dalara, 2014, 81, 101). In fact, over the last two decades, this perception has led all political parties, regardless of whether they are in government or opposition, to act as veto players in judicial reform (Dalara, 2014, 102). In other words, whichever party is in government uses the judiciary as a control mechanism. Such control is exerted through institutional means, e.g., the aforementioned parliamentary control of the judiciary, and invisible means, e.g., pressure on individual judges. Naturally, clientelist relations between governing elites and the judges result from the use of such invisible means. The Serbian judges themselves have been hesitant to pursue their autonomy from political control. This reluctance of judges may be explained through two considerations. Either the professional body of judges has been weakly organized or judges have been afraid that without political protection, they may be negatively assessed as far as their professional performance and integrity are concerned. In other words, some judges themselves are probably afraid of reform. After all, they have been accustomed to operating in a context of political patronage relations which underpin the unconsolidated democracy of Serbia as a whole. In sum, the judiciary may in fact have been both unable and unwilling to make itself independent from Serbia’s Executive (Dalara, 2014, 99, 103). Political influence on the justice system starts from the system’s top. As already noted, the HJC is itself under the control of parliament. Until recent amendments (discussed later in this section) were proposed, this Council consisted of eleven members, eight of whom were selected by the National Assembly. Among these eight members there were six judges, one attorney and one professor of law. The remaining three members

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were ex officio, i.e., “the President of the Supreme Court of Cassation, the Minister responsible for justice and the President of the Judicial Committee of the National Assembly” (Kmezi´c, 2017, 79). In addition to proposing a catalogue of prospective judges to the National Assembly, the HJC is responsible for the following tasks: to appoint, transfer and dismiss judges and to decide on incompatibilities of other posts held by judges which they may hold while also serving in Serbia’s justice system (Kmezi´c, 2017, 78–79). Notably, the HJC does not control either the size of its budget or the distribution of its expenditures (Kmezi´c, 2017, 79, 137). The Council is completely dependent on the government for its finances. In other words, the selection and funding of the judiciary are the epitome of clientelist relations among political institutions. Serbia’s justice system is strongly dependent on the shifting strategies and alliances among political parties and particularly so on the governing party. Successive governing parties (the SPS, the DSS, the DS and the SNS) have been complicit in that sense. Other governments serving before the Vuˇcic government, such as the DS-led government under Tadi´c in the late 2000s, had tampered with the justice system through the governmentcontrolled HJC. In detail, in December 2009 the DS-controlled HJC cleansed the judiciary from elements left over from the Miloševi´c regime and the era of SPS-party rule (1990–2000). The DS government also tried to get rid of government-unfriendly elements in the judiciary. The HJC proceeded with a massive renewal of Serbia’s judiciary: while the HJC gave tenure to 1531 judges, it simultaneously dismissed 837 others and appointed 876 new ones (Kmezi´c, 2017, 80). This was a major shock to the judicial system and a blatant expression of applying political clientelism. More importantly, the DS move completely upset the balance among the three branches of democratic regime, i.e., the executive, the judicial and the legislative, a balance that is considered a cornerstone of contemporary democracies. After the change of government in 2012, the pressure on the judiciary was raised. Judges who had been dismissed by the Tadi´c (the DS) government were re-instituted by the SNS government in their posts (interview 11). As a result, “judges selected by Miloševi´c were back in their posts after 2012” (interview 31). In more blunt terms, as a Serbian Professor of Law told me, “the SPS eventually saved its judges” (interview 27). Moreover, higher-ranking law enforcement officials as well as public notaries

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were also hand-picked by the new government in a purely clientelist manner. After such developments, SNS government officials gave direct instructions to judges and prosecutors on how to act. Government officials openly made public statements against court decisions which displeased the government, while government-friendly media also exerted pressure on judges. The rationale of such increased government pressure was that judges should give in to political will (Kmezi´c, 2017, 80), which was taken to be the will of the people’s majority, expressed by a populist government (e.g., the SNS government) elected to power. For example, the SNS government had the justice and prosecutorial authorities investigate business entrepreneurs associated with previous governments. As an anti-government NGO official put it, the SNS government had prosecutorial authorities target “business tycoons related to the DS party which had governed until 2012. The SNS simultaneously continued the corrupt practices of the DS through its own tycoons” (interview 29). The persecution strategy of the SNS government was not limited to unfriendly businessmen but extended to members of the opposition. A well-informed former ‘Tanjung news agency’ journalist asserted: “In 2012–2014 more than one hundred party cadres of the DS were charged with criminal law violations” (interview 10). Obviously, this strategy went counter to the principle of judicial independence which informs the rule of law in a functioning liberal democracy. But it was strategy that fitted the populist logic of aiming at targets which the populist government considers as traitors or enemies of the people. As argued above, both clientelism and populism were at play. To an extent, the process of changing the aforementioned clientelist relations between the government and the judiciary and altering the populist uses to which the justice system was put under SNS rule has been a long, painful and incomplete process of reforming Serbia’s constitution. The Meanders of Constitutional Reform of the Serbian judiciary’s Composition and Independence The SNS government, under pressure from the EU and the Council of Europe, had long pondered over necessary constitutional reform of the judiciary. However, it was torn between its own propensity to control the justice system and external pressures to grant it the autonomy required by

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the separation of powers in contemporary liberal democracies. On the face of it, the reform’s purpose was to enhance the independence and accountability of the judiciary. The purpose was served more in the reform of 2022 than in the aborted reform of 2018, details for which are provided below. The lack of independence of the judiciary from the government was not a new phenomenon under SNS rule. It was related to the shortcomings of the Serbian constitution of 2006 which allowed for political interference in the judiciary. On various occasions governments had promised to bring regulations on Serbia’s judiciary in line with international standards. The country’s official national strategy for judicial reform dated back to 2015 and ideally should have been implemented by 2016. As long as the reform remained incomplete, the government was unconstrained with regard to the appointment and promotion of judges. It continued exerting influence over the HJC and the HPC. Furthermore, members of the judiciary were under the undue influence of government officials. Any judges, who were not under such influence, were at times personally insulted by governing party MPs in sessions of the parliament (European Commission, 2021, 20–21). As the European Commission put it, summarizing the condition of the justice system at the end of the decade of the 2010s, “the current legal framework does not provide sufficient guarantees against potential political influence over the judiciary” (European Commission, 2021, 17). The Serbian parliament’s (and thus also the government’s) heightened role regarding the selection of judges was further enhanced in the amendments of the Constitution drafted by the Vuˇci´c government in January 2018 (but which were put on hold at least until the spring of 2020). In detail, the government prepared amendments to reform the Constitution and make the judiciary more independent. In its 2018 draft, the outcome of this constitutional reform would have further constrained the judiciary’s independence (Beširevi´c, 2018, 2–3). The SNS government was probably engaged in a decorative exercise to please the EU and other external observers. In 2018 the proposed amendments to the Constitution included a change in the composition of the HJC. It would have ten members, among whom five would be judges elected by their peers and five would be lawyers proposed by a parliamentary committee. They were to be elected by the plenum of the National Assembly. There were some preconditions barring less experienced lawyers from being elected (e.g.,

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a requirement of ten years’ experience in practicing law), although one would think that for such an influential post (member of HJC), a ten-year job experience is quite a low threshold. However, most importantly, only lawyers who were supported by the majority of the competent parliamentary committee could stand for election, and for a lawyer to be elected, it would be sufficient for him or her to obtain a three-fifths majority in the first round of voting in the National Assembly. If this threshold was not reached, then a five-ninths majority in the second round of voting would suffice. As the Venice Commission put it (2018, 14): “this provision creates the possibility that half of the members of the HJC – including, according to Amendment XV, the President—will be a coherent and like-minded group in line with the wishes of the current government. This is very problematic and other solutions should be explored”. Moreover, the SNS government’s amendments provided for an even more politicized selection of and eventual control over members of the High Prosecutorial Council (HPC). Out of the eleven members of this Council, prosecutors would be allowed to elect only four. The remaining seven, thus the majority of the HPC, would be five lawyers selected by the parliament in the manner outlined above for the selection of HJC, plus the Supreme Public Prosecutor and the Minister of Justice (Beširevi´c, 2018, 4). Political control over judges may be exercised also from within the ranks of the judiciary, i.e., by the HJC, as amendments would allow room for government-driven disciplining of judges who may not toe the government line. More concretely, amendments provided for the dismissal of judges on two clearly specified and two unclear (and thus politically suspect) grounds. A judge may be dismissed for: (1) being sentenced to at least six months’ imprisonment; (2) committing a crime that makes the person unworthy of judgeship; (3) performing judicial functions incompetently; and (4) having committed a serious disciplinary offence. The last two instances were vague enough to allow for government interference in dismissals of judges, through possible actions of progovernment members of the HJC. Further on, in the future judges or groups of judges deemed uncooperative by political authorities could also be transferred from their post to another sector of Serbia’s justice system. Transfers could be decided by the HJC “in case of revocation of the court

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or the substantial part of the jurisdiction of the court” (amendments III and VIII, commented upon by the Venice Commission, 2018, 11). The SNS government soon dropped this rather politicized constitutional reform of the judiciary only to resume it in December 2020 in order to meet the requirements of chapter 23 of EU accession negotiations. It was not until the spring of 2021 that the SNS-dominated parliament restarted the procedure of constitutional reform. The parliament plenum and designated committee worked on draft changes of the constitution in June–September 2021. The government submitted reform proposals to the Venice Commission which responded with a positive “Opinion” including reservations and recommendations (Venice Commission, 2021). The new reform left less room for the politicization of selections and procedures. It included the removal of the competence of Serbia’s Parliament to elect court presidents, a change welcome by the Venice Commission. It provided for electing the eleven members of the HJC on grounds allowing for less political interference than before, as six out of the eleven members would be judges elected by their peers; four would be “prominent” lawyers, with at least ten years’ experience, elected by the parliament after a public competition and a two-thirds majority; and the President of the Supreme Court would preside over the HJC (IFIMES, 2022). The Venice Commission and international and local critics of the suggested composition of the HJC noted the vagueness of the provision for “prominent lawyers” (Stojanovi´c, 2021). There would still be a lot of room for political manoeuvres that the parliament and the government would enjoy. In a parliament dominated by a single party and its close allies, it would be possible to select pro-government “prominent lawyers”. A change was also envisioned for the eleven members of the HPC: it would comprise of five members elected by the prosecutors themselves, four “prominent lawyers” elected by the National Assembly and two ex officio members, namely the Supreme Public Prosecutor and the Minister of Justice. The Supreme Public Prosecutor would be the only higher judge to be elected by the parliament, after a public competition and by a three-fifths majority. To sum up, as the Venice Commission noted (2021, 17–18), the above change would mean that out of the eleven members of the HPC, six would be elected by the parliament or be ex officio. Prosecutors in the HPC would be a minority. In other words, grounds for political

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interference remained with regard to the HPC, but much less for the HJC. Eventually, a referendum on these and other reforms of the constitution (e.g., the non-transferability of judges, the functional immunity for judges and prosecutors) took place in January 2022. The reform was approved by 60 percent, but the voter turnout was very low (31 percent). Serbs turned their back on that government initiative. It remains to be seen whether relevant legislation will be adopted to implement the constitutional reforms, after a first set of drafts of law were formulated in September 2022 (European Commission, 2022, 5). The way the HJC and HPC operate in the years to come will prove whether political interference in the Serbian justice system will decrease. To sum up this section, the dependency of the judiciary and prosecutorial authorities on Serbia’s elected governments had become apparent before the government turnover of 2012, when the SNS rose to power. However, outright dependency has become much more acute since then. Judges in Serbia were never independent from the elected government and kept their posts depending on which party was in power and on whether they followed the line of that party.

8.4

Independent Authorities

From a legal point of view, independent authorities in Serbia are the same as those found in today’s liberal democracies. Such authorities regulate and manage whole public policy sectors which ideally should remain out of the reach of the government. Independent authorities themselves are expected to hold the government accountable. Examples of such authorities in Serbia are the Ombudsman, the Personal Data Protection Authority, the Commissioner for the Protection of Equality, the Anti-Corruption Agency and the Regulatory Body for Electronic Media (REM). The SNS government has used a double-edge strategy towards independent authorities. It has kept some of them, such as the AntiCorruption Agency, at bay, trying to avoid them. Meanwhile, it has consistently attacked other ones, such as the Ombudsman, the Commissioner for the Protection of Equality and the Personal Data Protection Authority. The SNS government considers the latter authorities as the real opposition to its party rule, in lieu of the fragmented and weak parliamentary opposition (Chapter 5).

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Moreover, not all independent authorities are neutral to or critical of the SNS-led government. The REM is far from independent and in fact contributes to the government’s intrusion into the mass media sector. It is telling that between 2016–2020 the REM had no President. Other posts on its board remained vacant too, and the body did not acquire full capacity until July 2021 (European Commission, 2021, 35). After the REM became active again, it proceeded to review applications for TV licenses in Serbia. In July 2022, this ostensibly independent authority assigned national TV frequencies to four applicants: TV Pink, Nacionalna Happy TV , PRVA and TV B92. All are well-known supporters of the SNS government. Besides biased diffusion of information, the four TV channels have engaged in infotainment. Since 2014 the four TV channels have violated the relevant professional and ethical standards so openly that the REM itself has issued several reprimands, warnings and temporary bans against each of them (Jovanovi´c, 2022; Stojanovi´c, 2022). Regarding control of corruption, the government keeps at a distance the Anti-Corruption Agency, which typically is a major independent authority in many countries, and the Anti-Corruption Council, which is an advisory body on anti-corruption policy. The Agency is not endowed with adequate personnel or infrastructure, while the Council is not regularly consulted on anti-corruption policy. In fact, in July 2017 the government interfered in the composition of the Council, suddenly appointing two new members (European Commission, 2018, 21). The Anti-Corruption Agency is in practice constrained by the government. The SNS-controlled parliament had delayed appointing the Members of the Board of the Agency for two years and only did so in 2016, while the Agency was run by an acting interim Director (just for eight months). In 2016–2017 the Agency obtained little access to official data, while the Serbian Parliament did not consider its reports (US Department of State, 2017, 18–19). Moreover, “the Agency is unable to start or follow the necessary procedures to control cases of conflict of interest or to control the finances of parties” (interview 27). Given the impasse created by the fact that the Serbian judiciary was more or less controlled by the SNS-led government, citizens reacted by resorting to the Personal Data Protection Authority and the Ombudsman, two independent authorities which have proven more resilient against government pressure (interviews 28 and 31). One can go as far as arguing

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that the Ombudsman has functioned as “substitute for the non-existing opposition” (interview 32). Still, the SNS-led government has also attempted to control the Ombudsman’s Office. The Ombudsman, however, lacks sufficient independence and administrative capacity to play the role of protector of citizens’ rights (European Commission, 2018, 24). One of the persons who served as Ombudsman, Saša Jankovi´c, suffered a smear campaign by government-friendly media. Eventually, he resigned to run for the Presidency of Serbia in April 2017 against Vuˇci´c (but was unsuccessful). The fact that the person who held the Ombudsman’s post stepped down from his independent authority position to contest the presidential elections has not helped the status of independent authorities. The electoral performance of Jankovi´c was mediocre: in the 2017 elections, he obtained a mere 16.4 percent of the vote, in contrast with the staggering 55.1 percent of his opponent. Soon after, he saw the popular support which he used to enjoy as Ombudsman, fizzle. Meanwhile, the government and the SNS-dominated parliament continued to neglect the role of the Ombudsman as an institution. It is telling that “for the first time since 2014, the Ombudsman’s annual report was discussed in a parliament plenary session and conclusions were adopted in July 2019” (European Commission, 2020, 17). Nevertheless, in 2020–2021 some of the independent authorities produced critical reports on government practices. For instance, the Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection criticized street video surveillance by the Ministry of Interior, while the Ombudsman reported negatively on the ill treatment of citizens under police custody (European Commission, 2021, 32–33). However, overall independent authorities in Serbia have been characterized by passivity. In brief, in Serbia the government has rolled out a multi-faceted strategy to control or neutralize independent authorities, while the latter have been mostly unable to carry out their duties. For example, they have not been able to monitor cases of conflict of interest, in which government officials or their relatives engage in business endeavours incompatible with their official duties (Bjelotomi´c, 2020). To understand the approach of the SNS towards independent authorities, one has to recall that the SNS is imbued by populist ideology and for years has operated in a context of populist state-society relations (Chapter 5). For populists, intermediary bodies, standing in between the

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elected government and the people, are a nuisance. Under populism, there must be a direct relation between state and society, expressed in elections and referenda, while checks and balances carried out by independent authorities are perceived as sources of potential distortion of the will of the people. The same holds in the populist mind for the role of mass media in democracy.

8.5

Mass Media

In Serbia, mass media is controlled “from above”, while journalists are personally intimidated. This is no news to long-term observers of Serbian politics. Even before the rise of SNS to power, i.e., in 2008–2012, when Serbian politics was dominated by the DS party and its leader Boris Tadi´c, the government had attempted to control the private media. “There was media spinning already under Tadi´c” (interview 28). The DS government had channelled state-paid advertisements of government projects to favoured newspapers and other media outlets. “Already under Tadi´c and the DS party there was control over the media, but after the 2012 government turnover, the SNS exerted further control” (interview 32). While political control and the promotion of personal interests of government ministers already took place under DS rule, “the situation has become worse under SNS rule” (interview 10, Belgrade, April 2015). An exasperated director of an independent website, recalling the mobilization of journalists and many media outlets against the Miloševi´c regime in the late 1990s, declared that “regarding media freedom, the situation under SNS is worse than what it was then, under Miloševi´c, because today there is no opposition media left. Today not a single crack in the system of control is allowed” (interview 14). As with democracy itself in Serbia, the freedom of the Serbian media seems then to have oscillated between more and less control. It seems to have followed a pendulum-like movement from less freedom to more freedom and back. Indeed, since 2012 the SNS has implemented a consistent strategy to control the media. In detail, central and local government authorities provide funds to selected media through advertisements. Selectively aggressive tax audits against media critical to the government are combined with targeted channelling of government-paid advertisements by SOEs and municipalities to pro-government media (US Department of State, 2017, 10). This is important for many private media, which are starved for cash and depend on government funding for their economic

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survival. Thus, these private media tend to implement self-censorship on government policies. However, other private media did not limit themselves to selfcensorship. Being under government tutelage in the 2010s, they did the most they could to support the SNS government. TV channels, such as Prva, Pink TV, Happy TV, B92 and tabloid, “yellow-press” newspapers such as Informer (also active in Montenegro), Srpski Telegraf , Kurir, Alo! and Naše Novine openly promoted government policy; at the same time, they systematically launched smear campaigns against opposition politicians or independent authorities that were periodically targeted by the SNS government. There were also claims that “pro-government media is influenced by Russia” (interview 11; Šaikaš, 2016; and personal communication with former Serb diplomat, 19 February 2019). Regardless of the extent of such influence, it turns out that regarding political ideas, foreign affairs, social issues and lifestyle, the actively pro-government media and particularly the TV channels “are a vehicle of social engineering in the service of Serbia’s government” (interview 31). Moreover, if journalists kept an independent line, they were sanctioned by managers or media owners supportive of the government. An example is the suppression of the iconic TV show, “Impression of the Week”, aired by the once anti-Miloševi´c, anti-authoritarian B92 TV channel. The show, featuring Olja Be´ckovi´c as anchorwoman, was taken off air in 2014 for being critical towards the Vuˇci´c government (Živanovi´c, 2017 and interview 28; since 2019 the show has been aired on cable TV). However, the private media sector is not fully controlled. There are a few media organizations which have resisted economic dependence on the government. They have avoided self-censorship and the subjugation of their journalists to government pressure. Examples are the newspaper Danas, the website Pešˇcanik, the N1 TV (a CNN affiliate network operating since October 2014) and other electronic media. The same holds to some extent for the foreign-owned newspaper Blic and the weekly magazines Vreme and NIN . (The latter, depending on the circumstances, takes a strong pro-nationalist stance). Yet, to the battery of private pro-government media one has to add the government-controlled state media. The public broadcaster (RTS) effectively lacks independence from the government. Serbia’s oldest and once

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reputable newspaper Politika does not allow enough room for pluralism either (European Commission, 2018, 26). As the decade of the 2010s unfolded, the SNS government intensified its control of the media. The uneven performance and lack of success of the parliamentary opposition and social movements may be put in the context of limited freedom of expression. Press freedom in Serbia has declined over time, as documented in assessments of international observers and reactions of Serbian journalists. Compared to 2018, in 2019 Serbia’s position was dramatically downgraded by “Reporters Without Borders”. The country dropped from the 76th rank to the 90th rank among 180 countries and in 2021 it dropped to the 93rd rank. The country was categorized as “unsafe” for practicing journalism (Reporters Without Borders, 2019). Serbia’s rank improved in 2022 (79th rank), but overall, between 2017–2022, media freedom was severely constrained, despite growing citizens’ opposition to and international criticisms against the SNS government, as explained below. The deteriorating state of media freedom created reactions from journalists who in 2017 submitted to Vuˇci´c a list of demands (which he never met). In October 2018 the informal Media Coalition, a coalition of Serbian associations and media which monitor press freedom, addressed the international community and raised the issue of government control of the media (Media Coalition in Serbia, 2018). The six-month long civic protests that started in December 2018 in Serbia, after a violent physical attack against the left-wing leader Stefanovi´c, centred on many problems of democracy under SNS rule, including constraints on freedom of the press. The demonstrators adopted the slogan “One of a Million”, which was a direct reply to the reaction of the Serbian leader. Vuˇci´c had declared that he would not meet their demands, even if their numbers would reach one million. The organizers of protests asked a group of experts to formulate recommendations for necessary steps to have free and fair elections, a prospect for which securing the operation of free media is necessary. The European Commission in its 2019 Report on Serbia stated that “results have yet to be achieved on the thirteen most pressing issues for media freedom identified by media associations gathered in the ‘Team for Dialogue’” (European Commission, 2019, 26). The Commission reiterated similar reports in its reports of the following years (European Commission, 2020, 2021, 2022, 37–42).

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Among the reservations of the European Commission and other international observers, the most critical pertain to the SNS’s behaviour towards dissenting journalists. Indeed, under SNS rule, law enforcement agencies have tolerated the growth of a political atmosphere and a working environment that has put journalists at risk (Media Coalition in Serbia, 2018; Reporters Without Borders, 2019; Rupar et al., 2021). There are physical attacks, threats and intrusion in properties of journalists who engage in investigations that the government dislikes (US Department of State, 2017, 10). It is also telling that cases of murdered journalists from 1999 and 2001 remain “unresolved” (European Commission, 2018, 25). Throughout the ten-year long SNS rule (2012–2022), government officials used to sue journalists who were critical of the government and call them enemies of society or “foreign agents” (Media Coalition in Serbia, 2018). The Independent Journalists’ Association of Serbia (NUNS, a participant in the Media Coalition) keeps a data base of threats, verbal and physical attacks against journalists in Serbia. Reports based on that database show that the number of such attacks, which had fallen from 31 in 2012 to 23 in 2013, has risen since then. There were 69 attacks in 2017 and 102 in 2018 (NUNS, 2019). Serb authorities have sanctioned culprits of such attacks in only 12 such incidents (N1 website, 2019). Compared to 2019, there was an increase in pressures and attacks against journalists in 2020 (European Commission, 2021, 35). However, in 2021, there was a decrease in pressures and attacks (European Commission, 2022, 38). Nevertheless, the wider consequence of such a situation for democratic participation is inescapable. It has been noted by a website manager who is critical of the government: “if journalists are frightened, then fear is diffused to the rest of society” (interview 14). Reported by Freedom House “In March 2021, a journalist with the Crime and Corruption Reporting Network (KRIK), an independent investigative outlet, asked Vuˇci´c about the government’s alleged connections to organized crime during a press conference; following that press conference, KRIK became the subject of a smear campaign by pro-government media and SNS-affiliated figures in a clear attempt to discredit the outlet’s work. KRIK journalists have received death threats. The KRIK organization has been targeted by numerous lawsuits that, as media watchdog groups claim, are part of

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a strategic attempt to suppress KRIK’s operational ability” (Freedom House-Serbia, 2021). The Freedom House’s downgrading of Serbia’s status from “Free” to “Partly Free” in 2019 was largely owed to the above-noted governmentimposed constraints on press freedom. It was “due to deterioration in the conduct of elections, continued attempts by the government and allied media outlets to undermine independent journalists through legal harassment and smear campaigns, and President Aleksandar Vuˇci´c’s de facto accumulation of executive powers that conflict with his constitutional role” (Freedom House – Serbia, 2019). In its report for 2020, Freedom House added that “the SNS has steadily eroded political rights and civil liberties” (Freedom House – Serbia, 2020). To sum up this section, despite exceptions, in Serbia most electronic and printed private and state media is under strong government control, while journalists work in a heavily constrained environment. While political interference with the mass media was not uncommon under prior governments, control was intensified under the SNS government. For this reason, following Guriev and Treisman (2022), it has been argued that Serbia has become an example of “informational autocracy”. More concretely, the media does not provide truthful, complete and timely information. It systematically engages in pro-government propaganda (Jovanovi´c, 2022). The trend towards more control of the press should be couched in the context of populism on which the SNS has flourished and which it has reinforced throughout its term in power. Under populist statesociety relations, dissenting voices undermine the narrative of the people’s authentic representation by the populist leader and his (or her) party. People are expected to rally around the leader rather than listen to critics of the leader, be they independent mass media or civil society organizations (CSOs).

8.6

Civil Society

Civil society in Serbia periodically erupts in protest. This is a historical legacy dating back at least to the period of popular struggles against the SPS regime in the 1990s (Vladisavljevi´c, 2016). This tradition was continued, as shown by the anti-government protests in April 2017 in the wake of the presidential elections and the waves of protests in December

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2018–March 2019 after the violent attack against Stefanovi´c. Opposition political forces supported repeated rallies in Belgrade to accuse the SNS government of complicity in the beating of Stefanovi´c and of a general atmosphere of political unfreedom in Serbia. The number of CSOs in Serbia is quite high: in the lists of the Serbian Business Registers Agency, there are 26,293 CSOs (Wunsch, 2018, 30). However, many of these CSOs rely on a handful of individuals, do not have sustainable financial resources and do not have a wider appeal. What is more, the SNS government implements a strategy of controlling civil society “from above”. The Drive to Control Civil Society “from Above” In Serbia, any outbursts of political participation should be put in a larger constraining context which dampens uncontrolled participation. “The SNS government wants to control society as a whole” (interview 28). Society is left alone to organize and express itself, as long as it does not threaten the government. As a matter of fact, in a country which has never experienced the terrorist attacks that shook other European countries in the 2010s, the scale of police surveillance is striking: estimations of the number of citizens whose communications are monitored by the police vary between 70,000 and 100,000 (US Department of State, 2017, 9). Moreover, in Serbia the labour movement is fragmented, while labour unions and professional associations are organizationally weak (Ladjevac, 2017). As in other post-communist democracies, citizens distrust organizations which they may associate with what was once a one-party state under the League of Communists of Yugoslavia. The prospect of Serbia’s future accession to the EU, after the country obtained official EU candidate member status in 2012, mobilized CSOs. They created networks, such as the National Convention on the European Union (NCEU) and the PrEUgovor (“Pregovori with the EU”), which emerged in the context of accession negotiations (Wunsch, 2018, 100, 114). Serbian CSOs developed contacts with the EU, embarked on projects related to rule of law implementation and asked the government to streamline its cooperation with civil society. There was in fact a Government Office for Cooperation with Civil Society which was founded in 2011. This Office was supposed to facilitate consultation between the government and CSOs. In fact, government ministers regarded the

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office with suspicion which turned into outright hostility under the SNS government after 2012 (Wunsch, 2018, 97). In fact, research shows that the long effort of the EU to stimulate the development of civil society in Serbia as part of the larger aim to improve governance on the road to the country’s integration into the EU has produced only mediocre results (Fagan, 2013). There are just a handful of CSOs in large cities which have developed organizationally because of EU assistance, but such development has not been sustainable (Fagan, 2013, 65–66). To the little extent that Serbian CSOs were included in the policy-making process, they were granted a cosmetic role. The Serbian government has gone through all the formal motions to appear as receptive and transparent but has essentially kept CSOs at bay. As Natascha Wunsch has put it, CSOs achieved “procedural but not substantive empowerment” (Wunsch, 2018, 118). Even worse, whenever CSOs and social movements resisted the government, they faced the hard face of government control. “CSOs have tried to engage with the SNS government, but it has become more rigid over time” (interview 29). Rallies of civic associations or protest movements have periodically been subjected to excessive police force or have met with counter-rallies allowed by the police (European Commission, 2018, 26). In this way the police, following government orders, have tolerated pressure of pro-government groups on anti-government protesters. In addition, the SNS party has tried to control local voices by use of a double-edged strategy. First, as already noted in the first section of this chapter, when they deem it necessary, SNS local party cadres exert physical violence against dissenters (“The SNS has a para-military organization”; interview 11). Second, through a successful electoral campaign, the governing party has taken over municipalities, such as the municipality of Novi Sad, in order to silence opposition from local government. In the summer of 2020, the government upgraded its efforts to pressure CSOs and activists. A unit of the Ministry of Finance, the “Administration for the Prevention of Money Laundering”, asked Serbian banks to open the bank accounts of 37 CSOs and individuals who had been critical of the SNS government (Civil Rights Defenders, 2020). No further action was taken, but the government’s move clearly amounted to intimidation. The establishment of a new “Ministry for Human and Minority Rights and Social Dialogue” in October 2020 signalled that the SNSgovernment may have opted for a more tolerant, if not inclusive, approach

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to CSOs, although “verbal attacks and smear campaigns” against CSOs continued in parliament in 2020–2022 (European Commission, 2021, 12, 2022, 4). As one would expect in a society divided by multiple social class and identity cleavages, in addition to stark cleavages on foreign policy issues, the CSOs are neither united nor innocent of any sins. First, as a Serbian Professor of History claimed, “civil society is feudalized, as key CSOs are led by the same few people, few activists” (interview 21). Second, academic research further provides evidence for the claim that CSOs do not have a large appeal. They are run by a few managers capable of soliciting EU and other international financial and technical assistance (Bojici´c-Dzelilovi´c et al., 2013; Fagan, 2013). Be that as it may, we have to admit that at least since the government turnover of 2012, a handful of CSOs, including social movements, have assumed the role of political opposition under extremely constrained conditions of scarce finances and limited political freedoms. As an experienced director of an anti-government website put it: “Dissatisfied citizens do not protest, because people are blackmailed by Vuˇci´c, who threatens them that the Far Right will replace him; moreover, citizens fear rightist groups in Serbia” (interview 14). To complete this bleak picture, one should also add that in Serbia, as in Montenegro, not all CSOs are fighting for more democracy and freedom, as there are government-sponsored CSOs too. They are supported by the SNS government in their actions to defend government policy and discredit anti-government protests (Mari´c & Majstorovi´c, 2020, 44). Civil Society’s Resistance “from Below” While it is probably true that the SNS party, law enforcement forces and pro-government CSOs would like to control civil society, it is also true that resistance “from below” has existed for a long time. CSOs and social movements survived and mass protests erupted frequently, particularly in 2016–2022. Protesters contested the way the SNS government engineered the backsliding of democracy. CSOs have been defending democracy but also occupational and professional interests. The latter were couched in a larger anti-government discourse. Examples were the protests and strikes of teachers in the winter of 2014–2015 and the even longer strike of lawyers in the fall of 2014 and the fall and winter of 2014–2015. Moreover, other CSOs and loosely

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knit social movements were issue oriented, focusing on transitional justice and war crimes (Obradovi´c-Wochnik, 2013; Ostoji´c, 2013). There is also civil society mobilization over environmental protection, urban planning and the use of public spaces. A well-known example is the series of repeated protests of a social movement against the huge construction project Beograd na vodi (the “Belgrade Waterfront project”, BW). Since 2014, the project has involved government-sponsored, Abu Dhabi-funded large-scale redevelopment. The pharaonic “Belgrade Waterfront” project involved the construction of skyscrapers to house luxury hotels and thousands of new offices and apartments (Shepard, 2016). A citizens’ initiative was organized to stop gigantic new construction, including 6000 new apartments, 2000 offices and seven hotels on the banks of the River Sava which the SNS planned to carry out. Between 2015–2019, the civic initiative was a protagonist in city-wide social protests against the “Belgrade Waterfront” and other governmentsponsored and legally debatable projects of urban construction in the city. However, this anti-government dynamic did not gain enough momentum to become an organized political party opposition against the SNS government and the gigantic project went on. In detail, the construction project was rolled out in an old, underdeveloped neighbourhood, the Savamala, on the River Sava which flows through Belgrade. Although the BW project is a private business project, in 2015 the parliament passed legislation pronouncing it an enterprise of national importance. Such legislation enabled authorities to expropriate private property and alter urban planning regulations without adequate consultation with third parties. The SNS government backed the project, while judicial and prosecutorial authorities allowed violations of rule of law in the site of construction: in April 2016 masked men suddenly used bulldozers to quickly raze down shops and residences in the Savamala neighbourhood. Police just stood by. After the demolition, prosecutorial authorities delayed investigation by many months and eventually did not take any action at all (US Department of State, 2017, 4). Yet, Serbian state authorities and the SNS governing party have not been able to suffocate civil society in Serbia. Despite its deficiencies, civil society has mobilized in various ways and has underscored political opportunities for strengthening democratic participation in the context of an otherwise grossly eroded democracy. The efforts of civil society were not

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matched by the parties of the opposition, which until 2018 had failed to unite against the SNS government. As already noted above, the attack against Stefanovi´c was a spark that facilitated the creation of “Alliance for Serbia” in the winter of 2018–2019. This was a loose grouping of 30 opposition parties and other organizations which repeatedly organized anti-government protests, often on a weekly basis. It had periodic success, as “10,000 protesters assembled on 19 January 2019” (Reuters, 2019). The emergence of that tenuously held-together coalition of parties was a new political development, which, however, has not yet borne fruits. After the elections of 2020, partner organizations of the above coalition doubted the wisdom of boycotting those elections. “The boycotting coalition has disappeared, and some of the parties changed their mind” (Personal communication with Professor of the University of Belgrade, 26 November 2020). In brief, while the SNS government has tried to control civil society in Serbia, its efforts have probably backfired. There is a multi-faceted and at times quite large mobilization of civil society. Serbian civil society has raised issues of human rights, transitional justice, environmental protection, urban planning and control of state electronic media, among others, and has become over time a bastion of resistance to the control of democratic institutions by the SNS. In Belgrade and other Serbian cities, political participation through the channels of civil society may sometimes be weak. However, at other times it bursts out and has shown signs of sustainability. Field research has shown that in Serbia there is indeed a democratic public sphere which is often neglected (Dawson, 2014). Civil society’s protests in Serbia do not constitute the underground type of popular resistance “from below” encountered in twentieth and twenty-first century authoritarian regimes. Resistance is open and publicized. Civil society’s mobilization in today’s Serbia can be considered as an indicator of democratic life, however risky that life may be. It may be a precursor of government turnover, which may take place again, as it happened during the October 2000 uprising. Of course, it all depends on the existence of a coherent and persistent mobilization by political parties of the opposition and on future windows of political opportunity.

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The Political Management of the Covid-19 Crisis

In view of the above, it was not surprising that the SNS government used a public health emergency to further misuse and abuse democratic processes and institutions. The COVID-19 pandemic struck Serbia in early 2020 as it spread across the globe. As in other countries, in Serbia, too, a “state of emergency” was declared (Constitution of Serbia, article 200). If it is not the National Assembly (i.e., the Parliament) that declares that “state”, but the triumvirate of the Speaker of the Parliament, the Prime Minister and the President of the Republic, then the parliament must convene in 48 hours or “as soon as it is in a position to convene”, in order to give its approval to the triumvirate’s decision. The triumvirate declared a “state of emergency” on 15 March 2020, but the parliament first convened on the 26th of April (Tzifakis, 2020), while the “state of emergency” lasted until the 7th of May 2020 (in the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic). The parliament was dissolved anyway for the parliamentary elections that took place in June 2020. Notably, then, the parliament was not in session between 15 March 26– April 2020. After the June elections, which the SNS won, six weeks passed before the parliament was constituted. A new government was not formed for about three and a half months. All this amounted to the parliament being “actually inactive for more than nine months in 2020” (Mari´c & Majstorovi´c, 2020, 42). As noted above in this chapter, a similarly long period of parliamentary inaction occurred in 2022 as well. The government proceeded to ban public gatherings of more than 100 people and to make health care procurements without any public oversight whatsoever. Similar restrictions and lack of transparency characterized the periods during the following waves of the pandemic. Although people reacted to all this through street protests, for instance in July 2020, critical voices were silenced. It is telling that “During the 52 days of the ‘state of emergency’, President Vui´c was criticized for a total of thirteen seconds on the RTS, Serbia’s public broadcaster, and not by any Serbian opposition figure, but by the Montenegrin Minister of Health” (Mari´c & Majstorovi´c, 2020, 43). To sum up, in 2020, during the first phase of the pandemic, the SNS government misused state resources, governed by decree exceeding the limits of protection of human rights, and downgraded the parliament (Tepavac & Brankovi´c, 2020). It followed the same route of eroding Serbian democracy in the years that followed.

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8.8

Conclusions

In conclusion, the SNS government has inherited from past governments and has further developed strategies to control democracy from above. The strategies employed by the SNS include less the manipulation of elections or the unrestrained use of physical violence and more the control of institutions and processes, such as the parliament, the justice system, independent authorities and the mass media. The pre-existing state-society relations of populism and clientelism, along with large pockets of corruption, which the SNS reinforced after it came to power in 2012, may shed light on the misuses and abuses of democratic institutions in Serbia. The direction the SNS government has taken in order to use democratic institutions against democracy itself is embedded in a populist conception of democracy. According to such a conception, the state, personified by the populist leader, steers society and implements the will of the people. The populist party pushes aside any democratic institutions which could exercise oversight over the way the leader discharges his duties. Meanwhile, in a typical clientelist fashion, the party in power controls democratic institutions by recruiting and appointing government supporters in the justice system and the staterun media and by funding pro-government private media. There is also an element of authoritarianism, as the government suppresses dissenting voices in the media and civil society, a trend revisited in the following chapters on Montenegro and North Macedonia.

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CHAPTER 9

How Elected Governments Make Democracies Backslide: The Case of Montenegro

In Montenegro, the League of Communists of Montenegro won the first post-authoritarian elections of 1990 and was afterwards able to keep its political grip on almost all democratic and administrative institutions. In 1991 the party was officially dissolved but effectively renamed the Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS). After it easily won the 1990 parliamentary elections in the wake of the disintegration of former Yugoslavia, the DPS faced no serious challenger until 2020. In 1990 the DPS obtained 56 percent of the total vote and 83 out of 125 seats in the then Montenegrin Parliament. That was an electoral victory which paved the way for the party’s long-term domination of Montenegrin politics (Darmanovi´c, 2003; Komar & Živkovi´c, 2016; Morrison, 2009; Vukovi´c, 2015). According to the relevant literature on post-communist transitions (Bunce, 2003; Fish, 1998), if the opposition does not win a clear victory in the first national elections after transition from authoritarian rule, political and economic reforms evolve only to the extent that the former ruling party allows. In that sense, Montenegrin politics remained stagnant for a long time. This was also the case after the referendum on national independence of 2006, when the DPS formed a solid electoral base by contributing to a society-wide divide between adherents to the Montenegrin vs. Serbian national identity. Those in favour of independence subscribed to © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 D. A. Sotiropoulos, The Irregular Pendulum of Democracy, New Perspectives on South-East Europe, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25609-7_9

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a Montenegrin identity, distinct from the Serb identity. In the twentieth century, these two collective identities had never been clearly constructed, let alone fully separated in Montenegro’s society (Komar & Živkovi´c, 2016; Troch, 2014). A DPS-led coalition of parties put itself forward as a representative of “Montenegrins” against the “Serbs” and succeeded in winning the referendum by a small margin (55.5 percent of all votes cast, i.e., just above the 55.0 percent threshold which the international community and specifically the EU had required to recognize the referendum’s result). After Montenegro became an independent state, the DPS came first in total votes in all elections between 2006–2020, including during its period of relative decline in the second half of the 2010s. The successive victories of the DPS in the parliamentary elections of 2016, the presidential elections of 2018 and the local government elections of 2018–2019 (Marovi´c, 2018a, 2018b) were owed to several reasons. The DPS retained the organizational structures and local influence of the former communist party after 1990 in most Montenegrin electoral districts. It then practiced extensive political clientelism and exploited the national identity divide between “Serbs” and “Montgenegrins”. The repeated electoral successes of the DPS were also owed to a set of government interventions in Montenegrin society. The DPS government erected barriers to cordon off state institutions from possible challenges from society. Barriers included obstacles placed to obstruct the opposition parties’ access to state-owned mass media and public administration on a par with the governing party. Obstacles also included full control of the justice system and independent public authorities (e.g., the Anticorruption Committee) by the DPS. These barriers were effective until the elections of August 2020, when a coalition of opposition parties was able to win the majority of parliamentary seats and depose the DPS from government. In what follows in this chapter, I discuss how the DPS misused and abused democratic processes and institutions. I discuss in turn the conduct of elections, the parliament, the justice system, independent authorities and civil society and end with a brief note on how the Montenegrin government managed the COVID-19 crisis.

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Elections

Interventions by the DPS included a combination of widespread political patronage and selective social welfare policies. The DPS benefited from pre-1990, traditionally existing, clientelist state-society relations in Montenegro and built its political hegemony upon such relations. Under DPS rule there were also allegations of targeted attacks (financial inspections, threats of bodily harm, actual physical attacks) on dissenting organizations and individuals active in the mass media and NGO sectors. Such incidents did not take place only at the national parliamentary and presidential elections. They also occurred during local government elections in which the DPS mobilized its local party cells. Local governing party officials used a wide repertoire of targeted attacks and promises for welfare benefits (personal communication with Montenegrin political analyst, 11 February 2019). In this long-term, corruption-ridden set of state-society relations, networks of business and politics benefiting well-connected businessmen and incumbent government officials were constructed (Chapter 7). In detail, since the 1990s the DPS party has cast a wide net of political patronage, offering public sector jobs to different groups of the population (Miloševi´c, 2016). Patronage has continued unabated since then (Morrison, 2018, 172); in fact, the party used to offer public employment jobs at the central and the local government level (Chapter 6). In the words of a Montenegrin political analyst: “Even if you are hired to make coffee in a ministry, you have that job not because you make coffee well, but because of knowing the right people” (interview 33; list of interviews at the end of the book). Moreover, the DPS government periodically made social transfers to the poorer citizens, including outlays in kind, “such as flour, oil or wood, in addition to cash transfers” (interview 34). Such welfare benefits were distributed by ministries, SOEs and municipalities. They amounted to only “short-term social assistance outlays, which local officials of the DPS party distributed to the population, under unclear welfare criteria, insufficient to distinguish among beneficiaries” (interview 35). Usual beneficiaries included residents of under-developed areas in northern Montenegro and the unemployed around the country. Importantly, undisclosed state budget funds were also selectively used to fulfil

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citizens’ needs. Meanwhile the government refused to reveal the breakdown of the expenditures made on the basis of the relevant, classified and earmarked budget items (Institut Alternativa, 2016). Party patronage in public employee appointments and selective distribution of welfare benefits were funded by state resources. While many Montenegrin parties engaged in patronage, the DPS practiced it at a larger scale. Smaller Montenegrin parties used patronage in the municipalities they controlled, while the largest party, the DPS, did the same at the state level. After the government change of 2020, parties other than the DPS which formed government coalitions engaged in similar practices. Electoral Abuses In brief, as a Montenegrin top journalist put it, “the DPS abuses state resources before elections” (interview 36). The distribution of state resources to voters who were thus “bought off” in the period preceding the elections was so common, that the head of a pro-government NGO admitted it openly (interview 37). Buying off votes was also carried out in indirect ways. For instance, the government provided good infrastructure to villages in which voters primarily supported the governing party, while it also facilitated “bank loans given to government supporters” (interview 38). In return, voter turnout in Montenegrin elections is comparatively high (e.g., 71 percent in the parliamentary elections of 2012, 73 percent in the elections of 2016 and 77 percent in the elections of 2020). The high turnout is probably owed to the mobilization of voters by the DPS party organization. It may also be the result of peer pressure, as governing party supporters may press other citizens to turn out and vote. The option to abstain from voting may be not available in small-scale electoral districts where people know one another. Small communities have small size electoral registers, i.e., in Montenegro democracy is a small-scale affair. As a public opinion researcher and political analyst put it, “you do not have the luxury not to vote” (interview 39). Thus, in parliamentary and presidential elections between 1990–2020 the DPS was strong enough not to have to resort to excessive manipulation of the election process or election results. The party regularly won the vast majority of votes. Yet, whenever the difference in votes between a DPS candidate and an opposition candidate was small, abuses

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of the electoral system and the electoral procedure occurred. Such abuses thwarted challenges by competitors to the DPS rule and were probably more common in the 1990s than in the following decades. Yet, as argued below, abuses were also reported in more recent electoral contests, including parliamentary and presidential elections. Elections in 1990–1997 were influenced by police actions that supported the governing party (Darmanovi´c, 2003) and by gerrymandering. For instance, before the parliamentary elections of 1996 the DPSdominated parliamentary majority changed the electoral rules (Bieber, 2003). Montenegro, which, owing to its small size, used to have a single electoral district, was divided into 14 such districts. The DPS government conceived this division in order to tilt elections in its favour. Indeed, by winning a little over of half of the total vote, the DPS obtained two-thirds of seats in Montenegro’s Parliament. The presidential elections of 1997 signalled a major split within the DPS. Two former allies and DPS leaders, Momir Bulatovi´c and Milo Ðukanovi´c, competed for the post of Montenegro’s President of the Republic. Throughout the Yugoslav wars, Bulatovi´c had generally been more loyal to Serbia and Miloševi´c than Ðukanovi´c. The presidential elections of 1997 were relatively open, despite objections that some manipulation took place. The result was very close, as Ðukanovi´c won in the second round by a very small margin, namely 1.6 per cent of the vote (Vukovi´c, 2015). Bulatovi´c disputed the outcome of the election but was unable to pursue this matter and left his country for Serbia, where he became “Prime Minister of Yugoslavia” in 1998–2000, i.e., until the fall of Miloševi´c’ SPS from power. In the 2000s and the 2010s, electoral contests were somewhat more open than in the past but were still subject to government interventions. For example, video footage released in 2013 showed how the use of state funds was orchestrated in the parliamentary elections of 2012. The footage recorded meetings of DPS party officials who were talking about the use of state resources for party purposes (Komar, 2019, 71–72). This so-called recordings affair was never cleared by prosecuting authorities (European Commission, 2018b, 7; Morrison, 2018, 152). Further on, as a retired, formerly high-ranking Montenegrin diplomat told me, apparently “there were abuses in the presidential elections of 2013, in which Filip Vujanovi´c [the candidate of DPS] was elected” (interview 16). After these elections, the Special Prosecutor’s Office

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(SPO) investigated 198 cases of infringement of electoral rights. Eventually the justice system imposed light sanctions (i.e., suspended sentences) on law violators in only three cases, an outcome which the parliamentary opposition and NGOs found inadequate (European Commission, 2018b, 7). On various occasions during electoral campaigns, journalists reported that the governing party had secured the votes of all family members of a person employed by the party (e.g., as a newly hired civil servant). Meanwhile, before elections, the DPS facilitated citizens living abroad, i.e., members of the Montenegrin Diaspora, to travel back to their home country and vote for the ruling party. In addition, “deceased citizens, whose names were still on the electoral registers, seemed to have cast a vote too” (interview 36). Other abuses by the DPS party (and its successors in power) included the sale of electoral identity cards by a voter to a governing party member, who would then use such a card to cast a vote in favour of the DPS (in addition to his or her own vote). There was also “de-registration of known anti-government voters and the use of identity cards of voters who are members of the Diaspora and live abroad, so that others vote in their place” (interview 34). In order to limit such incidents, electronic identification of voters was implemented for the first time in a few cities in the local government elections of 2016. At polling stations an electronic device displayed visual identification of voters using their biometric passport or ID card. The results of the parliamentary elections of October 2016 were disputed by opposition party members who believed that the conditions of electoral competition were not fair and that a coup d’état had occurred on election day (16 October 2016). On that day, prosecuting authorities had a group of 20 alleged Serbian terrorists arrested and accused them of having attempted to overthrow the government. Information about the involvement of Serbian and Russian operatives in the coup was spread (Darmanovi´c, 2017, 124–125). The Belgrade government reacted initially by rejecting the accusations and then by detaining foreigners whom it accused of spying on the Montenegrin leader. This affair gradually petered out. Among the arrested people, 13 were condemned to prison sentences in 2019. Eventually this verdict was annulled on procedural grounds by a second-instance court in 2021. It is difficult to assess the extent of Russian interference in this affair. In the beginning, there

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was no concrete evidence for the above actions (Bechev, 2016), but other research claims that there is (Conley & Melino, 2019). International organizations, such as the OSCE/ODIHR, also made critical remarks on the various issues of elections in Montenegro. Under pressure from such organizations, in December 2017 the government amended legislation on the mass media, voter registration and the financing of political parties; but the opposition was not convinced, so it stood by and did not participate in electoral reform. Priority issues regarding the management of elections were not resolved, since amending certain clauses of the electoral law required a two-thirds majority of the parliament, and such a majority was not available. It is noteworthy that irregularities in elections occurred not only at the national but also at the local level. Still, it was impossible to precisely monitor all irregularities. This was owed to the fact that in Montenegro local government elections took place on a rolling basis: for instance, there were eight local government elections in the period of October 2016-February 2018. Governing and opposition parties claimed that there were electoral law violations in these elections (European Commission, 2018b, 6–7). As already discussed in Chapter 6, another barrier erected by the DPS party to safeguard its power consisted of closely knit patronage networks between big businessmen and government officials. The former supported the governing party in exchange for public procurement contracts for public works and other state-funded projects. “You cannot have a big business unless you are connected with the government. There are prearranged public tenders in which the conditions are set in a manner favouring selected businessmen” (interview 33). Local businessmen as well as Russian, Azeri and Arab businessmen were well connected to the DPS government. Businessmen were better off if they liaised with family members of top government officials, including the leadership of the DPS, which purposefully “weaves networks of businessmen around it, while no single businessman in Montenegro would publicly oppose the government” (interview 40). According to local observers of Montenegrin politics, while leaders of the DPS preoccupied themselves with governing the country, members of their families engaged in business deals facilitated by the fact that the DPS was in power. For instance, a Montenegrin journalist working for an opposition paper remarked: “The family is in business, the DPS party is in politics” (interview 38).

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Elections and Governance in Montenegro in 2016–2019 In contrast to North Macedonia, where the uncovering of corruption and clientelism through the “wiretapping” affair provoked the collapse of the 10-year long political rule of VMRO-DPMNE (Chapter 10), in Montenegro the very long rule of DPS remained unshaken until 2020. It was impossible to defeat the DPS, despite violations of rule of law and revelations of corruption. As already mentioned in the previous sections, the Montenegrin opposition had challenged the fair conduct of the elections of 2016 and civic associations organized protests against the government on various occasions. The opposition mobilized more intensely in the first months of 2019, without, however, succeeding in eroding the bases of DPS rule. The legitimation basis of the DPS consisted of extensive networks of clientelism and corruption (Morrison, 2017, 358). Indeed, the DPS withheld electoral challenges by opposition parties, the criticism of international organizations (the EU, the OSCE) and sporadic social movements springing from within society. It reigned supreme within state-society relations marked by clientelism, corruption and—to an extent—populism, which the party benefited from and also cultivated for three decades until the late 2010s. More concretely, after the parliamentary elections of October 2016, opposition parties, including the main party of the opposition, the rightwing pro-Serb Democratic Front (DF) party which had obtained 18 out of 81 seats, noted electoral law violations. The opposition disputed the results of elections and did not take part in parliamentary sessions. In June 2018 the DF returned to parliament, but smaller opposition parties (e.g., the URA party commanding 2 parliamentary seats) continued abstaining from parliament into 2019 (Zivanovi´c & Erebara, 2019). Ðukanovi´c The presidential elections of April 2018 confirmed the ability of the DPS party and its leader to hold on to power. Ðukanovi´c was elected President already in the first round of these elections, obtaining 54 percent of the vote. He achieved an astonishing 21 percent lead over the presidential candidate who came second, namely Mladen Bojani´c, who ran as an independent, supported by the DF and smaller opposition parties. The opposition candidate obtained only 33 percent of the vote.

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International observers monitoring the conduct of elections, such as the OSCE mission, observed that campaigning and voting were generally free, but also noted the tactics of the governing DPS to secure votes. The governing party candidate enjoyed an “institutional advantage”, a phrase implying the use of state resources to his favour; the State Election Committee (SEC) took decisions on complaints for law violations in a less than transparent manner; and on election day there were indications of vote buying and of tracking the votes of citizens who had already voted (OSCE/DHIR 2018b, 2–3). Afraid of losing their jobs, public employees would not freely consider voting for the candidate of a political party other than the DPS. Of course, the popularity of Ðukanovi´c did not only rely on the clientelist-like exchange of votes for favours and on the abuse of state resources. It also relied on his political skills: He is without doubt the most charismatic, pragmatic, politically astute, ruthless, and sharp-tongued politician in Montenegro, and his ability to adapt quickly and act decisively in fluid political situations, his instinct for political survival, and his ability to outmaneuver his political opponents have remained as sharp as ever. (Morrison, 2017, 355)

The popularity of the Montenegrin leader until 2020 was also the result of his pro-Western stance. Since 1997, when he started distancing himself from Serbia and the then governing SPS under Milosevi´c (Roberts, 2007, 451–452; Morrison, 2018), Ðukanovi´c has made overtures to the USA and the strongest EU powers. In the late 1990s, he eventually severed ties with the Serb leader and started approaching the international community before the fall of Miloševi´c in October 2000. Ðukanovi´c steered Montenegro into NATO in June 2017, while his country continued inching its way into the EU. Negotiations with the EU started in 2012 and they could perhaps end by 2025, when EU authorities foresee the country’s accession as possible. However, the Montenegrin leader was defeated in the presidential elections of March-April 2023. DPS-Led Government Coalitions The pro-Western orientation of Montenegro’s DPS governing elite and Montenegrins’ support of the EU and NATO did not guarantee the

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orderly functioning of democracy. As emphasized in this book, clientelism and corruption were typical patterns of Montenegro’s state-society relations. The ruling party had forged such relations not only with its mainstream clientele (Montenegrin voters and segments of the business elite), but also with small parties and ethnic parties. For instance, in the presidential elections of April 2018 the DPS elicited support for Ðukanovi´c by establishing relations with smaller coalition partners. The DPS regularly accorded some access to government to very small Montenegrin political parties (e.g., by appointing officials of smaller parties to government posts) in exchange for political support in parliament and in elections. In this vein, small and minority parties elected a few MPs to parliament and then went on to contribute to government coalition formation with the DPS. The Social Democrats and the Croatian Civic Initiative (CCI), a very small Croat minority party, are typical examples of such political partysatellites to the DPS (interview with Montenegrin political analyst, 3 February 2019). The Social Democrats, who elected only two MPs to the 81-seat parliament in the parliamentary elections of 2016, held two posts of government ministers. The CCI obtained just 0.47 percent of the vote in the same elections, but this was enough to pass the low threshold of 0.35 percent provided by electoral law for minority representation in the Montenegrin Parliament. Thus, the CCI party elected one MP, who joined the pro-government parliamentary majority of the DPS and the Social Democrats. The CCI leader, Marija Vuˇcinovi´c, served as government minister without portfolio in successive DPS cabinets. In other words, the electoral system serves the noble cause of political representation of ethnic minorities, but its implementation may also be put to other uses. The very small Croat minority in Montenegro (roughly 6,000 people in a total population of 600,000) benefited from an electoral system suited to create weak allies of the dominant DPS party. The Formation in 2020 of the First Coalition Government Without the DPS as Partner In late December 2019 the DPS-led government passed a law which obliged religious communities to provide clear evidence of ownership in order to retain their landed properties (the “Law on Religious Organizations”). If they were unable to do so, then the undocumented properties

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(e.g., plots of land, buildings) would be officially claimed to be stateowned. The law required that religious communities showed proof that they legally held properties which they owned before 1918. In other words, the law required evidence from the period of the independent kingdom of Montenegro, before it became part of the Serb-dominated Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in 1918 (the later kingdom was renamed Yugoslavia in 1929). The law of 2019 alienated the supporters of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Montenegro. The Serbian Orthodox Church lays claim to Orthodox religious buildings, sites and plots of land in Montenegro. It is the largest religious organization in Montenegro, as the Montenegrin Orthodox Church is a non-canonical Church and is not officially recognized by most Eastern Orthodox Churches. As noted above, before this new development, Montenegrins had expressed resentment towards the government through protests about corruption and other causes. “Still, the law on religious organization was probably the one to wake apathetic voters and bring about the longawaited change… The clash with the church definitely won the necessary margin or decisive votes in favour of the opposition to DPS” (personal communication with Montenegrin political analyst, 16 December 2020). Indeed, the Serbian Orthodox Church organized its followers and capitalized on anti-DPS sentiments. Anti-government protests organized by the Church and the opposition shook the country in early 2020. In the end, the opposition performed unusually well in the elections of the 30th of August 2020, even though, as in the past under DPS rule, the electoral campaign was not carried out on a level playing field: “the ruling party gained an undue advantage through misuse of office and state resources and dominant media coverage” (OSCE/DHIR, 2020c, 1). The OSCE mission highlighted many of the familiar problems, already noted above, regarding previous elections. There were issues with verifying signatures in support of candidacies, registering lists of national minorities and tabulating electoral results. The then governing DPS enjoyed comparatively wide coverage of its electoral campaign by the public broadcaster, while there was abuse of state resources which were put to the service of that party (OSCE/DHIR, 2020c, 1–2). The DPS came first in terms of total votes, but this time the opposition united to eliminate the chances for another DPS-dominated government. In December 2020 a new coalition government that excluded the DPS was

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sworn in after protracted negotiations among three coalitions of parties, as explained below. The opposition rode on the waves of the Church-backed protests against the DPS policy on the assets that the Church claims to be its own. The opposition also gained votes on an anti-corruption and anticlientelism agenda, as the DPS government had been widely viewed as a corrupt and patronage-ridden government for a very long time. Voters may have had misgivings about the opposition, as it consisted of three coalitions of parties often at odds with each other. Yet, in the words of a Montenegrin political analyst and opinion poll expert, after three decades of DPS rule, many voters thought that “nothing could be worse than the DPS” (personal communication, Podgorica, 22 July 2022). After the August 2020 elections, there were gross delays to form a government out of a new, ruling, tripartite parliamentary majority. Zdravko Krivokapi´c, the Prime Minister (PM) whom the ruling majority had agreed to support, wanted to exclude top party officials from his government. He preferred to lead a technocratic government. Instead of officials of the parties which had won the elections, he announced a government consisting of 12 ministers whom he called “the 12 apostles”. Some of the new cabinet’s members were clearly associated with the Church, while the rest were technocrats. The PM also appointed the party leader of United Reform Action (URA), Dritan Abazovi´c, as Deputy Prime Minister. “The formation of the new government left the parties of the new parliamentary majority unhappy” (personal communication with Montenegrin political analyst, 16 December 2020). In early December 2020, the new government obtained a vote of confidence in the 81-seat Montenegrin Parliament (it won with 41 against 40 votes). It was supported by the DF-led coalition, the URA-led coalition and the Demokrate-led coalition of parties. Among the new government’s first moves was to take control of the state apparatus and fulfil promises made to the Serbian Orthodox Church (Kajoševi´c, 2020b). Moreover, the civil service law, passed by the government of Krivokapi´c, led to a change of Montenegro’s ambassadors and eventually the replacement of higher civil servants of ministries who were considered open supporters of the formerly ruling DPS party (Kajosevi´c, 2020a). On the other hand, “the government did announce some initiatives on transparency and anti-corruption and inclusion of CSOs” (personal communication via e-mail with Montenegrin political analyst, 16 December 2020) but eventually such reform initiatives fell through

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(European Commission, 2022b). Further on, in order to consolidate its alliance with the Serbian Orthodox Church and its large base of supporters, in December 2020 the new government altered the contentious law on religious properties. Early on, there were doubts about the priorities of the new government. In the words of a Montenegrin public opinion researcher and political analyst: “I believe that the focus of the government, which might be short-lived, will be changing Montenegrin identity and history, not the economy, corruption, etc. The very new government is in fact a good example of corruption and nepotism, since most ministers are personally connected to Zdravko Krivokapi´c” (personal communication with Montenegrin public opinion researcher and political analyst, 23 November 2020). After the fall of the DPS from power (2020), the new government faced at least four challenges or drawbacks. The first was the continuing COVID-19 pandemic, which Montenegro’s public health system was inadequately prepared to face (see last section of this chapter). In addition to providing health care to the population, the government had to manage the negative economic impact of the pandemic, namely economic contraction. Negative economic growth in 2020 was −15.3 percent of the GDP. However, in 2021, as the pandemic subsided, the rate of growth recovered and reached + 12.4 percent (World Bank, 2022). A second challenge was that, as already noted, the government relied on an unstable majority of coalitions of parties which were united only by their antipathy towards the DPS. The coalition of the nationalist, populist, pro-Serbian DF party, the centrist coalition “Peace is Our Nation”, led by the Demokrate of Aleksa Beˇci´c, and the pro-EU, Green, liberal “In Black and White” coalition led by URA’s Dritan Abazovi´c were strange bedfellows who engaged in horse-trading throughout the term of the new coalition government in power (December 2020—April 2022). A third challenge was a tension between the choice of Krivovapi´c to form a government of experts, appointing technocrats to ministerial posts, and primarily the DF party’s insistence to have a more politicized cabinet staffed with party officials. A final challenge was the constraints posed by a government and a President of the Republic (still Milo Ðukanovi´c) belonging to opposing political camps. In 2020–2022 there was in Montenegro a situation of “co-habitation” encountered in French politics, when the President of the Republic belongs to a political party different from the party that

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dominates the French Cabinet and National Assembly (e.g., in in 1986– 1988, when Mitterand was President and Chirac was Prime Minister in France). In brief, there was a fragile parliamentary majority and a difficult “cohabitation” between the two heads of the executive, the PM and the President. The three political party coalitions which had prevailed over the DPS in the elections of 2020, supported a government based on a thin majority. The fragile government had to interact with Ðukanovi´c, leader of the defeated DPS, who had won the 2018 presidential elections for a five-year long term. The interaction between the President and the post2020 government of Montenegro was marred by problems. For example, in early November 2022 the President considered a law, which according to his view trimmed his powers, unconstitutional and returned the law to parliament. As a result, the coalition government under Krivokapi´c (as well as the government that succeeded it in 2022) was slow in pursuing the priorities it had laid out upon its formation. Priorities included making progress in Montenegro’s accession to the EU, domestic reforms preparing the ground for that accession, depoliticization of state organizations, which had for decades been dominated by the formerly governing DPS party, and fighting against corruption and organized crime. The government performance during its one and one-half year in power was very uneven. Government inefficiencies were owed not only to external shocks (public health crisis and ensuing economic crisis), but also to the rest of the drawbacks mentioned above. Typical problems included ambivalence and lack of decisiveness. For instance, in 2021 the government wanted to restructure the prosecution authorities, which were mostly pro-DPS. However, in doing so it opened the way for the re-politicization of the prosecution system, which would not be independent but pro-government. The resignation of the head prosecutor and the pensioning of other prosecutors in June 2021 raised the prospect of such a development, which went against the government’s promise to depoliticize state organizations. Effectively, the government’s ambivalence did not concern only these specific issues. It reflected a larger reluctance to deal with the legacies of populism, particularly since the DF party, a major bearer of populism in Montenegro, was now part of the decision-making elite, and an unwillingness to limit clientelism and corruption, under which Montenegrin state organizations had operated for decades. A new law on civil servants

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and public employees adopted in 2021 destabilized day-to-day operations of the public administration. As a result, there was “concern with regard to merit-based recruitment, competence and independence of civil servants” (European Commission, 2022b, 15). In a nutshell, the Krivokapi´c government, following the steps of past DPS governments, was preoccupied with colonizing the higher administrative echelons of Montenegro’s public sector. The legitimacy of the Krivokapi´c coalition government, which had been in place since December 2020, suffered from problems related to diverging strategies of coalition partners and the mismanagement of reactions to church-state relations. In March and May 2021, the three parties, led by a DF candidate, fought together against the DPS in the contested local government elections, respectively, in Nikši´c (pop. 57,000) and Herceg Novi (pop. 30,000), two of the larger cities in Montenegro. Despite the cooperation of the three government coalition partners, the DPS municipal ticket obtained a relative majority of votes in Nikši´c. Yet, its adversaries joined forces and together constituted an absolute majority. As a result, Nikši´c was left in the hands of the new, local, anti-DPS ruling coalition. However, in these municipal elections there were allegations of foreign, possibly Serbian, interference, in favour of the DF-led ticket (European Commission, 2021b, 10). Serbian influence may have included financial assistance and the presence of Serbian operatives in the field (interview 47). In 2021–2022 the DF periodically expressed its wish for renewed elections. The DF hoped that it would perform better than it had in the 2020 elections, when it came second with 33 percent of the vote, just behind the DPS (35 percent). DF party cadres counted on ridding themselves of PM Krivovapi´c along the way. However, such intra-coalition tensions and calculations were overshadowed by larger scale tensions in the relations between church and state. In September 2021 the three-party coalition government organized the official enthronement of the new Orthodox Metropolitan of Montenegro and the Littoral, Joanikije, at the historical monastery of Cetinje. The ceremony was to be led by the Patriarch of the Orthodox Church of Serbia, to which the Orthodox Church authorities in Montenegro belong. As manifested in the tensions over the national independence referendum of 2006 and in the dispute over the Law on Religious Organizations (2019), Montenegro is a country divided into those identifying with the Serb nation (who may also be close to the

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Serbian Orthodox Church) on the one hand and those identifying with a non-Serb autonomous Montenegrin collective identity (and smaller ethnic groups of Croat, Albanian and Bosniak origin) on the other hand. As noted in the beginning of this chapter, this is a schism dating back to the 2006 referendum on national independence, if not earlier. It creates fertile soil for renewed conflict (Stankov, 2020), even though, admittedly, such ethno-cultural cleavages in Montenegro were to an extent constructed from above, i.e., by elites seeking the consolidation of their own political power (Džanki´c, 2013). In such a context, in September 2021 what would have normally been a religious ceremony turned into a theatre of political confrontation. Protesters gathered on the road leading to the Cetinje monastery in order to impede an enthronement that they considered a further indication of Serbia’s intervention into Montenegrin politics. The DPS party, which had been in opposition since December 2020, seized the opportunity to support an anti-government protest. In a divisive move that is not usually expected from a head of state, Montenegro’s President and founder of the DPS, Ðuknovi´c himself travelled to Cetinje to show support for the protest. At the public gathering, the police reacted with excessive force. They used teargas and rubber bullets against DPS supporters and independent protesters for many hours on the day of the protest (Kajosevi´c, 2021 and personal communication with public opinion researcher and political analyst, Montenegro, 26 July 2022). After the Fall of the First Non-DPS Government The Cetinje events may have accelerated the fall of the coalition government that had been formed in December 2020. Indeed, the Krivokapi´cled government started disintegrating in January 2022 when the Deputy PM, Abazovi´c, leader of the URA (one of the government-coalition parties), submitted a parliamentary non-confidence motion against the government he was a member of. The PM dismissed the Deputy PM and URA ministers close to him, but eventually his government lost the confidence of the parliament in April of that year. Abazovi´c was able to form a minority government relying on the votes of the URA, the Socialist People’s Party (a pro-Serbian party), the Social Democratic Party of Montenegro and smaller, primarily ethnic parties and also counting on the support of the formerly ruling DPS. Abazovi´c was opposed by his

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former coalition partners, the DF party and the “Peace is our Nation” bloc (essentially, the Demokrate led by Beˇci´c). On the issue of relations with the Serbian Orthodox Church, which had spurred the decline and fall of the DPS government in 2020, the coalition government under Abazovi´c made little progress until early 2022. However, in July 2022 the minority government lost the support of the DPS when it adopted a “Fundamental Agreement” with the Serbian Orthodox Church in Montenegro. It was an agreement that had long been under preparation in the previous year. The former coalition government under Krivokapi´c wanted to mend the relations between the Church and the Montenegrin state (Kajosevi´c, 2022a). The agreement, over which some Western observers had expressed reservations (interview 47), reversed the policies of the DPS government which had sought to control lands unclaimed by the church. The agreement also gave the Church a role in matters of public education. The conclusion and signing by PM Abazovi´c of the “Fundamental Agreement” with the Serb Orthodox Church was considered by opposition parties and NGOs as a major step towards the “clericalization” of Montenegro. After all, the previous government led by Krivokapi´c already held frequent consultations with Orthodox clerics. In early August 2022, two of the parties supporting the Abazovi´c government, the DPS and the SDP, called for a vote of no-confidence against it. The call was successful, as in the same month that government fell after 50 out of 81 MPs supported the vote of no-confidence. A long period of government instability followed and was intensified by the municipal elections scheduled for October 2022 in Montenegro’s capital city Podgorica (pop. 189,000) and 13 other municipalities. In the arena of Montenegrin local government, there was a war of allagainst-all which ended with the prevalence of anti-DPS coalitions in the municipal elections. In October 2022, the DPS won only four out 13 municipalities. Its enemies won nine of them as well as the municipality of Podgorica. It turned out that the DPS has not been able to recover after it was ousted from government in 2020 (Kajoševi´c, 2022c). The DPS also lost the presidential elections of the spring of 2023. In sum, in 2022 two coalition governments lost power on noconfidence votes. Very acute political party polarization has dominated Montenegrin politics since 2020 (European Commission, 2022b, 9). Irreconcilable party conflict has become a sort of trademark of current

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Montenegrin politics, affecting the operation of major institutions such as the parliament and the justice system.

9.2

Parliament

As already noted, the Montenegrin opposition won no elections between 1991–2020 due to the uneven playing field which was always tilted in favour of the DPS, but also owing to party system fragmentation. The opposition’s fragmentation is shown in the excessively high number—for such a small country—of parties. For example, in the parliamentary elections of 2016, the DPS obtained 36 parliamentary seats and the remaining 45 seats were occupied by eight parties, of which five were Montenegrin and three were ethnic ones (Albanian, Bosniak, Croatian). The ruling party was able to carry votes in parliament, even if it did not enjoy a single-parliamentary majority, as was for instance the case in the elections of 2016. The DPS was able to dominate and neutralize the potential oversight which parliament could have exercised over its governments. As already explained in the previous section, the DPS created shifting alliances with smaller parties, some of which represented ethnic minorities. It created useful alliances by offering government posts to the parliamentary deputies of these parties. Meanwhile, the opposition oscillated between a strategy of fighting the DPS government in parliament and boycotting parliament (Kovacevi´c, 2019). In 2013, after the “recordings affair” (mentioned in the first section), the major opposition part DF, which held 20 of the 81 seats, boycotted parliament, but the rest of the opposition did not. Boycotts were repeated later on. In the wake of the alleged coup attempt and the subsequent irregularities of the parliamentary elections of 2016, Montenegrin opposition parties boycotted the parliament. Most parties returned to it only gradually in late 2017 and the first semester of 2018, while a few small opposition parties continued to abstain from parliament. In detail, in late 2016 the opposition started a long boycott of parliament, which thus functioned with only 42 out of 81 MPs participating in its sessions. A coalition group and three independent MPs returned to parliament more than a year later, in December 2017. Thus, the number of participating MPs rose to 63, but other MPs (e.g., the Demokrate) continued the boycott. Throughout that period, “the political scene

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remained fragmented, polarized and marked by lack of political dialogue, notably in the democratic institutions” (European Commission, 2018b, 3). Above all, an inactive parliament could not harm the short-term interests of the governing party, even though it damaged the prospects of Montenegro’s EU accession. In this context, during various time intervals the parliament did not fulfil its role, since the government passed legislation unopposed. Opposition politicians and civil society organizations (CSOs) either resorted to the streets to stage protests or turned to the Constitutional Court to hold the government accountable. In 2017 there was an increase in the number of laws challenged at the Court (European Commission, 2018, 9). The end result was that the DPS government was not seriously challenged in parliament and in fact was able to control it, as it did with the rest of Montenegro’s institutions, until 2019–2020, when the government made the tactical error of claiming lands belonging to the Serbian Orthodox Church. The government turnover of 2020 may have been a good sign for the consolidation of democracy in Montenegro, but it did not lead to the strengthening of the most important institution of parliamentary democracy, namely, the parliament itself. The extreme polarization between the former ruling party and its opponents, which had characterized the electoral campaign in 2020, was continued in the post-election period. Meanwhile, there were divisions within the ruling majority too, as the cabinet of experts led by PM Krivokapi´c periodically met with the distrust of the political parties which formed the coalition government in 2020– 2022. The thin majority enjoyed by the ruling coalition under Krivokapi´c (41 out of 81 parliamentary seats) decreased the government’s chances to have new legislation adopted or seek parliamentary approval for major decisions such as filling the posts of judges of Montenegro’s Constitutional Court. Thus, twice, in January and in May 2021, the opposition’s MPs boycotted the sessions of the parliament. Surprisingly, a share of the MPs of the ruling majority did the same in June 2021, expressing discontent with the government of experts. Essentially, the parliament became inactive for variable time periods (European Commission, 2021b, 1).

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9.3

The Justice System

The justice system in Montenegro has for a long time been subservient to the government. It has been the government’s institutional client. The Montenegrin judiciary is governed by two high-ranking bodies, the Judicial Council (JC) and the Prosecutorial Council. The Constitution of Montenegro and numerous laws regulate the courts and prosecutorial authorities. The JC is responsible, among other things, for selecting, appointing, promoting and transferring judges; investigating complaints against judges and exercising disciplinary action against them; submitting opinions on draft laws on the justice system; and implementing information systems and training programmes related to the judiciary (Kmezi´c, 2017, 82). While the Constitution nominally guarantees the independence of the courts vis-à-vis the government and the parliament, in practice the government’s influence in the justice system is heavily felt. This holds true even after the constitutional amendments made in 2013 (Kmezi´c, 2017, 84; European Commission, 2018b, 15). Montenegro was for a long time monitored by international organizations (e.g., the EU, OSCE) regarding its performance on rule of law, which eventually led to changes in the country’s legal framework. For instance, amendments were adopted to depoliticize the selection of higher-ranking judges. As a University of Montenegro professor of political science stated, “the judiciary is more independent than in the past because of the EU” (interview 19). Progress in terms of the judiciary’s independence may mean that there is a slight improvement compared to its previous complete dependence on the government. It is telling that even under the constitutional amendments of 2013, the parliament retained the competence to elect the President of the Constitutional Court, effectively contributing to a long legacy of political control of the judiciary by the governing party. A partial cure for the extensive politicization of the judiciary is that after the amendments of 2013 the President of the Supreme Court is no longer elected by the parliament but by the JC. Under the amended Montenegrin Constitution, the JC has ten members, as it used to have in the past. However, its composition is now changed to enhance the independence of the judiciary. The JC includes the President of the Supreme Court, the Minister of Justice, four judges and four eminent lawyers selected by the parliament. Thus, in total, among the ten members, there were five judges and five others. While this

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change probably amounts to a balance between professional judges and the rest, it nevertheless indicates a strong influence of the government and the parliament over the justice system. That is crucial in a country where, until 2020, the President of the Republic, government ministers and the majority of MPs typically belonged to the same party, the DPS. Political control over the judiciary is not exercised only through the politicized selection of the members of the JC or the Prosecutorial Council. First of all, the fact that judges and prosecutors are recruited through nationwide examinations does not provide an adequate buffer against the politicization of courts. “Despite efforts of both councils to organize transparent and merit-based selections, challenges remain over the planning of recruitments and the transparency of selection procedures.” (European Commission, 2018b, 16). Second, the fact that the parliament elects the Supreme State Prosecutor, the President of the Constitutional Council and four members of the JC from among “eminent lawyers” has political repercussions for the lower ranks of the judiciary’s hierarchy, because this practice paves the way for political interference from within the judiciary. Essentially, higherranking, government-connected judges exercise political power over the rest of judges. The latter, working in such a small country where everybody knows everybody else, do not have enough room for discretion if they want to dissent from their superiors. After all, the JC and the Prosecutorial Council can dismiss judges and prosecutors, while there is no possibility for the dismissed persons to challenge decisions of dismissal (European Commission, 2018b, 15). And third, there may be strong bias regarding which judge will be assigned a certain case. A safety valve that was provided for the transparent and random assignment of judges to cases did not work. More concretely, in order to avoid a biased appointment of judges in courts, an information system (called PRIS) had been adopted. In practice, delays occurred in issuing court decisions and backlogs were created. After workload accumulated and delays occurred, the information system was by-passed and superintendents re-allocated cases to reduce backlogs. In doing so, superintendents selected judges for various cases. Thus, anti-government defendants risked being subjected to an unfair trial. In view of the above, it is not surprising that in cases of violations of human rights brought before Montenegrin courts the outcome was at least debatable, as the court system “was subject to nepotism, corruption,

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and political influence”. All this “led to widespread public distrust” (US Department of State, 2017b, 7). The formation of the Krivokapi´c government after the elections of August 2020 gave rise to a difficult dilemma. There were two options. If the new government did not intervene in the justice system, which had for decades been staffed by pro-DPS judges, it would undermine the chances of success of its own reforms, meant to relax state capture by the DPS (first option). On the other hand, if it did intervene, then it would repeat the practices of its predecessor in government, the DPS, which used the judiciary as a tool to prolong its stay in power (second option). The DPS government’s control of the judiciary was not at all discrete, as already argued above. For instance, under DPS rule between 2016– 2020, the spouse of a government minister was appointed as a member of Montenegro’s Prosecutorial Council. Moreover, Council members had obtained housing loans from the government (Muk, 2022, 32). Despite reservations voiced by the EU, the Krivokapi´c government chose the second option with regard to the prosecutorial branch of the justice system. In 2021 it changed the law on the Prosecutorial Council and effectively terminated the mandate of the Council’s members. However, by doing so, it opened the way for re-politicization of the prosecution system, which would not be independent, but progovernment. The resignation of the head prosecutor and the pensioning off of other prosecutors in June 2021 raised the prospect of the staffing of these empty posts on patronage criteria. This development went against the Krivokapi´c government’s promise, made back in 2020, to depoliticize state organizations. The Krivokapi´c government was more relaxed towards the other branches of the judiciary, where empty posts of judges were not filled for a long time in 2020–2021. In brief, while the Constitution of Montenegro adopts the principles of rule of law, separation of powers and independence of courts and judges (articles 1, 11, 118, 121 and 122 of the Constitution), political expediency has dictated otherwise. These principles have not been fulfilled. Until the government change of 2020, the DPS governing elite controlled the justice system. After that government change, a fragile coalition government also intervened in prosecutorial authorities, while it was unable to take action with regard to the judiciary, which was left in a limbo. The situation did not improve after the URA-led coalition government lost a no-confidence vote in August 2022. Montenegro’s Constitutional Court remained inactive because older court members had retired but

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new ones had not been appointed by parliament. A similar crisis affected the JC. Appointments required a two-thirds majority of the 81 MPs. Political parties disagreed over proposed candidates and blocked the selection of new court members (Kajosevi´c, 2022b).

9.4

Independent Authorities

In Montenegro there are various independent authorities in charge of mass media, anti-corruption policy and human rights protection. For example, the RTCG (Montenegro’s public broadcaster) is governed by a nine-member council, the members of which are appointed by the parliament (their selection requires a simple parliamentary majority). Candidates are selected from among representatives of civil society organizations (European Commission, 2014). The council is supposed to be independent from the government, but the latter has means available to influence the council, as explained below. A case in point is the dismissal from the RTCG council of Goran Ðurovi´c, a member of the council who was very critical of the DPSled government. In December 2017 the DPS-dominated parliament had him dismissed from his post on the basis of a minor breach of the Law on Prevention of Corruption. He was also banned from exercising any public function (personal communication with political analyst, 11 February 2019). In his place, “the ruling majority voted for Slobodan Pajovi´c, a DPS councilor in Bar, as the new member of the RTCG Council” (Nikoli´c, 2017). The DPS was able to also control the rest of regulatory and administrative authorities, while creating the impression that Montenegro was making progress in the sectors regulated by the authorities. For instance, progress in the fight against corruption seemed to have grown only superficially. In practice, whatever progress went hand in hand with the manipulation of anti-corruption institutions and processes. The DPS government’s manipulations led to the dampening of the anti-corruption effort. In detail, a few dozen indictments and investigations launched in 2016–2018 may have created the impression of a concerted effort to fight corruption, but a closer look indicates a different situation on the ground. Indeed, prosecutions and trials against corrupt central and local government officials took place. Examples were the prosecutions in 2016–2018 against the Montenegrin former President of Serbia and Montenegro and

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top DPS party cadre, Svetozar Marovi´c and another 12 former officials, including the former mayors of Budva and Bar. Yet, political influence exerted on anti-corruption authorities raised questions regarding the uses to which the newly set-up authorities were put, as discussed below. After the mid-2010s, shifts in anti-corruption policy occurred as a result of recommendations and pressure from international organizations such as the OSCE. For example, in 2016 and 2017 there were improvements on the regulation of political party and electoral campaign finances. As Montenegro tried to adapt to future requirements of accession negotiations with the EU, the government founded two new anti-corruption authorities. As noted in chapter 7, the first was the Special Prosecutor’s Office (SPO) for the fight against corruption, organized crime, war crimes, terrorism and money laundering, which was established in 2015, while the second was the Anti-corruption Authority (ACA) in 2016 (European Commission, 2018b, 21–22). Thus, a suitable set of anti-corruption institutions and relevant legislation was put in place, but the results in the fight against corruption were far from impressive (Chapter 7). As a media analyst with knowledge of the field summarized, “laws are excellent, but there is no will to implement them” (interview 36). In a pattern similar to that observed in the case of anti-corruption institutions in Serbia, the Montenegrin Anti-Corruption Agency fell victim of a contradictory and incomplete legal framework shaped at the moment of its foundation. Moreover, it suffered from a lack of resources at its disposal and an orchestrated lack of autonomy from the government (Wunsch, 2018, 86). In fact, there was probably strong political will on the part of the DPS government to actually undermine anti-corruption law implementation. Apparently, DPS government ministers and governing party MPs frequently tried to interfere with the work of anti-corruption authorities. Such political influence was exerted when these authorities attempted to investigate cases of inexplicable growth in personal wealth of government officials, conflict of interest and abuse of public funds used for party purposes (European Commission, 2018b, 19). In the diplomatic language of the European Commission: “Further improvements of the track record of successful investigations and convictions will only be possible in an environment where independent institutions are shielded from any undue influence and incentivised to fully use their powers” (European Commission, 2018b, 18).

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The government also succeeded in instrumentalizing other, only nominally independent, authorities. For instance, the Ombudsman, to whom citizens used to appeal for violations of labour legislation, was unable to produce tangible results in improving the rule of law. The Ombudsman noted that the extreme delays in the distribution of justice undermined trust in the court system (US Department of State, 2017b, 8). But overall, this agency, too, failed to perform its role as an oversight institution. The reluctance or incapacity of state authorities when it comes to law enforcement is particularly alarming in cases of illicit tobacco trade through Montenegro. This is a long-term and internationally known problem, as Montenegro’s port of Bar on the Adriatic Sea has become a major outlet for the supply of counterfeit cigarettes and other illegal goods to countries in the European Union (European Commission, 2018b, 33). Further on, as discussed in chapter seven of the book, the flawed nature of Montenegro’s anti-corruption institutions was revealed in January 2019 when a bribery scandal, known as the “envelope affair” (the “Koverta” affair), was leaked (Kajoševi´c, 2019c; Kapor & Tadic-Mijovi´c, 2019). In other words, DPS rule could not be overturned without political party mobilization, i.e., opposition parties winning elections. Pressures from below, i.e., from social movements and civic associations, even if combined with pressures from abroad, i.e., recommendations by international organizations, remained fruitless unless a strong opposition party or a coalition of opposition parties stepped in. In 2020 the DPS government gave such an opportunity to its opponents, who formed a coalition government excluding the DPS after the elections of 2020. The impact of the government change on independent authorities was positive, as they were freed from the grip of the DPS. In 2021 independent authorities such as the Anti-Corruption Agency, the Ombudsman and the State Audit Institution became more active than in previous years, engaging in proceedings against law violators, including officials of the deposed DPS government.

9.5

The Mass Media

In contrast to Serbia and North Macedonia, in Montenegro the government does not heavily influence the private media. For example, in the 2010s well-known national circulation newspapers, Dan and Vijesti

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(enjoying the largest circulation), voiced anti-government views when the DPS was in power. “Ninety-percent of media is free” (interview 19). One of the reasons for such relative freedom, which Montenegrin media enjoy, lie in the capacity of government to use other mechanisms to render anti-government mobilization ineffective. These are the mechanisms described above, in the previous sections of this chapter. As long as such mechanisms are effective, a comprehensive strategy to control most of the media is not necessary. Another reason is the pressure which the DPS government in particular used to apply to journalists and selected media. While in Montenegro there is some pluralism in the mass media, there are at least two types of problems which hamper freedom of expression in the media. The first type is a record of violence against journalists, while the second type is a biased allocation of government-sponsored advertisements channelled towards pro-government privately owned media. We should also not forget the financial and political influence of Serbian companies on Montenegrin mass media. “Media may be free to report, but critical media face sanctions such as, for instance, smear campaigns against investigative journalists or even beatings of journalists” (interview 42). More than a decade after the murder of the editor-in-chief of the opposition newspaper Dan, Dusko Jovanovi´c, the case was not yet cleared. His murderers were not apprehended, while only one accomplice was tried and sentenced to imprisonment. Another journalist, Tufik Softi´c, was beaten in 2007 and an explosive device was thrown against his residence in 2013. This case was never cleared by the police, while in 2017 courts awarded the journalist financial compensation for such a blatant lack of effective investigation on the part of state authorities (US Department of State, 2017b, 11–12). Meanwhile, less fatal but still violent attacks against journalists who were critical of the government proliferated (Reporters Without Borders, 2019b). According to the professional association of journalists, the Montenegro Media Trade Union, there have been 33 attacks against journalists since 2004 (US Department of State, 2017b, 10). Only in 2017, seven attacks against journalists took place (European Commission, 2018b, 25). In May 2018 the well-known investigative journalist Olivera Laki´c was shot and wounded in Podgorica (The Guardian, 2018), in a case the political and criminal aspects of which remain unknown (interview 47).

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Control of the media was also attempted through heavy influence on state TV and government support of selected media outlets. For a short while after April 2016, under the temporary agreement between the DPS and opposition representatives which made Montenegro’s government less monolithic, the public broadcaster (RTCG) was also released from tight government control. However, as already noted above, in 2017– 2018 the still government-controlled public broadcaster was subjected to pressure through the dismissal of selected members of its governing council (European Commission, 2018b, 26) and television top managers Andrijana Kadija and Vladan Mi´cunovi´c, both RTCG employees. Moreover, it was also reported that government-paid advertisements of government projects were disproportionally channelled to friendly private media, such as the newspaper Pobjeda, the radio station Radio Antena M and the website Portal Analitika (US Department of State, 2017b, 9–10). After 2020 the coalition government that replaced the DPS in power imitated this practice with friendly press, i.e., the newspapers that had helped bring down the DPS (interview 47). In view of the above, it is plausible to argue that, as in Serbia and North Macedonia, in Montenegro too the governing party attempted to control the media through “soft censorship” (interview 40). Further on, international observers noted that pressures on media in Montenegro resulted in the country’s placement at a comparatively low rank on press freedom (103rd rank in 2018 and 104th rank in 2019 among 180 countries; Reporters Without Borders, 2019b). The situation improved a lot after the fall of DPS from power in 2020. In 2021 a new board was appointed at the public broadcaster and media content became more diverse (European Commission, 2021b, 31). In 2022 Reporters Without Borders placed Montenegro at 63rd rank among 180 countries (Reporters Without Borders, 2022b), despite the fact that violence and intimidation against journalists were not properly addressed. Overall, compared to the extensive control of the government over private and state media in North Macedonia under Gruevski and Serbia under Vuˇciˇc, the media in Montenegro was comparatively more independent. Occasionally the Montenegrin media has served as a source of real opposition to the government which employed other institutions to hold society hostage, including civil society associations.

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9.6

Civil Society

Taking into account its small size, Montenegro is a country with a plethora of civil society associations (CSOs). It is reported that the registry of CSOs, kept at the Ministry of Interior, includes 4,421 CSOs (Wunsch, 2018, 30). Typical policy sectors in which CSOs intervene are human rights protection, media freedom, control of corruption and reform of public administration. The EU has offered support to CSOs in the form of funded projects and the inclusion of concerns voiced by CSOs in the European Commission’s progress reports on Montenegro. For example, the establishment of an Anti-Corruption Agency in January 2016 to coordinate control of corruption was the result of joint pressure by CSOs and the European Commission on Montenegrin authorities (Wunsch, 2018, 86). Montenegrin CSOs mobilized in such an energetic fashion that they even participated—at least initially—in the country’s accession negotiations with EU (opened in July 2012). The agenda of the CSOs was shaped by domestic demand for reforms and the requirements set by the European Commission for Montenegro’s EU accession. Particularly in the capital city, Podgorica, there are various active CSOs pressing the government on issues of media freedom and human rights. Examples include the Podgorica-based “Center for Civic Education” (the CGO) and the Alternative Institute (IA) as well as the Center for the Development of Non-Governmental Organizations (CRNVO) and the Network for the Affirmation of the Non-Governmental Sector (MANS). These CSOs are staffed by young lawyers, political analysts and activists, who have demanded reforms in different public policy sectors (interview 41). In various policy sectors, there is some consultation between government officials and CSOs. For instance, new legislation was passed in 2017 to make such consultation more systematic and to regulate the funding of CSOs (European Commission, 2018b, 10). However, in Montenegro’s civil society under DPS rule there was a discernible cleavage between pro-government and anti-government CSOs, in a situation similar to the one in Serbian civil society (Chapter 8). Thus, the DPS government did not generally attempt to control civil society but tried to create inroads in it. Organizations with pro-European titles were proven to be pro-government, turning a blind eye on digressions from EU standards of rule of law and media freedom. Progovernment CSOs were staffed by university graduates in media and the

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social sciences and counted on the government and sometimes on the EU for support and funded projects. “They also depend on selling their influence with government officials” (interview 39). Moreover, the openness of the DPS government to contributions by CSOs to policy-making had severe limits. After the initial inclusion of such organizations in consultations with government officials, the government denied them access to crucial documents and displayed open hostility towards them (Wunsch, 2018, 91). In 2018 the DPS government dismissed representatives of CSOs from state bodies and regulatory bodies (European Commission, 2021b, 14). Overall, CSOs which were critical of the DPS government were subjected to harassment in the form of strong negative language used by government officials. Such CSOs were called “fascist” or “anti-patriotic”. The government’s labelling of investigative reporting or reform-oriented policy research as “anti-patriotic” contributed to creating a toxic political context. It was a political environment that was conducive neither to independent media nor to a vibrant independent civil society (personal communication with Montenegrin political analyst, 11 February 2019). Yet, in the second half of the 2010s, as the then ruling DPS was becoming less and less responsive to the requirements of a liberal democracy, people reacted more intensively to the DPS government’s mishandling of civil society. Civil society protests multiplied and—as already noted—when in 2020 anti-government CSOs joined forces with the Orthodox Church in Montenegro, the DPS was deposed from power. Nevertheless, the government change of 2020 did not lead to improvements on consultation and cooperation between the government and CSOs (European Commission, 2022b, 14–15).

9.7

The Political Management of the Covid-10 Crisis

The COVID-19 crisis struck Montenegro in early 2020 at a time period in which the country was already suffering from “toxic polarization” between government and opposition (Braendle, 2020). There was a clash between supporters and opponents of the DPS law that reformed the landed property rights of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Montenegro. Even though parliament was in session for most of the period of the COVID-19 crisis, there was no real oversight of the DPS government’s emergency measures. The parliament was consumed by polarizing debates

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on past DPS government practices and on religious and national identity. The Constitutional Court did not control the government, not only for the reasons explained above (in the section on the justice system), but also because of its very slow reflexes (Tzifakis, 2020, 5; Muk, 2020). An example is the case of the decision to publish personal data of Montenegrins who had contracted COVID-19 and were in self-isolation. During the first wave of the pandemic the government-dominated National Coordination Body for Communicable Diseases published such information on more than 1,800 people (Muk, 2020, 33). The agency in charge of personal data protection, an independent authority effectively controlled by the DPS, approved of the National Coordination Body’s move. The Constitutional Court was very late in deciding against that government initiative: it blocked the disclosing of personal data on COVID-19 two months after the government had stopped this practice (Muk, 2020, 33). Thus, the DPS government had a more or less free hand to manage the health care crisis in a way that also proved helpful when it came to protests from citizens. The police showed much more tolerance towards gatherings organized by supporters of the DPS than towards other public gatherings (Muk, 2020, 35 and personal communications via Zoom with public opinion researcher and political analyst, 26 July 2022). Overall, during the first phase of the COVID-19 pandemic the government concentrated more powers in its hands at the expense of other democratic institutions. “The undemocratic practices of the government have been exacerbated by the emergency circumstances, during the early stages of the crisis” (Muk, 2020, 36). The change of government after the parliamentary elections of August 2020 shifted political priorities to government stability, but also to the prolongation of clientelism and populism under the new government coalitions in 2020–2022, as argued in this chapter.

9.8

Conclusion

In Montenegro democratic institutions and processes were embedded in clientelist and corruption-based relations between state and society, while they were also, to an extent, affected by state-driven populism. The protagonist who in this context engineered the misuse and abuse of institutions and processes for three decades was the DPS party.

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Although there has been progress regarding the conduct of elections since the early 1990s, the DPS-led governments were able to influence the outcome of elections through means other than solely abusing electoral rules and procedures. In Montenegrin national elections, the governing party devised an imaginative “carrot-and-stick” strategy to win more voters than any of its competitors for power. As a consequence, parliament became an institution much more passive than expected in contemporary democracies. The DPS party either enjoyed the absolute majority of parliamentary seats or allied itself with smaller parties willing to share the spoils of governing. In other words, the government’s strategy, aided by the fact that the DPS was always the strongest party in parliament, was to create shifting government coalitions which essentially made the parliament subservient to the government. In regard to the judiciary, the DPS government’s strategy was to keep it at arm’s length by populating its ranks with pro-government judges and prosecutors and exerting informal pressure on them. The only possible exception until 2016 was the Special State Prosecutor’s Office (SPO), which, however, had been embattled by other prosecuting authorities controlled by the government. Over time, the SPO was probably compromised. On various occasions, “when there were serious allegations of involvement of top DPS leaders, the SPO was either silent or very passive” (personal communication with political analyst, 11 February 2019). Similarly, regarding independent authorities, the government’s strategy was to neutralize them through the appointment of pro-government staff at the helm of the relevant agencies. A similar conclusion could be drawn regarding the mass media. Freedom of expression and pluralism of media outlets existed. Yet, under DPS rule, there were less than visible ways, including periodic intimidation of media organizations and journalists, which, taken together, helped the DPS government keep the media at bay. The strategy of the DPS government to control civil society was equally subtle, as it did not include outright oppression. Rather, this strategy was deployed on two fronts, the rhetorical and the organizational. First, the DPS employed strong rhetoric, labelling representatives of CSOs who dissented from government opinion as fascists, enemies of the state and lucrative profit seekers. And second, the government constructed its own beachheads in civil society by putting forward or allying itself with CSOs willing to work with the DPS. Such government-sponsored CSOs pretended to be independent.

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In short, the DPS government controlled most of the political and administrative institutions in the country (European Commission 2015b, 2019b and 2020b). The government used the rest of the country’s institutions to bend democracy to its will. However, in Montenegro there were also independent electronic and printed media and—to a lesser extent—an active civil society that was not sponsored by the government. They preserved a democratic public space, criticizing the government and staging protests for many years. Yet, the most effective opponent to DPS proved to be the Serbian Orthodox Church in Montenegro. When in December 2019 the DPS government started challenging the Church through a law that would have passed church-owned lands to the ownership of the state, the Church rejected the government’s plans and mobilized churchgoers. In less than a year, the combination of civil society mobilization, popular discontent over economic conditions and long-term abuse of government power with the anti-government stance of the Church contributed to the unification of opposition parties and the government turnover in December 2020. In that month a pro-Church government of technocrats based on a tripartite coalition replaced the DPS in power, but the new government did not last long. During its one and one-half year in power, the coalition government, ravaged by bickering among its partners, adapted to clientelist, populist and corruption-based legacies of state-society relations. Eventually, the coalition government was replaced by another one, equally fragile, in April 2022. It survived only until August 2022. None of the two post-2020 coalitions succeeded in trimming, let alone cutting down, the hegemony of DPS in Montenegrin politics. Montenegro’s longest ruling party supported the new fragile government coalition formed in 2022 and continued to play a major role in Montenegrin politics. In view of the above, what is at stake in Montenegrin democracy is achieving government stability. If based on fragile government coalitions among incompatible partners, such stability is always hard to achieve. Stability has been especially difficult since the elections of 2020, as the base of earlier coalitions, i.e., the DPS and its allies, changed. “After that time, the base of governing coalitions broke. Since then, there has been no consolidation of government coalitions in Montenegro” (interview 47).

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However, a stable government is a prerequisite for continuing Montenegro’s road to EU integration that lies ahead and requires many reforms. Given the fragmentation of the Montenegrin party system and the age-old, identity-based rather than policy-related, cleavages in the electoral body, stability is not an easily achievable target. Most of Montenegro’s political elites, pre-occupied with the day-to-day management of unsalvageable coalition governments, have been unable to focus on the larger issue of Montenegro’s European future, assuming that elites actually desire such a future. An even less achievable target is the change in the populist, clientelist and corruption-based state-society relations which have allowed governing elites to tolerate, if not engineer, the backsliding of democracy in order to prolong their stay in power. In 2021–2022, populism, clientelism and corruption continued to be recognizable features of Montenegrin democracy.

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OSCE/DHIR. (2018b, June 28). Montenegro Presidential Election 2018b— ODIHR Election Observation Mission Final Report. Available at https:// www.osce.org/odihr/elections/montenegro/386127?download=true. Last accessed on 13 August 2022. OSCE/DHIR. (2020c, December 11). Republic of Montenegro, Parliamentary Election 30 August 2020c, OSCE/ODIHR Election Mission Final Report, Warsaw. Available at https://www.osce.org/files/f/documents/5/ 2/473532.pdf. Last accessed on 13 August 2022. Reporters Without Borders. (2019b). Freedom Press Index—Montenegro. Available at https://rsf.org/en/index. Last accessed on 12 November 2022. Reporters Without Borders. (2022b). Freedom Press Index—Montenegro. Available at https://rsf.org/en/country/montenegro. Last accessed on 2 August 2022b. Roberts, E. (2007). The Realm of the Black Mountain: A History of Montenegro. C. Hurst and Co. Stankov, N. (2020). Voting, Clientelism, and Identity: Experimental Evidence from Montenegro. Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, 20(3), 473–489. Troch, P. (2014). From “And” to “Either/or”: Nationhood in Montenegro During the Yugoslav Twentieth Century. East European Politics and Societies, 28(1), 25–48. Tzifakis, N. (2020). The Western Balkans during the Pandemic: Democracy and the Rule of Law in Quarantine? European View, 19(2), 197–205. US Department of State. (2017b). “Montenegro”, Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2017. Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor of the United States Department of State, https://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/ hrrpt/humanrightsreport/#wrapper. Last accessed on 11 November 2022. Vukovi´c, I. (2015). Political Dynamics of the Post-Communist Montenegro: One-Party Show. Democratization, 22(1), 73–91. World Bank. (2022). GDP Growth Annual (%)—Montenegro. Available at https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?locations= ME. Last accessed on 21 July 2022. Wunsch, N. (2018). EU Enlargement and Civil Society in the Western Balkans: From Mobilization to Empowerment. Palgrave Macmillan. Zivanovi´c, M. and G. Erebara (2019). Oppositions Refuse to Return to Parliament, Balkan Insight. Available at https://balkaninsight.com/2019/02/27/ albania-montenegro-serbia-oppositions-refuse-to-return-to-parliament/. Last accessed on 13 August 2022.

CHAPTER 10

How Elected Governments Make Democracies Backslide: The Case of North Macedonia

Since North Macedonia’s declaration of national independence (1991), all political parties, when in government, have curbed rules and institutions to obtain short-term political benefits and discriminate against opponents. When it comes to electoral law violations, shady deals of political parties with supportive businesspersons and misuse of state resources, including state capture (Damjanovski & Markovikj, 2020; Mitevski, 2018), there are no innocent parties in North Macedonia. Yet, in what follows, my focus will be on the last fifteen years. The year 2006 was a turning point in the misuse and abuse of North Macedonian political and administrative institutions. The VMRO-DPMNE party, that had governed the country also in 1998–2002, came back to power. Between 2006 and 2016, this centre-right nationalist party won most parliamentary and presidential elections and was in government, always in coalition with one or more Albanian parties, while the centre-left, the SDSM party, was in opposition until May 2017. In what follows, I discuss how the VMRO-DPMNE misused and abused democratic process and institutions. I also analyse the limited extent to which its successor in power, the SDSM, treated processes and institutions in a more democratic way. I focus in turn on the conduct of elections, the parliament, the justice system, independent authorities and

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 D. A. Sotiropoulos, The Irregular Pendulum of Democracy, New Perspectives on South-East Europe, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25609-7_10

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civil society and I end with a brief note on how the North Macedonian government managed the COVID-19 crisis.

10.1 Elections and Domestic Political Developments until 2022 Elections in North Macedonia are managed and overseen by an independent authority, the nine-member State Electoral Commission (SEC). This Commission has been established for a long time, but its role has been more nominal than real. Over time the management of elections has improved, but electoral problems persisted at least until the early 2010s (Giandomenico, 2013, 70–71, 76, 79 and 82). Indeed, violence and other irregularities, which characterized all elections in the 1990s, were not uncommon in the elections of 2006 and 2008. The SEC is a public body, in which the four largest parties (two Macedonian and two Albanian) were represented until 2006. Since then, this body has been endowed with permanent civil service personnel. It has managed elections, overseeing the work of Municipal Election Councils (MECs) at municipalities and Electoral Boards (EBs) at polling stations. International observers have regularly monitored elections in North Macedonia. OSCE missions were present, for example, in Macedonian parliamentary elections throughout the 2000s and the 2010s (e.g., elections of April 2014, December 2016 and July 2020), presidential elections (April 2014 and April 2019) and local government elections (October 2017). It has been common for elections to be conducted in an institutional context which does not resemble a level-playing field for all parties and candidates. Political violence and infringement of the electoral procedure have been common in North Macedonia. From time to time, violence diminishes, and at other times, it becomes more acute. As documented below, there is a pendulum-like movement in that respect. Administrative problems in elections, such as lack of experience, training and clear instructions to local electoral committees on the registration of voters, checking on voter lists and the casting and tabling of votes, have frequently marred electoral procedures (OSCE/ODIHR, 2008a). To a large extent, such problems resulted from the reluctance of political parties which participated in elections to safeguard these procedures (Giandomenico, 2013).

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More concretely and similarly to Serbia and Montenegro (chapters eight and nine), before elections took place, the governing party and its coalition partners in government used to blur the lines between conducting their electoral campaign and implementing government policy measures. The government selectively dispensed welfare benefits and public sector jobs to prospective voters. There was also intimidation of opponents and pressure on public employees who may have been perceived by the governing party as undecided voters or were known as voters of parties other than the governing one. It is probable that no political parties were innocent of traditional clientelist practices, such as family voting. This is a pattern of clientelism in which the head of a family, usually an older male, promised the votes of all of his family members to a political party in exchange of various patronage-based benefits. Moreover, election rigging took place both before election and on election day. On the day of elections, particularly in the decade of the 2010s, authorities tolerated undemocratic actions by governing party officials who made an effort to tip elections in favour of the VMRO-DPMNE-led government. Such actions included failure to check the IDs of voters, as in the parliamentary elections of 2015, when approximately 50 or more Albanian citizens with ties to North Macedonia were brought over by the VMRO-DPMNE party from the Albanian city of Pustec. They voted using fake identity cards of North Macedonia (Financial Times, 2015 and interview 44). The rigging of elections was also manifested in toleration of multiple similar signatures on the side of more than one names on voter lists, and the casting into the ballot box of multiple ballots folded together. At the end of election day, it could be discovered that the number of ballots cast was larger than the number of signatures by voters on the voter list in a polling station. Erroneous tabulation of votes also occurred (Giandomenico, 2013, on the basis of OSCE reports, published after electoral observation missions in North Macedonia). Electoral Abuses in 2006–2015 Concrete examples of such practices abound. For instance, the parliamentary elections of 5 July 2006 were probably a turning point, because they were managed by a comparatively more professional SEC and by municipal election commissions and election boards. The elections of 2006 actually marked a government change, as the SDSM-led government

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coalition was replaced by a VMRO-DPMNE-led government coalition. The VMRO-DPMNE had been defeated in 2002 by the SDSM but came back in 2006. Even though such a government turnover is usually understood as an indication of democratic consolidation (Huntington, 1991), international observers noted several problems in the conduct of elections (OSCE/ODIHR, 2006). Problems included violence and intimidation during the electoral campaign and major irregularities on election day. Fights between the Albanian parties, the DUI and the DPA reached the level of use of firearms and physical attacks on electoral campaign centres in 2006. On election day, in at least ten municipalities, there were “ballot-box stuffing, vote buying, theft of ballots and other election material, and instances of tension and intimidation, including by groups of armed persons” (OSCE/ODIHR, 2006, 3). After polls closed, further irregularities were observed during vote count. Results were annulled and eventually elections had to be re-run in 29 polling stations. The reform of electoral law in 2006 was meant to introduce more standardized practices applied in EU democracies. Changes in the composition and functions of the SEC in that year meant that elections were to be conducted in a fairer way, at least as far legal provisions were concerned. The implementation of legal provisions was another matter. Despite successive improvements between 2006 and today, the record of quality of elections has been erratic, particularly under the rule of the VMRO-DPMNE between 2006 and 2017. For example, in the parliamentary elections of 2008 one person died and several were injured. Meanwhile, during the electoral campaign, there were reports of intimidation against voters who might have risked losing their public pensions or welfare benefits depending on which party they would vote for, and on election day, there were incidences of theft of ballot boxes (Giandomenico, 2013, 78). Moreover, intimidation by VMRO-DPMNE government officials against civil servants included threats to their jobs (Fouere, 2014a). The early parliamentary elections of 2008 were characterized by violence which erupted mostly in Albanian-dominated communities. Extensive violence took place between supporters of the two Albanian parties DUI and DPA and resulted in voters being physically prohibited from voting. The scale of violence was such that in many Albanian communities the elections of 1 June 2008 had to be repeated on 15 June and in other such communities on 29 June.

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The exacerbation of political violence among Albanians may be interpreted in terms of political culture. Albanians have periodically been alienated from the national political institutions of North Macedonia. A political culture of openness and trust towards and dialogue with other ethnic groups and national political authorities of their country has never prevailed in their community life. Conversely, within Macedonian communities, there has been very deep mistrust towards Albanians, dating back to the commotions of the national independence of the new state in 1991, if not earlier (Ramet, 2006, 567–568; Boduszynski, 2010, 143–144). The dynamics of political party struggle within the Albanian community and clashes among strong political personalities should be factored in the analysis. In North Macedonia, Albanians have been politically socialized into a very divisive political subsystem, namely their own party system. The degree of fragmentation of the Albanian party subsystem within the larger party system of North Macedonia is quite astonishing. Although constituting a small share (about one-fourth to one-third) of the total electorate, Albanians have since the beginning of the transition been divided over their allegiance to Albanian parties. The parallel existence within the Albanian political community of longtime influential leaders, such as Arben Xhaferi, leader of the DPA (who passed away in 2012), and strongmen, such as Ali Ahmeti, former head of the Albanian guerrilla insurgents in 2001 and leader of the DUI, speaks volumes of intra-ethnic divisions. The rise of opponents to Ahmeti, namely Bilal Kasami (Besa party), Zijadin Sela (Party of Alliance for Albanians) and Afrim Gashi (Alternativa party), who currently lead or have led smaller Albanian parties, points to the same conclusion about extreme party system fragmentation. The particular political context matters too: the larger representation of an Albanian party in parliament was translated not so much into greater influence in policy-making, as to greater access to spoils to be distributed to party supporters. The availability of spoils, in turn, was commensurate to the chances that an Albanian party joined one of the two major Macedonian parties (the VMRO-DPME or the SDSM) in government, as their junior government coalition partner. For example, in May 2007, the small Albanian opposition Party for Democratic Prosperity (PDP), which earlier had been a coalition partner of SDSM, joined Gruevski’s government in exchange for a ministerial post offered to the party’s leader (BIRN, 2007).

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Finally, violent political behaviour must be seen as a larger problem of the comparative underdevelopment of civil society, not only within the Albanian community, but more widely in North Macedonia (Markovi´c, 2013). There are several causes for this lack of development. Ethnic tensions between Albanians and Macedonians, distrust of most citizens towards political institutions and long-term habits of social exclusion of all sorts of minorities were aggravating factors and contributed to the rise of uncivil behaviour. The latter fed into a culture of abuse, frequently encompassing electoral contests at the national and local government level in North Macedonia. For instance, in the parliamentary elections of 2008, the VMRODPMNE government coalition took full advantage of its position in power by blurring official government activities and electoral campaign targets. International observers reported “a publicity campaign launched by the authorities shortly prior to the official campaign advertising the success of government initiatives, as well as government programs providing special services to citizens during the campaign period” (OSCE/ODIHR, 2008a, 2). In the local government and presidential elections of April 2009, there were “evident problems” of intimidation of voters (OSCE, 2009). However, the situation was not as problematic as it had been in previous electoral contests. While there were threats against public employees, there was much less ballot-box stuffing (Giandomenico, 2013, 82). In the local government elections of 2013, disturbing phenomena included the biased coverage of the electoral campaign by state and private media in favour of the VMRO-DPMNE candidates. Also, VMRO-DPMNE government officials again blurred the boundaries between discharging their official duties and campaigning for their party and their own candidacy (OSCE/ODIHR, 2013, 1). There has been some progress in the management of elections over time in the sense that law infringement has been on the decline, while other irregularities have also started eclipsing. However, “the overall political climate in which elections take place has deteriorated” (Fouere, 2014a). In other words, between the mid-2000s and the early 2010s, if not during earlier periods, the quality of electoral procedures was very uneven. The evolution of the quality of elections, i.e., of peacefulness, openness, and fairness of elections in North Macedonia, was not linear. In the 1990s, elections were neither fair nor peaceful. Albanians boycotted the

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vote on the constitution in 1991, gross irregularities occurred in the elections of 1994 and a boycott of the SDSM-dominated parliament by the VMRO-DPMNE followed in the mid-1990s. Since the early 2000s, there has been some progress in the peaceful conduct of elections, but part of the Albanian electorate, represented by the Albanian party DPA, disputed the outcomes of national and local elections in that decade (Aleksov et al., 2019, 90–93). By contrast, the level of fairness of electoral competition probably regressed between the late 2000s and the mid-2010s. In other words, the pendulum of democracy swung to the semi-authoritarian end. In the parliamentary elections of June 2011, for the first time, citizens living abroad were entitled to out-of-country voting. However, once more, the scales were tipped in favour of the governing VMRODPMNE. There was inadequate separation of government and party structures; there were serious doubts about the accuracy of voter lists; and the programs of the public broadcaster disproportionately favoured the governing coalition (OSCE/ODIHR, 2011, 1–2). Then, in the elections of 2014, astonishingly many voters listed on the electoral register seemed to share the same residential address. The “lack of a centralized electronic database” (OSCE/ODIHR, 2014, 2) made the compilation of voter lists a delicate affair. The parliamentary and presidential elections of 2014 were free in the sense that nine political parties competed openly, whereas violent incidents, similar to those occurring in the past, were rare. In both the parliamentary and the presidential electoral campaigns, the incumbent governing political party (VMRO-DPMNE) and the party’s candidate for the Presidency (Gyorgi Ivanov, who had first been elected as President in 2009) clearly prevailed over their competitors. The opposition parties did not have the large-scale access to state resources which the then governing party and president enjoyed. This included access to private media, state funds and the public broadcaster. Essentially, by channelling government advertisements to selected private media, the government won their overwhelming support during the electoral campaign. Furthermore, allegations of voter intimidation “by parties and state authorities” persisted (OSCE/ODIHR, 2014, 2). Moreover, after elections ended, the State Audit Office did not have the resources or the information to control political party finances and pre-electoral spending (OSCE/ODIHR, 2014, 3). A former EU official noted that “democracy has lost its meaning in Macedonia” (Fouere,

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2014b). In view of the above, after the parliamentary and presidential elections were over in late April 2014, the SDSM party did not either recognize the results of election or assume the parliamentary mandates which it had won. Then, the SDSM boycotted the Parliament, which was customary for opposition parties in North Macedonia and other West Balkan democracies (Atanasovski, 2019). The politics of North Macedonia were then transformed through a “colourful revolution” (Markovikj & Damjanovski, 2022), a long-protracted uprising against the rule of Gruevski that eventually brought him and his party down. The Turning Point of 2015–2016 The parliamentary elections of December 2016 were inconclusive: the VMRO-DPMNE party and the SDSM party came neck to neck at the finish line. While the opposition (SDSM) did not recognize the election result, the international community was ambivalent and a six-month-long impasse followed. The elections of 2016 were heavily contested after two years (2014– 2016) of acute conflict between government and opposition (Ceka, 2018, 151–154). Conflict had deepened particularly after February 2015, when the SDSM party had released telephone conversations of government officials who were publicly accused of corruption, infringement of public procurement regulations and unlawful campaigns against opposition politicians. Moreover, an armed clash between Albanian insurgents and the police in the city of Kumanovo in May 2015, which left 18 people dead, also played a role in preparing a political change. The armed clash on the one hand contributed to fears of political instability and on the other hand alarmed the international community, as the incident was reminiscent of the armed insurgency of Albanians in 2001. Compared to previous parliamentary elections, the elections of 2016 were conducted in a fairer way. This was probably due to the fact that the country was under very tight international supervision. Government and opposition, under the tutelage of the EU, had reached an agreement in the summer of 2015 (the Pržino agreement) to investigate the wiretapping affair and place the matter in the hands of a new independent investigating authority, the Special Prosecutor. Regarding the electoral campaign, the mission of the OSCE concluded that “the campaign (of 2016) was competitive but took place in an environment characterized

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by public mistrust in institutions and the political establishment, and allegations of voter coercion. The election administration struggled with the preparations for elections and missed a number of deadlines, but election day was generally well administered and proceeded without major incidents” (OSCE/ODIHR, 2017a, 1). However, in twelve instances during the electoral campaign of 2016, the OSCE Mission noted “voter intimidation, coercion, pressure on civil servants, vote-buying, and the misuse of administrative resources” (OSCE/ODIHR, 2017a, 2). Similar problems occurred in the municipal elections of October 2017, when “isolated cases of misuse of administrative resources and vote-buying were reported” (OSCE/ODIHR, 2018a, 3). Further on, there was no progress regarding campaign financing and party finances, a thorny issue in North Macedonia (but also in many other, more stable contemporary democracies). There was no “requirement to provide documentary evidence of either contributions or expenses. No actions were taken against campaign overspending, as reported by contestants” (OSCE/ODIHR, 2017a, 2). Voter lists became more reliable in the municipal elections of 2017. Noticeable progress like this would not have been possible without the pressure of the OSCE and the EU, which monitored elections and produced reports suggesting improvements (e.g., OSCE/ODIHR, 2014 and 2017a). To sum up, after a long period of dubious electoral behaviour by all parties in North Macedonia following the transition to democracy in 1991, and after the highly contestable elections under VMRO-DPMNE rule (2006–2016), the conduct of elections eventually improved. As the OSCE noted about the municipal elections of October 2017: “Overall, the 2017 municipal elections were perceived as an important milestone in building the new government’s credibility and contributed to strengthening confidence in the democratic process” (OSCE/DIHR, 2018a, 3). Overall, the extent to which the quality of electoral procedure improved was a function of pressures exerted by international organizations on the government and public administration of North Macedonia. For instance, this country has been recognized as a “Candidate Member State of the EU” since 2005. The EU does not explicitly include in the requirements of negotiations of accession of candidate member states

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any measurable progress in the conduct of free and fair elections (Giandomenico, 2013). However, it is clear that EU conditionality, based on the Copenhagen Criteria set by the EU in 1993, has an impact on the content and implementation of electoral law. Negotiations with the EU cannot proceed smoothly while gross violations of electoral regulations and the corresponding international standards continue. In that respect, progress in accession negotiations relied on the performance of domestic actors. The willingness of parties and particularly the governing party to play by the rules of the electoral game was essential to integration into the EU. Such willingness, however, was not necessarily forthcoming. In North Macedonia, the primary issue for a long time in the 1990s used to be the state of relations between the ethnic majority and ethnic minorities. Their relations were to be kept stable and manageable. Regarding North Macedonian politics, this was the priority of international community too. It was only after the Ohrid Framework Agreement of 2001 that the priority of stable management of ethnic relations was counterbalanced by another priority, namely conducting elections in a relatively freer and fairer manner. Nevertheless, not only in the 1990s, but also in the 2000s, elections took place in a defficient manner. The reason was probably that for political parties, it was “easier to steal and buy votes than to leave it to the uncertainties of elections” (Giandomenico, 2013, 79). Such phenomena did not eclipse in the 2010s, but they became less frequent, particularly after the government change of May 2017, when the SDSM party formed a government under EU monitoring. In sum, elections remain a major vehicle through which elected governments attempt to control democracy or even to make it backslide. As argued in this section, in North Macedonia, this temptation has been shaped by long-term legacies, which were common to other post-communist democracies of Southeastern Europe as well, namely nationalism and clientelism (Vachudova, 2005). The conduct of elections was burdened by mistrust on all sides. It would be useful to place mistrust among political competitors and electoral law violations in the context of state-society relations. Already before the transition of 1991, these relations were permeated by clientelism and corruption. Clientelism and corruption survived the transition. Coupled with populism throughout the term of VMRO-DPMNE in power (2006– 2017), such relations became critical antecedents of the erosion of

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democracy in North Macedonia. Democracy started backsliding without having been consolidated in the first place. Political Developments in North Macedonia After Gruevski In North Macedonia, the long period of turmoil sparked by the revelation of the wiretapping scandal in February 2015 only ended in May 2017, when a new coalition government was sworn in (European Commission, 2015c, 2018c and 2019c). The new coalition government, commanding 62 out of the 120 seats in parliament, was headed by Zoran Zaev, leader of the SDSM party. His coalition government included the largest Albanian party, DUI, and a smaller Albanian party, “Alliance for Albanians”. Another small Albanian party, Besa, which had supported political change and the downfall of VMRO-DPMNE, did not participate in the new coalition government, while after 2017 the VMRO-DPMNE constituted the main opposition party in parliament. The government change was a turning point. Compared to Serbia and Montenegro, North Macedonia showed a capacity to start overcoming the backsliding of democracy which it had experienced prior to 2017. Elections at the local level in 2017 and national level (the presidential elections of 2019 and the parliamentary elections of 2020) were conducted in an open, fair and comparatively free manner. Populism and state capture, which had become rampant under Gruevski (Mitevski, 2018), may have subsided to an extent. Yet, while populism lost its main representative (Gruevski), clientelism and—to an extent—corruption remained distinct features of state-society relations in North Macedonia. Even though major EU Member States such as France and Germany were not convinced in 2016–2019 that the country was ready to embark on accession negotiations to join the EU, one has to factor in that North Macedonia moved further on the road to democratization than Montenegro and Serbia did in the same post-2016 period. The gradual and frail recovery of North Macedonian democracy, however slow, is worth noting. In the mid-2010s, democracy enjoyed a better chance in North Macedonia than in Serbia. Democracy started recovering in North Macedonia also earlier than in Montenegro (where the DPS lost power only in 2020), even though North Macedonia faced complicated challenges (Ramet, 2017).

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Challenges included recurrent ethnic divisions (Macedonians vs. Albanians), long-term foreign affairs problems (the name dispute with Greece which was eventually resolved in 2018–2019) as well as extreme polarization between parties with inchoate internal party structures and unclear ideological profiles (Siljanovska-Dankova, 2016). Polarization had led to prolonged instability after 2015 and the formation of a new coalition government in Skopje only in mid-2017, relying on thin parliamentary support. Zaev’s coalition government had a slim but stable majority in parliament. It was confirmed in 2017–2022. In that time span, after a long period of political instability and the violent storming of the Macedonian Parliament in April 2017 by pro-VMRO elements, Zaev and his coalition partners probably enjoyed a wider basis of legitimation than the elections of December 2016 had shown. The Zaev government also enjoyed the backing of the international community. Indeed, in 2015–2017, the USA and the EU exerted pressure on the then ruling elite of the VMRO-DPMNE, including on President of the Republic Ivanov, to streamline the transfer of power (Maruši´c, 2017). Based on the Pržino agreement, in October 2015, a two-party coalition transitional government was installed, while the Special Prosecutor’s Office (SPO) started investigations on the wiretapping scandal. According to schedule, Prime Minister Gruevski was to resign 120 days before the parliamentary elections; he did so in January 2016 and was replaced by another official of his party (VMRO-DPMNE’s Secretary General Emil Dimitriev). However, the conduct of elections did not proceed according to schedule, as many of the conditions agreed upon in Pržino were not met in early 2016. In detail, opposition parties claimed that the conditions set by the Pržino agreement regarding the conduct of fair elections in April 2016 had not been met. Voter lists had not been cleansed and mass media had not become independent from government control. There were also some issues with the strong control of the state administration by the VMRO-DPMNE party. Under pressure by the opposition and by the European Commission, the scheduled parliamentary elections were repeatedly postponed. In April 2016, the SDSM renewed its call for preconditions in order to participate in elections. Meanwhile, the VMRO-DPMNE supported President Ivanov who “pardoned 56 individuals implicated in the wiretapping scandal, including high level politicians” (Konrad Adenauer Stiftung

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and Institute of Democracy-Skopje, 2016, 9). The President’s involvement in an unfinished criminal investigation was later reversed by him and provoked massive protests from the opposition against his decision and counter-protests from government supporters in his favour. Long negotiations among the largest parties followed in the summer of 2016 under the monitoring of EU authorities and foreign ambassadors to Skopje. After progress in cleansing voters’ lists from disputed names of voters and in resolving other issues, a second Pržino agreement (“Pržino 2”) was reached in July 2016. Based on this agreement, a new ad hoc committee was set up to monitor the impartial coverage of elections by the media, while the head of the country’s public broadcaster was replaced (Konrad Adenauer Stiftung and Institute of Democracy-Skopje, 2016, 9). Elections were postponed twice in April and June 2016. The period until the final conduct of elections in December 2016 was marred by further disputes over the number of voters in the country’s six electoral districts. Further delays were also related to the need to approve the state budget for the following year with parliament in session. Changes to the electoral law were also voted upon by parliament just in time for the December 2016 elections to take place. The changes involved prohibiting the use of state resources during the election campaign and conforming to a new “Code for fair and democratic elections”. There were also changes in the composition of the State Electoral Committee (the new nine-member SEC) to balance the influence of the then governing VMRO-DPMNE. The aim of this change was to make the SEC’s management of the voters’ lists more transparent and full-proof to external interventions. The new legislation also increased the required female participation in party tickets to 40 percent of party candidates and prohibited funding of the media by the state’s budget or municipal budgets. A Protracted Transition from Gruevski’s Rule Finally, parliamentary elections took place in December 2016. The outcome was a close-call, disputed by almost all parties except for VMRO-DPMNE. The latter obtained 39.4 percent of the vote, while the SDSM obtained 37.8 percent, the largest Albanian party (the DUI) 7.5 percent and the smaller Besa party 5 percent. The VMRO-DPMNE party obtained 51 out of 120 seats of parliament, the SDSM 49 seats, the Albanian party DUI 10 seats and Besa 5 seats.

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In terms of the normal functioning of democracy, it is telling that these were the fourth snap parliamentary elections in a row: early parliamentary elections took place in 2008, 2011, 2014 and 2016 (Konrad Adenauer Stiftung and Institute for Democracy—Skopje, 2016, 7). Obviously, this was a sign of political instability. Furthermore, a six-month period of political instability followed the December 2016 elections. In addition to the opposition’s disputing of the outcome, the front-runner party had no potential coalition partners in parliament. Albanian parties did not want to cooperate anymore with what they considered an internationally discredited political elite, namely Nikola Gruevski and his party’s officials. Eventually, the SDSM obtained the support of the Albanian parties, formed a coalition with the DUI party and demanded that Zaev be sworn in as Prime Minister. However, supporters of the VMRO-DPMNE would not give in and the VMRO-DPMNE-backed President Ivanov did not allow the SDSM to form a coalition government. In April 2017, a dispute between the VMRO-DPME and the SDSM occurred in parliament over the election of an Albanian politician (Talat Xhaferi, a high-ranking official of the DUI party) to the post of the parliament’s Speaker. In parliament, the SDSM party supported the election of an Albanian to such a high post for the first time since the 1991 transition from state socialist rule. “Moments after Zaev announced the election of Xhaferi… some 200 supporters of VMRO-DPMNE stormed the building (of the parliament). Zaev and others were beaten. Journalists and others were hospitalized” (Hopkins, 2017). The violent protest was quelled after the intervention of riot police. Yet, this incident became a turning point, as President Ivanov eventually agreed to the formation of a new government coalition without the VMRO-DPMNE. Eventually, Xhaferi was installed as the new Speaker in Parliament, and in late May 2017, the new SDSM-led coalition was sworn in and obtained the (thin) support of a new majority in parliament. In view of the above, for a long period between January 2016, when the former PM Gruevski resigned, and the end of May 2017, when Zaev was sworn in as Prime Minister, North Macedonia underwent a period of unprecedented political polarization and protracted transition. This time period resembled periods of transition from authoritarian rule in newly established democracies: in North Macedonia, new rules for the democratic game were negotiated among the outgoing and the incoming political elites, as was the case in “pacted”, i.e., negotiated, transitions

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from authoritarian rule in Southern Europe, Latin America and Eastern Europe in the last quarter of the twentieth century (Linz & Stepan, 1996). After the transfer of power took place in 2017, the new government had to face many remaining challenges (Dimishkovski, 2017; Maruši´c, 2017). Among many open issues, the main ones were the restoration of the proper functioning of democratic institutions, such as the judicial system, the media and parliament; and the management of tensions in ethnic relations between Macedonians and Albanians. However, the reforms initially planned by the SDSM government were delayed or remained incomplete two years into its rise to government. The government had put together two special committees to reform the justice system, but one of them was dismantled and the other had not reached conclusions on reform measures until mid-2019. Plans to reform the central public administration were still pending in 2019–2020. The “cleansing” of the secret services, which had played a major role in the wiretapping affair of 2015, was not completed either (personal communication with legal expert, Professor of the Cyril and Methodius University, 24 June 2019). Still, the SDSM government was not involved in any abuse of state institutions of the magnitude witnessed under the government of Gruevski between 2006 and 2017. In 2018–2019, prosecuting authorities investigated the April 2017 invasion of the parliament by VMRO-DPMNE supporters. Three VMRO-DPMNE politicians (the former speaker of the Macedonian Parliament and two former ministers) were charged with supporting and facilitating the invasion, and another 16 participants were charged with crimes related to the violent entry (Radio Free Europe, 2019). Eventually, the three politicians were left off the hook, but the trial of the rest proceeded and ended with extensive jail sentences imposed on the accused. Progress in North Macedonia’s Foreign Relations and Its Impact on Domestic Politics There was more progress in foreign affairs in 2017–2019, which may have stabilized North Macedonia’s domestic political affairs as well. Progress was orchestrated by foreign actors, EU officials and ambassadors of major European powers in Skopje, who always play a major, albeit not always visible, role in the politics of North Macedonia. They intervene

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in the informal interactions among involved political leaders within the country and in relations with its neighbouring countries (Markovikj & Damjanovski, 2018). After assuming government, Zoran Zaev successfully negotiated a solution to the Macedonian name issue and other issues with Greece. The country’s name was officially changed to “Republic of North Macedonia” after an agreement was signed with Greece in 2018. In detail, on 12 June 2018, the Greek and North Macedonian PMs, Alexis Tsipras and Zoran Zaev, signed an agreement to change the name of the country from the Republic of Macedonia to the Republic of North Macedonia. The agreement, long prepared and facilitated by EU authorities, is known as the “Prespes Agreement”, as the two leaders met at the shores of Prespes Lake, located at the intersection of Albanian, Greek and North Macedonian borders. The agreement resolved a long-term dispute over the name of Macedonia and other issues related to the use of symbols and historical legacies. The dispute dated back to North Macedonia’s declaration of national independence in 1991. Briefly, Greece argued that the name “Macedonia” applies exclusively to its own northern territory (the regions of Western Macedonia, Central Macedonia and Eastern Macedonia/Thrace which are three of Greece’s Northernmost regions). By contrast, the authorities of the new-born state claimed rights to the same name, associated with its existence as a constituent republic of former Yugoslavia (the “Socialist Republic of Macedonia”). The Skopje government also laid claims to ancient national symbols and leaders, such as the “Vergina Sun” (an ancient emblem) and Alexander the Great. These were considered by Greek authorities and the Greek population to be part of ancient Greek history. The government in Athens vetoed the new state’s accession to the EU, after North Macedonia had become a candidate member state in 2005, and blocked its accession to NATO in 2008. The VMRO-DPMNE used the name dispute for short-term political gains. During 2006–2017, the VMRO-DPMNE government started a large-scale campaign of renaming public infrastructure works (airports, highways) with names reminiscent of the ancient kingdom of Alexander the Great and remodelling the centre of the capital city, Skopje. This was the project “Skopje 2014”, meant to create a new city centre in the country’s capital that would be full of ancient Greek-like and baroque buildings and monuments. Statues included a three-floor-high sculpture

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of an ancient warrior on horseback who conspicuously looked like known representations of Alexander the Great. The VMRO-DPMNE played the nationalist card in domestic politics, while the conflict had a symbolic dimension more than anything else. Essentially, the VMRO-DPMNE exploited the conflict with Greece as much as possible to reap domestic political benefits (interview 44). The Prespes Agreement of 2018 was significant because it superseded the symbolic level; it re-affirmed the EU’s role as a problem-solving player in the region, a pole of attraction for the rest of Western Balkan states and a political context in which the democratization of post-Yugoslav political regimes could further develop. The Agreement was not received approvingly by all sides in North Macedonia (or, in fact, in Greece). President Ivanov, who had twice been elected on a VMRO-DPMNE ticket in 2009 and 2014, used whatever legal means possible to obstruct the Agreement’s implementation. Meanwhile, large-scale demonstrations shook Skopje, as VMRO-DPMNE supporters considered Zaev a traitor. Eventually, the parliaments of the two countries approved the Prespes Agreement, albeit with slim majorities, in the winter of 2018–2019. Earlier, in a consultative referendum in September 2018, North Macedonians overwhelmingly approved the Prespes Agreement in conjunction with future membership of their country in the EU and NATO (although the turnout in the referendum was low, just 37 percent—in North Macedonia, there is a requirement for turnout in referenda to be over 50 percent). Thus, the road opened for Northern Macedonia to join NATO under its new name in February 2019 as well as to proceed with EU accession negotiations. In May 2019, the European Commission gave a generally favourable opinion on reforms carried out in North Macedonia (and Albania) in preparation for the start of accession negotiations (European Commission, 2020c). However, negotiations would not start before all 27 Member States of the EU were convinced that North Macedonia and Albania had indeed completed reforms in their government and justice systems. The EU’s decision on the start of negotiations was put off towards the end of 2019 (Barigazzi, 2019) and was temporarily blocked by France in October 2019. Eventually, the EU’s approval to start negotiations (“accession talks”) was given in March 2020. The meanders of North Macedonia’s foreign affairs had a negative impact on domestic reforms, which were put on the back burner. Between 2017 and 2020, Zaev’s foreign policy efforts towards membership in

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NATO and the EU were front-loaded in comparison with his efforts to reform the government organization, public administration and justice system of North Macedonia. Reforms were not forthcoming in the policy areas of justice, security, education and health. The extent of the mandate of the Special Prosecutor to fight corruption was long debated between the governing SDSM and the opposition, particularly as Gruevski was condemned to imprisonment on charges of corruption. Eventually, Gruevski secretly left the country to seek political asylum in Hungary in November 2018, where he still resides today. Meanwhile, in autumn 2020, North Macedonian authorities opened new criminal investigations against Gruevski on money laundering. Other former government officials of his party were also under investigation (chapter seven of the book). Elections Consolidating Political Change in North Macedonia Despite slow progress in the above domestic policy areas, in the local government elections of October 2017, the Zaev government reconfirmed the political support it had won in 2016–2017. The local government elections were conducted in a more free, fair and open manner (OSCE/DHIR 2018a) than most elections of the period of the late 2000s and the early 2010s (Apostolova, 2018). The governing SDSM expanded its electoral influence by winning 57 out of the 81 municipalities of North Macedonia. Among major parties of the opposition, both the VMRODPMNE and the Besa party complained about electoral irregularities and filed complaints, which were dismissed by the State Electoral Committee (SEC). By 2019–2020, it was apparently difficult to discern between serious and legitimate complains about election irregularities, such as threats exchanged or even materialized by voters or members of competing parties, and knee-jerk complaints by defeated parties about irregularities. In the national and local elections of 2016–2020 in North Macedonia (parliamentary, local and presidential elections), there was probably vast improvement over past elections, in which international observers (e.g., the OSCE, the European Commission) had noted systematic irregularities which favoured incumbent candidates. In 2019, the SDSM went on to consolidate its political hegemony, i.e., to confirm its political legitimation and to proceed with its reform program by winning the two-round presidential elections of April–May

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2019, albeit with serious losses of votes. In this heavily contested election, the SDSM candidate, Stevo Pendarovski (who also had been his party’s candidate in the presidential elections of 2014), won in the second round. He defeated the VMRO-DPMNE candidate, Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova, by a margin of six percent (52 percent over 46 percent) although, taking into account North Macedonia’s small size, this was a margin of fewer than 60 thousand votes cast. However, in the presidential elections of 2019, the SDSM and DUI together obtained far fewer votes than they had obtained in the local government elections of 2017. In 2019, the two parties lost 181 thousand votes (Maruši´c, 2019), amounting to a decline of 36 percent over their combined influence in 2017. The presidential elections of 2019 were conducted in a free and open manner, although the side which lost in the second round (the VMRODPMNE) raised the possibility of vote buying by the SDSM and three Albanian parties, during the “last three hours before the polls closed” (personal interview with top official of the defeated party, 24 June 2019). However, international observers, such as the OSCE, noted only “few indications of vote buying” in the towns of Štip and Strumica (OSCE/DHIR 2019, 2 and 7). Elections were well managed, but there were also long-standing problems with electoral campaign rules, campaign finance and voter registration between the two rounds of the election (OSCE/DHIR, 2019, 1). Despite the more or less smooth conduct of local and presidential elections, one problem was the low voter turnout (Maruši´c, 2019). This was 41 percent of registered voters in the first round and 47 percent of registered voters in the second round of the presidential elections of April 2019. Compared to a turnout of 63 percent in the parliamentary elections of 2014 and 67 percent in the corresponding elections of 2016, the fall in electoral participation in 2019 was striking. Indeed, the turnout in the first round (41 percent) was the lowest ever in presidential elections conducted since 1990. The problem may have to do with the remaining issues of voter lists or with the fact that in contrast to parliamentary elections, the presidential ones are more of a symbolic contest. Nevertheless, the President of the Republic of North Macedonia has competences in foreign policy and may veto laws passed by parliament. We should not forget that President

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Ivanov had intervened to halt criminal investigations against government officials and to obstruct or delay the implementation of the Prespes Agreement (2018). For this reason, the crucial test for the SDSM-led government came with the parliamentary elections of July 2020 (Table 10.1). The elections of 2020 were called after the EU had announced (in October 2019) that it was not ready to start “accession negotiations” with North Macedonia. Despite remaining issues in the electoral law framework (revisions to the Electoral Code), the elections of 2020 were conducted smoothly (OSCE/ODIHR, 2020a). The turnout (50 percent) in the parliamentary elections of 2020 was small but higher than in the presidential elections of 2019, and the party of Zaev won the elections by a small margin: it obtained 35.9 percent of the vote, while the VMRO-DPMNE, running under a new leader, Hristijan Mickoski, obtained 34.6 percent (Table 10.1). It was a victory for the SDSM, even though the party lost eight seats in parliament compared to its performance in the parliamentary elections of 2016. The VMRO-DPMNE also lost seats, while the Albanian party DUI and the “Alliance for Albanians-Alternative” saw their electoral influence increase, obviously among the Albanian minority. Smaller Albanian parties did not do as well, but chose to side with the winner of the elections. Table 10.1 Results of the 2020 Parliamentary elections in North Macedonia Party VMRO-DPMNE Social Democratic Union of Macedonia (SDSM) Democratic Union for Integration (DUI) Democratic Party of Albanians (DPA) Alliance for Albanians- Alternativa The Left Total Voter turnout

% of votes 34.6 35.9 11.5 1.5 9.0 4.1 100.0 50.0

Seats in Parliament 44 46 15 1 12 2 120

Note The votes for very small parties are not reported here; percentages may not add up to 100% due to rounding Source of table Election Guide, 2022, https://www.electionguide.org/elections/id/3314/. Note The “Alliance for Albanians-Alternativa” and the “Left” were two new parties which managed to surpass an old ethnic party, the DPA, in terms of votes and parliamentary seats.

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Thus, in August 2020 a new coalition government won the confidence of the North Macedonian parliament. It was led by Zaev and consisted of the SDSM, two Albanian parties (the DUI political party and the Democratic Party of Albanians—the DPA) and other small parties. Eventually, the new ruling majority under Zaev commanded 62 votes in the 120seat Parliament of North Macedonia. Despite obtaining fewer votes in comparison with the elections of 2016 and relying on a slim majority, the SDSM-led coalition returned to power because of its relatively good performance in 2017–2019. Besides resolving the question of the country’s name, in 2017–2019, the Zaev government was able to restore political stability after the turmoil of 2015–2017 (personal communication/interview with foreign expert and professional residing in Skopje, 7 December 2020). However, the new Zaev government, formed in 2020, lasted for less than two years, falling victim to inter-party bickering and the dissatisfaction of the population with economic stagnation in the country and the turmoil in North Macedonia’s external relations. The Fall of Zaev from Power To recap, the Zaev government stayed in power between 2017 and 2021. It faced domestic and international challenges. Between 2017 and 2019, the Zaev government was preoccupied with international affairs. Particularly, after 2019, it also had to confront domestic challenges. Domestically, the Zaev government faced the problem of managing the COVID-19 pandemic. Vaccinations were delayed in North Macedonia in 2020 and were fully deployed only in April 2021. A fire damaging a COVID-19 hospital in Tetovo and killing 14 in September 2021 also shed a negative light on the government’s capacity to manage the pandemic. Moreover, the government received criticism for the large wildfires in the summer of 2021 and for delays in the prosecution and trials against officials of the Gruevski government (2006–2017) implicated in corruption cases. Lack of progress in improving the living standards of North Macedonians, as well as the continuation of tolerance of clientelism and to an extent corruption, also undermined the legitimacy of the Zaev government. Meanwhile, the 2021 population census, the first to be conducted after 20 years, was delayed. Its details became a controversial issue, given the tense inter-ethnic relations between the majority and minority ethnic

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groups. Upon completion, the census’ results were doubted by the opposition (VMRO-DPMNE) and by segments of the Albanian minority, the members of which were counted to be 24.3 percent of the total population of North Macedonia (Samardjiev, 2022). But, as in the past, the major challenge for a government of North Macedonia emerged from complications concerning the country’s integration into the EU and relations with neighbouring countries, to the extent that such relations affected EU-North Macedonia relations. In the words of an academic: “the Zaev government was a single-issue government” (interview 45). To a certain extent, the almost exclusive preoccupation of the Zaev government with foreign affairs was dictated by challenges beyond its control, namely tensions with neighbouring countries and shifts in the EU’s enlargement policy (e.g., France’s block on EU entry talks in October 2019). The unfinished project of North Macedonia’s EU integration lingered on. However, one could also argue that the Zaev government was unable to show results in policy areas which should have been more under its control, for instance, economic policy and justice affairs. The government subsumed “all its domestic goals to progress in relations with the EU; and that because the government’s economic policy was disastrous, as it bore no visible result” (interview 46). While it is early to assess the performance of the economy under the Zaev government, the truth is that the SDSM party ascended to government mostly on a domestic policy agenda. The voters of SDSM had counted on a set of promises to reverse the backsliding of democracy that had occurred in 2006–2017 and improve the population’s living standards. Yet, after its ascent to power, the SDSM was caught up in the management of North Macedonia’s relations with neighbouring countries (Greece, Bulgaria) and the EU. Symbolic politics, namely the country’s name, language, historical origins and collective identity, prevailed over politics of democratization and economic reform. That was unavoidable to the extent that such foreign policy issues preceded the rise of Zaev to power. After all, nationalism and its impact on external relations naturally consume the political energy of government and opposition in newly born countries if they face challenges to their national sovereignty. Moreover, North Macedonia is a relatively small country that relies on diplomatic support and foreign investments by larger countries (the USA, Germany and other EU

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Member States) and international organizations (the EU). External actors play a preponderant role in the politics of North Macedonia. Thus, resolving the name dispute with Greece proved insufficient for North Macedonia’s progress towards EU accession. Once Greece’s objections were lifted, North Macedonia joined NATO in 2020. However, in late 2020, the Zaev government ran into a new obstacle in the country’s integration into the EU. There was a new block by Bulgaria on North Macedonia’s road towards the EU, which would be resolved after Zaev’s departure from government in the winter of 2021–2022. North Macedonian Politics After Zaev The block was not owed to a mishandling of the EU integration process by the Zaev government, but to Bulgaria’s sudden vetoing of the start of accession negations between the EU and North Macedonia. In November 2020, Bulgaria, a Member State of the EU, blocked the start of these accession negations between the EU and North Macedonia (a move that resulted in a corresponding delay in Albania’s accession negotiations). Essentially, “Sofia questioned the historic existence of a Macedonian nation, certainly before 1945, and considered the Macedonian language a Bulgarian dialect” (Bechev, 2022). Bulgaria claimed that since the establishment of a joint historical commission in 2017 (“Friendship Treaty”), there had been no progress in resolving disputes over history and identity, and that there is hate discourse against Bulgaria in North Macedonia and no recognition of a Bulgarian minority. The turn of events was surprising given that at the relevant meeting of the EU Council eight months before, in March 2020, Bulgaria had not raised objections to starting accession negotiations with North Macedonia (Bechev, 2022). The shift in Bulgaria’s stance may be interpreted in the context of Bulgarian domestic politics. In 2020–2022, political party competition in Bulgaria became completely unpredictable. In 2021, there were three inconclusive parliamentary elections in a row (in April, July and November 2021). Traditional political elites (e.g., the leadership of the formerly governing GERB party) turned to nationalism to meet the challenge of social protests. The GERB wanted to avert the rise of a young, liberal, anti-corruption political elite, represented by Kiril Petkov and Anton Vasilev, who eventually formed a new party and a new government in December 2021.

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Meanwhile, in North Macedonia, the Zaev-led government coalition had won a confidence vote in March 2021, obtaining 62 out of 120 votes. However, it relied on that thin majority of parliamentary seats (European Commission, 2021c, 11). The defeat of the SDSM in the municipal elections of October 2021 was another turning point. The SDSM lost the vast majority of the 57 municipalities it used to hold, including the municipality of Skopje, in which the VMRO-DPMNE candidate, Daniela Arsovska, was elected mayor. The VMRO-DPMNE won these elections, which were not marred by the irregularities encountered in previous national and local elections in the country. At the local level, voters expressed their discontent with national economic and political developments. The discontent reflected the lack of improvements in the economy and labour market, the corresponding lack of results in fighting corruption and reforming the state administration and—above all—the stalemate in North Macedonia’s integration into the EU. After the municipal elections, Zaev announced his resignation from the post of PM and leader of his party. Faced with an immediate vote of noconfidence submitted by the VMRO-DPMNE, Zaev stayed on as PM to stabilize the SDSM-led coalition government. After intra-party elections, the former Deputy Finance Minister Dimitar Kovaˇcevski won the SDSM party leadership. He was later sworn in as PM and his party formed a new government coalition, consisting of the SDSM, the DUI and the Albanian party Alternativa. The coalition won a thin confidence vote (62 out of 120 votes) in January 2022 (Duman, 2022; Stamouli, 2022). In 2022, tensions with Bulgaria, rather than domestic issues, preoccupied the Kovaˇcevski government and the citizens of North Macedonia. For a while, Bulgaria’s block seemed insurmountable. However, in an era of war raging close to the Balkan region (Russia’s invasion of Ukraine), energy shortages and a continuing pandemic (COVID-19), intra-regional tensions on mostly symbolic issues were dealt with rather successfully by the EU, which wanted to proceed with the integration of North Macedonia (and Albania) into its ranks. In June 2022, more than one and half-year after Bulgaria had blocked North Macedonia’s accession negotiations, the block was lifted after protracted negotiations between the two countries. Pressure was exerted by EU authorities and an initiative of the French President E. Macron. The French proposal was multifold but essentially came down to Bulgaria lifting its veto in exchange for North Macedonia’s recognition of a

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Bulgarian minority within its national boundaries. The VMRO-DPMNE opposed the agreement, which, however, was passed in late July 2022 with the votes of the governing SDSM and smaller parties, a total of 68 votes out of 120. In contrast to the cases of Serbia and Montenegro, where parliament is downgraded to an institution serving the government or is an inactive institution, in North Macedonia the parliament has acquired a somewhat more important role. This is a relatively recent phenomenon, as between 2006 and 2017 it used to be subservient to the government.

10.2

The Parliament

The Parliament of North Macedonia usually has very little power over the government. In North Macedonia, the elected government has tended to fully control a large majority of parliamentary seats, while the opposition has tended to boycott the parliament on various counts, e.g., upon challenging the fairness of elections. Periodic walkouts of the opposition from the parliament are a typical feature of North Macedonia’s parliamentary life. For example, following the victory of the VMRO-DPMNE in the parliamentary elections of April 2014, which the opposition considered rigged, the parliamentary majority of the ruling coalition consisted of that party and the Albanian DUI party. The opposition, led by SDSM, walked out of the parliament in protest against the way elections were conducted and continued to boycott parliament sessions (Aleksov et al., 2019). The full control of parliament by the government probably reached its peak under the successive coalition governments led by Gruevski. In parliament, the ruling VMRO-DPMNE party even used physical violence against representatives of other parties. A first example of exerting violence occurred in 2012. The VMRODPMNE government sought to control the parliament by using violence against members of the opposition on Monday, 24 December 2012 (remembered as “Black Monday”, Gligoroska, 2013). During a debate on the state budget, the passing of which the opposition had rejected and tried to obstruct, the VMRO-DPMNE government called in the police and had opposition Members of Parliament and journalists forcefully evicted. Upon the instructions of the VMRO-DPMNE government, plain clothes policemen literally dragged opposition MPs outside the room of the parliament’s plenum.

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A second, similar example was the storming of the parliament by VMRO-DPMNE protesters in April 2017, as already noted in the previous section. The instance was the election of an Albanian politician to the post of the Speaker. In brief, as with the conduct of elections, which was discussed earlier, violence was used when other means of exerting control over institutions were exhausted.

10.3

The Justice System

The justice system of North Macedonia comprises of courts, with the Supreme Court at the top, and prosecutorial authorities, at the peak of which stands the Public Prosecutor of the Republic of North Macedonia. It is a system governed by the Judicial Council (JC) and the Council of Public Prosecutors (articles 105 and 106 of the Constitution). Separately, there is a Constitutional Court. In the past, the selection of members of the JC and the Public Prosecutor was a process through which the elected government, commanding a majority of votes in parliament, could control the judicial system. Changes in the Constitution brought about in 2014 may be regarded as a hesitant step taken to reduce such control. After winning the parliamentary elections of April 2014, the VMRODPME party proceeded with reforms of the judiciary. Relying on a majority of parliamentary seats, which permitted it to reform the Constitution, the Gruevski government drafted and passed constitutional amendments. Amendments purported to modernize the system. However, specific amendments would have helped the VMRO-DPMNE government to fully control the judiciary and other institutions of accountability, such as the State Audit Office. Among the seven amendments drafted by the government and passed by parliament in 2014, the most important concerned the State Audit Office and the JC. The State Audit Office The amendments of 2014 included a clause for the selection of the head of the State Audit Office (the SAO), namely the principal State Auditor, responsible for auditing public funds. The SAO’s lack of autonomy from the government had already been criticized by the European Commission (European Commission, 2014b). The government’s amendment of the Constitution provided that the State Auditor was to be appointed and dismissed by parliament by simple majority of votes (Venice Commission,

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2014a, 2014b, 10–11). Essentially, under the new amendment, the ruling VMRO-DPMNE could appoint and remove a person of its choice. This was another attempt at the politicization of an institution, the SAO, which ideally should be in a position to hold the government and the public administration accountable. The Judicial Council (JC) In North Macedonia, the judiciary is governed by a 15-member strong Judicial Council (JC). The JC is responsible, among other things, for the appointment and promotion of court presidents and judges (based on the country’s Constitution, article 15, the 29th Amendment of the Constitution and the Law on Courts). The JC also has competences to investigate disciplinary offences committed by judges and to nominate two of the members of the country’s Constitutional Court (Kmezi´c, 2017, 71), as well as to decide on complaints against judges filed by citizens or legal entities (e.g., companies). Among the 15 members of the JC, eight are judges elected by their colleagues (other judges) for a four-year-long period (Article 104 of the Constitution and 28th Amendment of the Constitution). There are ethnic quotas imposed by the Constitution, so that members of “nonmajority” ethnic communities (primarily the Albanian community, but also the Roma and Turk ones, among others) stand chances for a fair trial. If members of such minorities were put on trial, they should have a trial as fair as that of members of North Macedonia’s ethnic majority. Thus, three out of the eight judges must belong to non-majority ethnic communities. After eight of the Council’s fifteen members are selected, the remaining seven members of the JC are selected from among university law professors, lawyers and other prominent jurists, as follows: two are ex officio members, namely the President of the Supreme Court and the Minister of Justice; three are elected by the parliament through a double majority (majority of all Members of Parliament and majority of Members of Parliament belonging to non-majority ethnic communities); and the remaining two are proposed by the President of the Republic and are elected by the Parliament, while one of these two must belong to nonmajority communities (28th Amendment, mentioned above). Thus, out of 15 members of the JC, four must belong to non-majority communities. However, the fact that out of the 15 members only eight are judges

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may “leave the door open for political pressure” on this Council (Kmezi´c, 2017, 71). In February 2015, the VMRO-DPMNE government attempted to increase pressure on the judiciary. It established a new institution within the judiciary in order to investigate disciplinary cases launched against judges and submit corresponding reports to the JC. It was called the Council for the Establishment of Facts (CEF). The institution’s name sounded awkward, as if taken out of the pages of George Orwell’s “1984”. Its mission was doubted by international monitors (Venice Commission, 2017, 4), and eventually, the Zaev government passed a law in 2017 to abolish the CEF. In the meantime, the constitutional and legal guarantees of independence of the courts in North Macedonia had already broken down. Under the Gruevski government, the politically controlled courts had been instrumental in the prosecution of journalists and the closing down of the dissident TV station A1 and three daily newspapers in 2011–2013 (Kmezi´c, 2017, 73). Pressure was put on the members of the JC and judges serving in court through direct intervention by Gruevski’s government ministers and by members of higher courts over their colleagues serving in lower courts. Another vehicle of government control was the economic dependence of the JC and the courts on the Ministry of Justice, as the former did not have autonomy regarding the courts’ budget (Kmezi´c, 2017, 71 and 137). In brief, while the constitution of North Macedonia guaranteed the independence of the judiciary (article 98 paragraph 2), in practice there was only nominal independence. The European Commission Annual Progress Reports repeatedly noted the constraints put on the judiciary by the government (e.g., European Commission, 2014b and 2015c, among many other reports). In September 2017, a group of EU officials and law experts representing the European Commission (the Senior Experts’ or Priebe Group, named after its coordinator, Reinhard Priebe, former European Commission official) published a report. It assessed what progress had been made regarding recommendations which the Group had offered to the Gruevski government in 2015 (Senior Experts’ Group, 2015). A long period of very slow progress had followed (Ahmeti & Ramic-Mesihovic, 2016). In 2017, the Senior Experts elaborated three major points regarding the

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indirect politicization of the judiciary under Gruevski in the last phase of his term as Prime Minister (2015–2016): First, “the control and misuse of the judicial system by a small number of judges in powerful positions to serve and promote political interests has not diminished in any significant respect. These judges have continued to bring pressure on their more junior colleagues through their control over the five systems of appointment, evaluation, promotion, discipline, and dismissal which have been used to reward the compliant and punish those who do not conform. This has been described as a type of ‘state capture’, but is perhaps more precisely characterized as the capture of the judiciary and prosecution by the executive power” (Senior Experts’ Group, 2017, 4–5). Second, the court cases which could have been sensitive for the government were allocated in a non-transparent manner: “the system of assigning cases to judges….is supposed to be done in a random manner using an automated system (ACCMIS). However, there are credible indications that this system has frequently been interfered with, in order to ensure the allocation of sensitive files to particular judges” (Senior Experts’ Group, 2017, 5). Third, there was direct interference in the day-to-day work of judges: “A number of judges informed the group about direct interference through instructions either from senior members of the judiciary or even directly from political elements, allegedly accompanied by threats of serious consequences. A number of judges who had been the subject of disciplinary proceedings believed that those proceedings had been motivated by their refusal to conform to such instructions” (European Commission, 2018c, 6). Notably, almost all the above vehicles or means of government control over the judiciary were also employed to exert a similar control over independent authorities.

10.4

Indpendent Authorities

North Macedonia has a quite large array of independent regulatory and administrative authorities. These are the Office of the Ombudsman, the Directorate for Personal Data Protection, the State Commission for the Prevention of Corruption, the Commission for Prevention of and Protection from Discrimination, the Commission for Access to Public Information and the Council of the Media Agency. The legal framework

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covering their organization and competences is not so divergent from that found in EU Member States. However, North Macedonian independent authorities lagged behind their EU counterparts in terms of their independence from the government (Senior Experts’ Group, 2017, 17–18). More concretely, under the VMRO-DPNE government, most such independent bodies lacked the power and resources (e.g., funds, staff) to fulfil their tasks (European Commission, 2018c, 22, 24 and 27). Moreover, independent authorities either faced direct interference in the way they implemented their mandate or refrained from implementing the rule of law out of “political self-restraint” (Centar Savremene Politike—CSP, 2017, 40). How did the government manage to block such authorities, the task of which was precisely to oversee any violations of the rule of law or human rights? Throughout 2006–2017, the VMRO-DPMNE government controlled the majority of parliamentary seats and was thus able to control the composition of relevant parliamentary committees as well. In detail, the parliament’s competent committee, the Committee on Elections and Appointments, made politicized and non-transparent appointments to the management of independent authorities. Meanwhile, the relevant legislation allowed for unspecified grounds on which dismissals from such bodies (e.g., the Anti-discrimination Commission) were possible. Whenever independent authorities were able to voice concerns regarding law violations in the area of their own competence, they often met with the uncooperative stance of government-controlled prosecutorial and judicial authorities (Senior Experts Group, 2017, 18– 20). As the European Commission’s “Senior Experts’ Group on Systematic Rule of Law Issues” put it: “With regard to inter-agency cooperation regarding serious offences, difficulties have been noted in applying special investigative measures against the allegedly corrupt officials, especially when these are members of the judiciary and law enforcement” (Senior Experts’ Group, 2017, 21). After the government turnover of 2017 independent authorities functioned in a less restrained manner. A new State Commission for the Prevention of Corruption was appointed in 2019 and focused on asset verification, while the State Audit Office inspected the finances of political parties. The Personal Data Protection Authority increased its supervisions in 2020–2021 (European Commission, 2021c, 23 and 27).

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341

Mass Media

Based on assessments of Freedom House and Reporters Without Borders (2017), mass media was unfree in North Macedonia until 2017. In fact, it was the only country in Eastern Europe in which the media was not considered to be “partly free” but was plainly characterized as “not free” (Freedom House, 2017b). A combination of financial strain and government pressure circumscribed freedom of expression and pluralism of the media in North Macedonia, particularly between 2006 and 2017. Under the VMRODPMNE, pressure was exerted on media through threats and violence against journalists (Reporters Without Borders, 2017), control of the public broadcaster (MRT), inspections of mass media companies and the channelling government advertisements to favoured media outlets (Senior Experts Group, 2017, 23–24; European Commission, 2018c, 29–30). The Gruevski government went as far as shutting down the TV channel A1, a dissenting television outlet. In 2013, the VMRO-DPMNE government had the investigative journalist Tomislav Kezarovski imprisoned. He was arrested by the country’s special forces, tried and put to prison for two years (Foeldi, 2019). Overall, under VMRO-DPMNE rule, there were governmentorchestrated corrupt ties between government officials and media owners. There were also threats of physical attacks and actual physical attacks on journalists working for dissenting mass media. The situation improved somewhat after 2015, when, under international and domestic pressure, sparked by the wiretapping affair, the VMRO-DPMNE government stopped using state funds to place pro-government advertisements in private media. Still, the level of government interference in the media sector was the worst in Southeastern Europe (Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, 2017). The formation of a new government under the SDSM party in 2017 provided hope for improvements in media freedom, as the party had campaigned for the eradication of government control of the media. However, restrictions seem to have been re-introduced in 2018, i.e., after the VMRO-DPMNE’s fall from power in 2017. Both government and opposition parties converged on imposing restrictions on the mass media. They agreed on amendments in electoral legislation which allow

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for the use of public funds in media campaigns and assign the State Electoral Commission (SEC) the competence to monitor online media and impose fines for “impartial reporting” (Marusi´c, 2018). The fall of VMRO-DPMNE from power in 2017 created a better political environment for journalists to work. However, North Macedonia’s politics continued to be extremely polarized, while politicians and government officials felt unrestrained in targeting journalists. Most importantly, in 2020–2022, numerous journalists continued to face intimidation, verbal and physical attacks (European Commission, 2021c, 29; European Commission, 2022c, 28). Despite these attacks and the room for political interference in the media after the government turnover of 2017, there has been visible progress in North Macedonia with regard to media freedom. In 2016, the Reporters Without Borders placed the country at the 116th rank, the worst in the Western Balkans (META.MK, 2022b). They placed North Macedonia at the 90th rank in 2021 and the 57th rank in 2022 (Reporters Without Borders, 2022c).

10.6

Civil Society

While it is argued that civil society in North Macedonia is little developed (Markovi´c, 2013), officially the registry of CSOs in North Macedonia includes some 14,000 organizations (Central Registry of the Republic of Macedonia 2013; personal communication with professor of the Cyril and Methodius University, Skopje, 28 May 2019; not all registered CSOs are active). In brief, CSOs are often active players in the arena of political party competition, and, importantly, civil society associations (CSOs), such as NGOs and informal networks of citizens, are polarized. In some detail, in North Macedonia, there are on the one hand organizations independent or critical of the government and on the other hand pro-government organizations supporting and probably supported by the government. This was a phenomenon apparent under the Gruevski government before the government turnover in 2017. The phenomenon was similar to the division between anti-government and pro-government CSOs in Serbia and Montenegro. Pro-government organizations used to take little, if any, distance from the government of VMRO-DPMNE, while being critical of the opposition and particularly of Zaev. Thinly veiled negative reactions towards the opposition and neutral, if not friendly, reactions towards the VMRO-DPMNE government became

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evident in my own discussions with some independent researchers and NGO activists (e.g., interview 3). Moreover, under the VMRO-DPMNE, pressure against CSOs frequently took very visible forms. First, in December 2016, the leadership of the then governing VMRO-DPMNE led a smear campaign against selected CSOs by identifying them as a whole with George Soros’ Open Society Foundation and openly calling for the “de-Sorosoisation” of society (European Commission, 2018c, 13). Second, the Public Revenue Office and the Public Prosecutor’s Office were reported to have made tax and criminal law investigations against CSOs which were unfriendly to the government (Senior Experts Group, 2017, 26). The Anti-Money Laundering Agency made similar investigations after the elections of December 2016 (Centar Savremene Politike, 2017, 41). It is worth noting that this harassment took place between December 2016 and May 2017, as the VMRO-DPMNE government was trying to cling to power after the disputed election results of December 2016. The role of CSOs was crucial in the government turnover in North Macedonia in 2017. They staged protests against the VMRO-DPMNE, regarding the extensive corruption that had accompanied the rule of that party between 2006 and 2017 (chapter seven of the book). CSOs also protested against restrictions on media freedom in the country and against public infrastructure works which had negative effects on the city centre of Skopje, particularly in the last period of the VMRO-DPME’s reign. After the rise of the SDSM to power, CSOs continued to act as watchdogs. Moreover, in 2020–2022, CSOs participated in consultations with the government on law-making (European Commission, 2021c, 12 and European Commission, 2022c, 11 and 12).

10.7

The Political Management of the Covid-19 Crisis

In 2020, at the time of the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, North Macedonia was preparing for parliamentary elections and the parliament was not in session. The President of the Republic, Stevo Pendarovski, declared a “state of emergency” that lasted from March to June 2020. The parliament was not reconvened, a decision which created negative reactions. Elections were finally held in July of the same year, but until the parliament started functioning again, the country was run by government

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fiat. Effectively, “the parliament was inactive for four months” (Markovikj, 2020, 29). In that period, transparency of government actions and access to information were hampered, while major reforms, such as the justice system reform, were slowed down (Kotevska et al., 2020, 37–38). The government proceeded to cut CSO funds and prohibit public gatherings. These and other measures constrained human rights and civil liberties, but in some instances the Constitutional Court of North Macedonia intervened. It annulled some of the government’s decrees which had been promulgated during the “state of emergency” and were not directly related to the management of the COVID-19 crisis. To sum up, in the first and most crucial period of the COVID-19 crisis for democratic freedoms, two major democratic institutions did not function properly. The government was not elected, but there was a caretaker one, while parliament was not in session. This left the country in a “dangerous political limbo” (Markovikj, 2020, 32). However, compared with other West Balkan countries, “the fewest abuses of power were observed in North Macedonia, which was nevertheless being ruled by a caretaker government at the time” (Tzifakis, 2020,7). During the next phases of the COVID-19 crisis, priorities had less to do with preventing democratic erosion and more with gross inefficiencies in the public healthcare management of the crisis, government instability after the municipal elections of 2021 and external challenges posed to North Macedonia on the road to EU accession.

10.8

Conclusions

To sum up, after 2017, democratic institutions functioned well in North Macedonia, but the underlying, at times debilitating, ethno-political cleavages remained crucial, placing further democratization in brackets. The overcoming of populism, clientelism and corruption, i.e., the statesociety relations underpinning democratic politics in North Macedonia, would be impossible as long as underlying cleavages did not centre on social and economic issues, but concerned issues of foreign policy and national identity, i.e., issues “imported” from abroad. Indeed, in 2018–2019, after the signing of the Prespes Agreement (June 2018), the major cleavage in North Macedonia’s body politic was between supporters and opponents of that agreement with Greece. In 2021–2022, a second, similar cleavage emerged between supporters and

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opposers of Macron’s and the EU’s proposal on reconciling Bulgaria and North Macedonia, after Bulgaria blocked the latter country’s accession to the EU in November 2020. As already noted, Bulgaria lifted the block after almost two years, in June 2022, and the Parliament of North Macedonia approved the French proposal in July 2022. The two cleavages overlapped only partly among North Macedonian elites and masses. In 2021–2022, North Macedonian governing elites and probably a segment of hardline pro-EU voters were prone to discussing Bulgaria’s concerns, particularly since the rise of the liberal, pro-EU party government of Kyril Petkov to government in Bulgaria in December 2021. On the contrary, nationalists and also some supporters of the earlier agreement with Greece were against any concessions to Bulgaria. They were exasperated with Bulgaria’s demands and France’s intermediation, which in their view gave leverage to Bulgaria in the accession negotiations between North Macedonia and the EU. As in the 27-year-long dispute with Greece, they felt that a third country inappropriately demanded to play a role in a sovereign country’s self-determination and foreign policy choices. On the other hand, neighbouring countries (Greece, Bulgaria) considered that they had legitimate concerns about the younger nation-state’s sometimes awkward moves in the field of symbolic politics. Such moves included debatable claims over history (e.g., the North Macedonian nation originating from Alexander the Great and his people in fourth century BC Greece) and language (e.g., the scale of differences between languages spoken today by the majority of residents of North Macedonia and Bulgaria). However, the implementation of the terms of North Macedonia’s agreement with Bulgaria requires an amendment of the North Macedonian constitution. The amendment requires an enhanced parliamentary majority which was not to be found in 2021–2022. The constitution’s preamble recognizes that “full equality as citizens and permanent coexistence with the Macedonian people is provided for Albanians, Turks, Vlachs, Romanies and other nationalities”, while similar references to other nationalities, such as the Bosniaks, are made in other articles of the constitution. Any amendment, such as adding explicit references to a Bulgarian nationality too, requires a two-thirds majority in parliament (i.e., 80 out of 120 Members of Parliament; article 131 of the constitution). A similar impasse had occurred in 2018–2019, when the Prespes Agreement

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with Greece required a constitutional amendment regarding the Macedonian name. The VMRO-DPMNE had rejected that Agreement. The then governing SDSM did not command the required two-thirds majority. Eventually, MPs from other political parties decided to split ranks with their own party leadership and the amendment was passed in January 2019 with 81 votes. Over the recent period (2021–2022), North Macedonia has continued “its efforts to strengthen democracy and the rule of law” (European Commission, 2022c, 3). Yet, in North Macedonia, major policy choices and government stability are once again in a limbo. In 2022, the SDSMled coalition government, under PM Kovaˇcevski, managed to hang in, but fresh elections would determine whether the constitutionally required majority would be achieved. In the past in North Macedonia, the performance of democratic institutions fluctuated a lot, i.e., it moved like a pendulum. Under the coalition governments of VMRO-DPMNE (2006–2017), there was periodic backsliding of democracy. Compared to the 1990s, when the balance of powers among the executive, the legislative and the judiciary had also been very frail, the situation improved somewhat in the early 2000s, but deteriorated after the mid-2000s. In 2006–2017, there was probably a much more acute imbalance among the three aforementioned powers. The government change of May 2017 may have been the start of a period of democratic reform in North Macedonia. The SDSM-led government coalition put forward a reform plan which was to be incrementally implemented in three, then six and then nine months (the so-called 3–6-9 plan of the Government of North Macedonia). Three years later, some of the projected reforms were legislated, but implementation and fine tuning of the reforms were not fully completed. The recommendations of the Senior Experts’ Group (the Priebe Report), made public in the summer of 2017, have only been followed to a small extent (European Policy Institute, 2019). Part of the problems related to non-implementation may have been owed to the fact that all the reforms the European Commission had envisaged were deemed urgent (European Commission, 2015c and 2018c). No reform signposts had been laid out in terms of a temporal sequence of successive measures. As in the past, the absence of concrete deadlines may have slowed down or sidetracked important reforms (Ali & Ramic-Mesihovic, 2016, 115).

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Meanwhile, the government was caught up in difficult foreign affairs issues. For the better part of the year 2018, North Macedonia was consumed in negotiations with Greece over the name dispute, which were eventually successful in the sense that they led to the Prespes Agreement. This Agreement was finally approved by the parliaments of the two countries in the winter of 2018–2019. The bilateral agreement opened the way for North Macedonia’s admission to NATO in the spring of 2019, a prospect which Greece had objected in the past. This development has facilitated the positive opinion the European Commission gave in May 2019 regarding the start of accession negotiations between North Macedonia and the EU (European Commission, 2019c). The conclusion of the bilateral agreement with Greece in 2018 and the smoother management of relations with Bulgaria in 2022 may also facilitate the implementation of domestic reforms in North Macedonia. These are necessary in order to prevent in the future any elected government from controlling the rest of democratic institutions to the detriment of democracy. However, in the meantime, the Zaev government was shaken by revelations in the late summer of 2019 regarding a new affair, the so-called extortion affair (see chapter seven). To remind the reader, two journalists were suspected of committing extortion to influence the decisions of the Special Prosecutor’s Office over a criminal investigation against a businessman, Orce Kamcev, for money laundering. The Special Prosecutor herself, Katica Janeva, resigned over allegations that she had used the journalists as middlemen to receive bribes from the businessman, an allegation not documented at the time of her resignation. Eventually, she was tried and convicted to imprisonment in June 2020 (as discussed in chapter seven of the book). The whole affair, suspicious videotapes and recordings of which were publicly aired in July and August 2019 cast a shadow on the positive developments in Macedonia after the fall of Gruevski. The mobilization of pro-democratic civil society organizations and the rise of the opposition to power in 2015–2017 in North Macedonia provided a window of opportunity to stem the erosion of democracy. However, the meagre progress of the post-Gruevski governments in 2017–2022, when it came to improving the record of political patronage and control of corruption, pointed to the limits of top-down political action, i.e., on the part of successive governments. Even assuming in good faith that the latter

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actually wanted to change clientelism and corruption as modes of statesociety relations, the results were disappointing. Nevertheless, compared to Serbia and Montenegro, North Macedonia has made progress in halting democratic erosion.

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Conclusions. Available at https://www.osce.org/files/f/documents/f/d/ 457408.pdf. Last accessed on 13 August 2022. Radio Free Europe. (2019, February 21). North Macedonia Arrests Ex-Speaker, Two Others For 2017 Parliament Invasion. Available at https://www.rferl. org/a/north-macedonia-arrests-former-government-members-parliament-inv asion/29782196.html. Last accessed on 14 August 2022. Ramet, S. P. (2006). The Three Yugoslavias: State-Building and Legitimation, 1918–2005. Indiana University Press. Ramet, S. P. (2017). Macedonia’s Post-Yugoslav Reality: Corruption, Wiretapping and Stolen Elections. In S. P. Ramet, C. M. Hassentab, & O. Listhaug (Eds.), Building Democracy in the Yugoslav Successor States: Accomplishments, Setbacks and Challenges since 1990 (pp. 287–320). Cambridge University Press. Reporters Without Borders. (2017, March 8). Journalists Repeatedly Attacked in Macedonian Political Crisis. Available at https://rsf.org/en/news/jou rnalists-repeatedly-attacked-macedonian-political-crisis. Last accessed on 14 August 2022. Reporters Without Borders (2022c). North Macedonia. Available at https://rsf. org/en/country/north-macedonia. Last accessed on 2 August 2022c. Samardjiev, A. (2022). North Macedonia, the Census Does Not Quell the Controversy. Available at https://www.balcanicaucaso.org/eng/Areas/ North-Macedonia/North-Macedonia-the-census-does-not-quell-the-con troversy-217397#:~:text=The%20figures,residents%20and%20260%2C606% 20non%2Dresidents. Last accessed on 24 July 2022. Senior Experts’ Group on Systematic Rule of Law Issues. (2015, June 8). The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia: Recommendations of the Senior Experts’ Group on Systemic Rule of Law Issues Relating to the Communications Interception Revealed in Spring 2015. Available at https:// ec.europa.eu/neighbourhood-enlargement/sites/near/files/news_corner/ news/news-files/20150619_recommendations_of_the_senior_experts_group. pdf. Last accessed on 13 August 2022. Senior Experts’ Group on Systematic Rule of Law Issues. (2017, September 14). The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia: Assessment and Recommendations of the Senior Experts’ Group on Systemic Rule of Law Issues. Available at https://ec.europa.eu/neighbourhood-enlargement/sites/near/files/2017. 09.14_seg_report_on_systemic_rol_issues_for_publication.pdf. Last accessed on 13 August 2022. Siljanovska-Davkova, G. (2016). Two Faces of Internal Life of Political Parties in Western Balkans. Revista Ballot (rio De Janeiro), 2(1), 1–26.

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Stamouli, N. (2022). Dimitar Kovachevski on Course to Become North Macedonia’s New Prime Minister. Available at https://www.politico.eu/article/ kovachevski-north-macedonia-new-prime-minister/. Last accessed on 22 July 2022. The Financial Times. (2015, March 15). Macedonia hit by vote-rigging allegations. Tzifakis, N. (2020). The Western Balkans during the Pandemic: Democracy and the Rule of Law in Quarantine? European View, 19(2), 197–205. Vachudova, A. M. (2005). Europe Undivided: Democracy, Leverage, and Integration after Communism. Oxford University Press. Venice Commission. (2014b, October 13). Opinion on the Seven Amendments of the Constitution of the Former Republic of Macedonia. Venice Commission. (2017, December 8–9). Opinion” on Three Draft Laws of the Former Republic of Macedonia.

CHAPTER 11

Prolonging or Halting Democratic Erosion in Serbia, Montenegro and North Macedonia: A Comparison

In this prior-to-last chapter, I discuss democratic recovery, i.e., how and why North Macedonia and also, to a lesser extent, Montenegro, have partly re-embarked on the road to democracy, while Serbia has not done so. I also argue that populism, clientelism and corruption have presented the main obstacles to recovery. Such types of state-society relations tend to place severe constraints on the reversal of democratic erosion, regardless of government turnover or the sincere democratization efforts of a new political party in power. In what follows, I am going to discuss the performance of democracy in the three countries under study at the end of the 2010s and beginning of the 2020s, with emphasis on the role of political parties. I will first examine developments in the backsliding of democracy and discuss commonalities among the three cases and then analyse the role of opposition political parties in bringing about progress in the fight against governing elites which erode democracy. I will then examine the cases of Serbia, Montenegro and North Macedonia one by one. I will argue that in North Macedonia, the erosion of democracy has been halted. In contrast to Serbia and Montenegro, this development in North Macedonia can be attributed to a combination of domestic and external pressures towards political transformation, which was sparked by the wiretapping affair that led to a loss of legitimacy of the VMRO-DPMNE government. This © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 D. A. Sotiropoulos, The Irregular Pendulum of Democracy, New Perspectives on South-East Europe, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25609-7_11

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opportunity was capitalized on by a pre-existing, strong parliamentary opposition to the government in North Macedonia.

11.1

Party Politics and Erosion of Democracy in the Post-Yugoslav Successor States

The lack of a shift towards democratization at least until 2022 in Serbia and the real but incomplete shifts in Montenegro and North Macedonia were reflected in recent annual Reports of the European Commission on the three countries. In its 2019 regular Reports on Serbia, Montenegro and North Macedonia, the European Commission noted that, while democracy was strengthened through the 2017 change in government in North Macedonia (European Commission 2019c, 3, 9), in the other two countries political opposition was divided and weak. In Serbia and Montenegro, government practices constrained political debate and legislative scrutiny (European Commission 2019a, 3, 5; European Commission, 2019b, 3, 6). In its corresponding Reports for 2020, the Commission noted that Serbian authorities had failed to address long-term electoral shortcomings, the lack of political pluralism and the absence of necessary checks and balances (European Commission 2020a, 4). Regarding Montenegro, the Commission noted the following: “The political scene prior to the August 2020 elections was fragmented, polarized and marked by lack of genuine political dialogue”, but “the outcome of the Parliamentary elections [of August 2020] paves the way for returning the political debate to the Parliament” (European Commission 2020b, 4). As for North Macedonia, the Commission remarked that “efforts continued to strengthen democracy and the rule of law, including by activating existing checks and balances and through discussions and debates in key policy and legislative issues. Opposition parties remained engaged in the parliament and supported key issues of common national interest, such as EU-related reforms and the NATO integration process, which North Macedonia joined in March 2020” (European Commission 2020c, 4). Furthermore, in the Commission’s Report on Serbia for 2021 (European Commission 2021a, 8–9), there was little hope for the revitalization of democracy. Hopes were placed on the inter-party dialogue, a forum for dialogue between the governing SNS party and opposition parties. This

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was an imported institutional channel that had been established by the European Parliament in 2019. The European Parliament intervened to facilitate this forum, after it had become clear that there was no common ground in parliament between government and opposition. Meanwhile, the SNS government continued to increase its pressure against democratic institutions, dissenting parties, NGOs and journalists (Chapter 8). Despite the periodic sessions of the forum, the backsliding of democracy in Serbia towards competitive authoritarianism, the semi-authoritarian end of democracy’s irregular pendulum, continued. This trend contrasted with trends in democracy in the other two cases under study, Montenegro and North Macedonia. In Montenegro, the government change of 2020 was a sign that the country had not become a competitive authoritarian regime. The same held for North Macedonia: the return to power of the ruling SDSM in the parliamentary elections of 2020 was not the result of election tampering, as was often the case between 2006 and 2017. In 2021, the European Commission presented a more optimistic view on these two countries but still expressed concern about the proper functioning of democracy. In Montenegro, the party system remained highly polarized, as political parties mistrusted one another and groups of parliamentarians boycotted parliamentary sessions. Thus, issues that were vital to further democratization, such as the electoral law reform and the appointment of new members to high-ranking courts, were not resolved (European Commission 2021b, 2–3). Conversely, in North Macedonia, the government and opposition— despite being at odds on many issues, including domestic reform and relations with neighbouring Bulgaria—did not contribute to a polarization as extreme as that witnessed in Montenegro. The European Commission notes that the opposition engaged with the government in parliament. Institutional checks and balances were strengthened in 2020–2021 (European Commission 2021c, 3–4). It is obvious then that the political regimes of Serbia, Montenegro and North Macedonia differed in the beginning of the 2020s. Political forces in the three countries performed a delicate balancing act between unconsolidated democracy and competitive authoritarianism. Importantly for this analysis, all three are party-led political regimes. While they continue to be unconsolidated democracies, they are above all party-dominated

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democracies or, simply put, “party democracies” (Katz, 1997; Wildenmann, 1986). On this count, they do not differ from other democracies today. Even though political party-voter linkages have attenuated over time, contemporary party democracies are characterized by the intermediation which political parties continue to perform between voters and governments. Parties are the major mediators, using the vehicle of elections and articulating the interests of voters while formulating party programs. Therefore, the governments formed after each electoral competition are more or less partisan governments. The question remains to what extent the governments of the three post-Yugoslav successor states are also authoritarian governments.

11.2

A Balkan Model of Authoritarianism?

It has been argued that North Macedonia after 2006 and Serbia after 2012 have displayed similar characteristics with respect to the authoritarian turn of the Gruevski and Vuˇci´c regimes (Krsti´c, 2016; Zivanovi´c & Andri´c, 2018). Some of these common characteristics may have in fact been shared by the regime of Ðukanovi´c in Montenegro too. It is, however, doubtful if the similarities of these regimes add up to a model of “Soft Putinism” (Krsti´c, 2016), common to Serbia and North Macedonia, if not to Montenegro too. The Russian political system is of a scale incomparable to the small countries under study here, while governmentorchestrated violence against dissidents in Russia has reached a very large scale (Snyder, 2018). These patterns are unheard of in the post-Yugoslav successor states. Nevertheless, the argument that in the 2010s the regimes of North Macedonia and Serbia were competitive authoritarian regimes (instead of being unconsolidated democratic regimes, as I argue in this book) can be summarized as follows: the VMRO-DPMNE in North Macedonia and the SNS in Serbia used to be radical, nationalist and anti-Western parties, but have altered their profile to become less radical in order to attract more centre-right and moderate voters. After winning elections in North Macedonia in 2006 and Serbia in 2012, respectively, the two parties enacted authoritarian policies. Moreover, the two populist rulers, Gruevski and Vuˇci´c, approached the West European and US governments, in order to offer them a promise of domestic political stability in exchange for streamlining the accession of

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their countries to the EU (Krsti´c, 2016). Montenegro’s regime followed more or less the same recipe (Chapter 9 of the book; Morrison, 2017). However, one has to take into account differences among the three cases, starting with the observation that in contrast to Montenegro, populism has been the major ideological vehicle of government policy in North Macedonia and Serbia (Chapter 5). Moreover, both Serbia in the second half of the 2010s and Montenegro until 2020 were characterized by weak and fragmented parliamentary opposition. By contrast, North Macedonia differed in at least one sense: the existence from early on of a strong opposition party, the SDSM, which was able to align itself with anti-government movements, particularly in 2015–2016, and to form a coalition with other opposition parties. Eventually, it rose to government and replaced Gruevski’s party in power in May 2017.

11.3 Opposition Political Parties and democracy’s Backsliding Whenever channels of political participation based on rallying around political parties turn out to be ineffective, citizens turn to “street politics”, including political protests and political mobilization not controlled by parties. This is typical of situations in which citizens have lost trust in political parties in general or the political parties of the opposition are very weak or fragmented. In Montenegro, for instance, political party opposition continued to be fragmented before the DPS government submitted the Law on Religious Organizations (December 2019) that affected the Serbian Orthodox Church, as up until that point opposition parties distrusted one another as much as they distrusted the governing DPS. In Serbia, a new, albeit short-lived, anti-government coalition of opposition parties, the “Alliance for Serbia”, was formed in September 2018. Serbian opposition parties reacted after a physical attack against Borko Stefanovi´c, leader of the “Serbia’s Left” party. Indeed, in December 2018, the allied opposition started staging frequent protests demanding a free environment for the media and the conduct of free elections. A similar development had occurred in North Macedonia in 2015 with the opposition rallying against the then government of VMRO-DPMNE. Yet, without a strong and united opposition in parliament, it is difficult to bring about government change.

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The same lesson was drawn from domestic developments in Montenegro in the second half of 2020. The DPS lost power in 2020, for the first time since 1991, only after opposition parties united and political mobilization through protests expanded to include previously acquiescent segments of Montenegrin civil society, such as the Serbian Orthodox Church and its Montenegrin members. Formerly, anti-government protests in Montenegro were most often instigated by the liberal, pro-Western segments of civil society. In the meantime, the parliamentary opposition was not strong or efficient enough to bring the government down. While in 2018–2020 there were periodic street protests in Serbia and Montenegro, street politics had only limited impact; namely, they increased the pressure on governing elites which were eroding democracy and galvanized the shaping of a united opposition front against the ruling party. This drive to bring down the long-ruling SNS government was unsuccessful in Serbia. It was successful in North Macedonia and only to certain degree in Montenegro. The change in the Podgorica government was delayed after the parliamentary elections of August 2020 and relied on a coalition of strange bedfellows, i.e., Montenegrin parties which shared very little other than hostility to the DPS. It is too early to tell if the defeat of the DPS in the presidential elections of April 2023 means a sea change in Montenegro. In other words, street politics cannot easily topple governing elites in unconsolidated democracies. Such elites that rely on organized governing parties are overturned by the concerted action of political parties of the opposition, not by street protests. This is all the more so, if external players, such as the EU and the USA, entertain fears of destabilization of regional politics, as was the case with the international community’s stance towards post-communist regimes in the Western Balkans. After all, political parties rather than social movements or civic organizations have been the protagonists of transition from authoritarian rule in various countries of Southern Europe, Latin America and parts of Eastern Europe at the end of the previous century. More specifically, top officials of political parties, i.e., political party elites, were the protagonists of the democratic transition, particularly in countries in which there was a lack of strong resistance by social movements or civic organizations to authoritarian rule (Linz & Stepan, 1996). This is the case of post-Yugoslav successor states too. To go into detail, in Serbia, before the regime change of October 2000, a coalition of 18 parties (the DOS coalition) was formed to oust the

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semi-authoritarian SPS from power. The mobilization of people around political parties with the aim of ousting anti-democratic leaders does not mean that the parties leading the democratic transition are internally democratic; nor do they necessarily have an impeccable democratic record, if they have governed in the past. For instance, both the SDSM party, which helped overturn the Gruevski regime in 2015–2017 in North Macedonia, and the DS party, which initially—but rather weakly—led the democratic opposition against the SNS rule in Serbia after 2012, were not innocent of transgressions of the rule of law while they were in power. Before losing the Macedonian parliamentary elections of 2006, the SDSM’s image had been tarnished by problems related to the unfair conduct of elections and corruption. After coming back to power in 2017, the SDSM practised clientelism, while a few of its government officials were investigated for acts of corruption (Chapter 10). Before losing the Serbian parliamentary elections of 2012, the DS party’s image had also been tarnished by problems related to government control of the judiciary and close ties with selected business elites. Overall, corruption and clientelism in Serbia were extensive before the ascent of the SNS in government and became exacerbated after that party became all-powerful. Moreover, in Montenegro, the DF party, which led the coalition that overturned the DPS regime in late 2020, has a distinct right-wing, populist-nationalist profile. In the late months of 2020, after winning the parliamentary elections, the DF tolerated attacks against members of small ethnic minorities of Montenegro (personal communication via e-mail with Montenegrin public opinion researcher and political analyst, Podgorica, 23 November 2020 and with Montenegrin political analyst, 16 December 2020). In other words, opposition parties are not ipso facto best-suited to support and bolster democracy. On some occasions, protest movements may play a more crucial role in effecting real democratization (Bunce, 2000, 2003). Nevertheless, depending on the circumstances, opposition parties, rather than protest movements without party support, can become the major vehicles of democratic transformation of regimes previously tilted to serve anti-democratic incumbents. Pressure from a robust opposition counts a lot towards effecting better governance in postcommunist democracies (Grzymala-Busse, 2007). Naturally, governing elites that benefit from the erosion of democracy will not let power slip

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out of their hands, unless they face a strong and unified opposition in parliament. In detail, Table 11.1 (below) shows that at least since the mid2000s and until 2020, in contrast to North Macedonia, in Serbia and Montenegro parliamentary opposition was never strong enough to offset the electoral influence of the winner of the elections. Opposition could not prevent the encroaching initiatives of the governing party or coalition of parties on democratic institutions in either Serbia or Montenegro. By contrast, in North Macedonia, the main party of the opposition, the SDSM, had a consistently high electoral influence which ranged between 23% and 38% of the vote in parliamentary elections in 2006–2020 (Table 11.1). In Serbia, the only opposition party which reached such high levels of electoral influence was the SRS (30% of the vote in 2008). This was an extreme nationalist party of the Right. The SRS was excluded from all government coalition formation by the rest of the relatively strong parties, such as the DS, the DSS and the SPS. The other strong party which could have played the role of opposition in Serbia was the SPS. However, over the past 20 years, it has frequently been invited to be a part of coalition governments, rather than staying in the opposition. The SPS, occupying a space in the centre of the party system, between the right-wing nationalist parties and small proEuropean parties, was an experienced and convenient coalition partner. It was only three times, after the parliamentary elections of 2000, 2003 and 2007, that the SPS did not join the government. On all other occasions, the SPS, benefiting from stable party leadership (under the same person, Ivica Daˇci´c, since 2006) and occupying the aforementioned flexible position roughly at the centre of Serbia’s party system, was a government coalition partner of whichever party won the elections. Most of the rest of Serbia’s parties remained small. They changed their party leaders, suffered internal splits and remained in the opposition. In Montenegro, the second stronger party (after the DPS), which was the Democratic Front (DF) in the parliamentary elections of 2012 and 2016, reached the peak of its electoral influence (33% of the vote) in 2020 (Table 11.1). Other parties opposing the DPS used to win small shares of the vote and frequently became internally divided. Until 2020, the DF resembled the Serbian SRS to a certain extent: by accentuating its antiWestern political profile, the DF repelled rather than attracted prospective coalition partners in Montenegro. Thus, the DF was not able to lead a successful drive of the opposition as a whole against the DPS. It did so

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Table 11.1 Distribution of Seats in Parliament: The Winner of Parliamentary Elections and the Second Largest Party in Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia Montenegro Total seats in parliament: 81 Winner of elections DPS Parliamentary election

% of vote, MP seats

2006 2009 2012

48.6%, 41 seats 51.9%, 48 seats 46.3%, 39 seats

2016

41.4%, 35 seats

2020 35.1%,30 seats North Macedonia Total seats in parliament: 120 Winner of elections Title: VMRO-DPMNE Parliamentary election % of vote, MP seats 2006 32.5%, 45 seats 2008 48.8%, 63 seats 2011 40.0%, 65 seats 2014 42.2%, 61 seats 2016 39.4%, 51 seats 2020 35.9%,46 seats Serbia Total seats in parliament: 250 Winner of elections Parliamentary election % of vote, MP seats 2007 (SRS), 29.1%, 81 seats 2008 (DS), 39.3%, 102 seats 2012 (SNS), 24.0%, 73 seats 2014 (SNS), 48.4%, 158 seats 2016 (SNS) 48.3%, 131 seats 2020 (SNS) 60.1%, 188 seats 2022 (SNS) 44.27, 120 seats

Second largest party (various parties before 2012) Title, % of the vote, MP seats 14.7%, 12 seats 16.8%, 16 seats 23.2%, 20 seats (DF party) 20.3%, 18 seats (DF party) 32.6%,27 seats (DF party)

Turnout 70 65 69 72 76

Second largest party Title: SDSM % of the vote, MP seats 23.3%, 32 seats 23.6%, 27 seats 32.8%, 42 seats 24.9%, 34 seats 37.9%, 49 seats 34.6%,44 seats

% Turnout 54 55 62 61 67 50

Second largest party (title) % of the vote, MP seats (DS), 23.1%, 64 seats (SRS), 30.1%, 78 seats (DS), 22.1%, 6 seats (SPS), 13.5%, 44 seats (SPS), 11.00%, 29 seats (SPS) 10.4%, 32 seats (UZPS) 14.1%, 38 seats

Turnout 61 61 58 53 56 47 59

Source of the table Election Guide (2022), https://www.electionguide.org/ UZPS is the abbreviation of the coalition of Serbian opposition parties, standing for “United for the Victory of Serbia”. It essentially dissolved after the elections of 2022

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eventually in 2020, after forging an alliance with several other parties. And it supported the successful electoral campaign to displace the leader of the DPS from the Presidency of the Republic in April 2023. Except for the dynamics of the party system, political participation is of great importance when it comes to engineering political change in contemporary liberal democracies. Two trends, first, the mobilization of citizens to demand political change or to resist government policy measures and, second, the elected government’s curbing of democratic freedoms have been periodic in the three countries under study over a long period in the 2010s. Yet, it was only in 2017 that such mobilization led to a change in government in one country, North Macedonia, where there was a strong opposition party, a major competitor to the ruling party. The Role of International Community Party politics and street politics are not sufficient to understand large-scale political changes in political systems which have been under long-term external surveillance, such as the political regimes of the Western Balkans. In order to avert or to stop wars, the international community directly intervened through diplomatic and military means in the region in 1991–2001 and has retained a strong presence there since then. The government of North Macedonia was pressured by international organizations and foreign governments in 2015–2017, when an opportunity for government change arose. This opportunity for change was created by domestic political forces, the major opposition party and anti-government social movements. Given North Macedonia’s geographical location and the geopolitical situation in the region, external actors were worried about threats to regional stability (Bieber 2018b; Bieber, 2020; Kmezi´c & Bieber, 2017; Kmezi´c, 2019; Pavlovi´c, 2016, 2017). In view of the above, how can we answer the question of why the reversal of the backsliding of democracy, i.e., the start of a large-scale, pro-democratic, political transformation, took place in North Macedonia and may have stated in Montenegro but not so in Serbia? The question may be answered with an eye to (1) the dynamics of party systems in the three countries, (2) the dynamics of pressure “from below”, i.e., popular mobilization and (3) opportunities offered and pressure exerted on domestic actors from the external institutional environment, namely the EU, the USA and other external actors. These dynamics and

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opportunities were discussed in detail for each of the three countries under study (Chapters 8–10). According to the theoretical framework of this book (Chapter 1), the above question on the continued backsliding of democracy in Serbia may be answered best by looking at a larger question. This question refers to the extent to which populism, clientelism and corruption obstructed democratic recovery.

11.4 Comparing Populism, Clientelism and Corruption in the Three Cases The deeper cause of the lack of progress towards democracy in Serbia, as opposed to the other two cases, Montenegro and North Macedonia, may be found in the specific configurations of populism, clientelism and corruption in each of the three countries. Not all three types of statesociety relations exist in equal degree in the three cases under study. For example, Serbia has experienced rising populism since the ascent of the SNS to government in 2012 in terms of the political discourse and strategies of that governing party. However, Serbian state-society relations are also characterized by long-term high levels of clientelism and corruption. Montenegro has long been plagued by corruption, even though clientelism has been rampant as well; yet in Montenegro populism is not as strong a characteristic of the long-time governing DPS party (between 1991 and 2020) and its leader, Ðukanovic (who eventually lost the presidential elections of 2023). In North Macedonia, under the nationalist, centre-right VMRODPMNE rule in 2006–2017 the phenomena of populism, clientelism and corruption were also very widespread. But the intensity of these three state-society relations was not as high as in Serbia. Compared to Serbia, in North Macedonia, there were and still are windows of opportunity to curb such democracy-eroding phenomena. The social democratic party SDSM, which succeeded the VMRO-DPMNE in power in 2017, may have failed to adequately fight clientelism and corruption, but it is not a populist party. In brief, as Table 11.2 shows and as is argued in this book, there are varying degrees and mixes of the three types. If, in the three cases under study in this book, there had not been long-term historical legacies of populism, clientelism and/or corruption

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Table 11.2 Populism, clientelism and corruption in the three cases under study in 2006–2016

Populism Clientelism Corruption

North Macedonia

Serbia

Montenegro

Medium/High High Medium

High High High

Low Medium/High High

Source author’s own analysis

in the specific varying mixes shown in Table 11.1, then the antidemocratic strategies of political leaders and governing elites would not have produced the backsliding democracy analyzed in this book. These three varieties of state-society relations are critical antecedents which have shaped the appropriate context for democracy’s backsliding to occur. The critical antecedents constitute, in other words, Peter A. Hall’s “ideological and institutional fields” (Hall, 2016). Benefiting from these “fields”, political actors, after being elected to government, put their hands on the levers of power and pulled them to their own benefit and to the detriment of democracy.

11.5

Conclusions

To sum up, a comparison of political developments in North Macedonia on the one hand and in Serbia on the other is instructive. In the former country, the continuous strong electoral performance of the major opposition party (the SDSM) made the difference: when the political opportunity arose to challenge the incumbent government, which was primarily responsible for democratic erosion in North Macedonia since 2006, the opposition and later on its coalition partners seized the opportunity presented by a major incident that de-legitimized the government, namely the wiretapping affair. The opposition then rode on the waves of anti-government protests and benefited from the international outcry and pressures from external actors on the incumbent VMRO-DPMNE in 2015–2017. In contrast to Serbia, the opposition in North Macedonia thus emerged as a credible successor in government. The SDSM, aided by its Albanian coalition partners, formed a new government. The new government in North Macedonia made progress on the diplomatic front, especially in the country’s bilateral ties with Greece and Bulgaria as well as with regard

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to accession negotiations with the EU. It has also started rolling back the mechanisms and strategies which the VMRO-DPMNE governing elite had employed to retain government power and curb democracy. The SDSM has, however, failed to effectively combat the remnants of clientelism and corruption in North Macedonia. The case of Montenegro can also be contrasted to that of Serbia. The DPS party continued to be predominant in Montenegro’s party system after the mid-2010s (Morrison, 2017). However, in January 2019, the “envelope” affair sparked anti-government mobilizations, albeit smaller and much less persistent than the anti-government protests in 2015– 2017 in North Macedonia. It was only after December 2019, when the Montenegrin government passed an unpopular law on church-owned lands, that protests against the DPS rule picked up. In North Macedonia and to a lesser extent in Montenegro, a combination of political party dynamics, pressure from protesting citizens and the intervention of external actors in domestic political developments have led to government turnover. These three factors (political party dynamics led by a strong opposition party, popular mobilization from below and foreign intervention) have not occurred in Serbia, where the primary agent of political change, i.e., the parliamentary opposition, has been fragmented. Serbian opposition political parties have been relatively small and frail. Most importantly, as already argued above, in Serbia populism, clientelism and corruption were constructed and guarded by successive governments. They are extensive and long-lasting state-society relations, which are difficult to supersede. In view of the above, stopping and reversing democratic erosion cannot be achieved without government turnover. For democratic recovery to occur, the parties or coalitions of parties orchestrating the backsliding of democracy need to be replaced in power by other parties. The fall of Gruevski’s party from power in North Macedonia was such an instance of government change, as was the fall of Ðukanovi´c in Montenegro; but until the spring of 2023, there were no similar developments in Serbia. Nevertheless, government turnover has proven to be a necessary but not sufficient condition to stop the backsliding of democracy.

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Bibliography Bieber, F. (2018b). The Rise (and Fall) of Balkan Stabilitocracies, Horizons, issue no. 10, Available at https://www.cirsd.org/en/horizons/horizons-win ter-2018-issue-no-10/the-rise-and-fall-of-balkan-stabilitocracies. Last accessed on 9 August 2022. Bieber, (2020). The Rise of Authoritarianism in the Western Balkans. Palgrave Macmillan. Bunce, V. (2000). Comparative Democratization: Big and Bounded Generalizations. Comparative Political Studies, 33(6–7), 703–734. Bunce, V. (2003). Rethinking Recent Democratization: Lessons from the PostCommunist Experience. World Politics, 55(2003), 167–192. European Commission (2019a). Serbia 2019 Report, Available at https://ec. europa.eu/neighbourhood-enlargement/sites/near/files/20190529-serbiareport.pdf, Last accessed on 10 November 2022. European Commission (2019b). Montenegro 2019 Report, Available at https:// ec.europa.eu/neighbourhood-enlargement/sites/near/files/20190529-mon tenegro-report.pdf, Last accessed on 10 November 2022. European Commission (2019c). North Macedonia 2019 Report, Available at https://ec.europa.eu/neighbourhood-enlargement/sites/near/files/ 20190529-north-macedonia-report.pdf. Last accessed on 10 November 2022. European Commission (2020c). North Macedonia 2020 Report, Available at https://ec.europa.eu/neighbourhood-enlargement/sites/near/files/ north_macedonia_report_2020.pdf, Last accessed on 10 November 2022. European Commission (2020b). Montenegro 2020 Report, Available at https://ec.europa.eu/neighbourhood-enlargement/sites/near/files/monten egro_report_2020.pdf, Last accessed on 10 November 2022. European Commission (2020a). Serbia 2020 Report, Available at https://ec.eur opa.eu/neighbourhood-enlargement/sites/near/files/serbia_report_2020. pdf, Last accessed on 10 November 2022. European Commission (2021c). North Macedonia 2021 Report, Available at https://ec.europa.eu/neighbourhood-enlargement/north-macedoniareport-2021_en, Last accessed on 10 November 2022. European Commission (2021b). Montenegro 2021 Report, Available at https://ec.europa.eu/neighbourhood-enlargement/montenegro-report-202 1_en, Last accessed on10 November 2022. European Commission (2021a). Serbia 2021 Report, Available at https://ec.eur opa.eu/neighbourhood-enlargement/serbia-report-2021_en, Last accessed on 10 November 2022. Grzymala-Busse, A. (2007). Rebuilding Leviathan: Party Competition and State Exploitation in Post-Communist Democracies. Cambridge University Press.

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Election Guide. (2022). Election Guide-Democracy Assistance and Election News, Available at: https://www.electionguide.org/countries/, Last accessed on 11 August 2022. Hall, P. A. (2016). Politics as a Process Structured in Space and Time. In O. Fioretos, J. Lynch, & A. Steinhouse (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Historical Institutionalism (pp. 31–50). Oxford University Press. Katz, R. S. (1997). Democracy and Elections. Oxford University Press. Kmezi´c, M., & F. Bieber, eds. (2017). Policy Paper: The Crisis of Democracy in the Western Balkans. An Anatomy of Stabilitocracy and the Limits of EU Democracy Promotion, BiEPAG, Available at https://biepag.eu/publication/policy-paper-the-crisis-of-democracyin-the-western-balkans-authoritarianism-and-eu-stabilitocracy/. Llast accessed on 10 August 2022. Kmezi´c, M. (2019). EU Rule of Law Conditionality: Democracy or ’Stabilitocracy’ Promotion in the Western Balkans? In J. Džanki´c, S. Keil, & M. Kmezi´c (Eds.), The Europeanization of the Western Balkans: A Failure of Conditionality? (pp. 87–109). Palgrave Macmillan. Krsti´c, N. (2016). Balkan Model of Authoritarianism: 6 Similarities Between the Regimes in Macedonia and Serbia, European Western Balkans homepage, 21 April 2016, Available at https://trackingenlargement.wordpress.com/2016/ 04/21/balkan-model-of-authoritarianism-6-similarities-between-the-politicalregimes-in-macedonia-and-serbia/. Last accessed on 11 August 2022. Linz, J. J., & Stepan, A. (1996). Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe. The Johns Hopkins University Press. Morrison, K. (2017). The Trajectory and Parameters of Democratic Transition in Montenegro. In S. Ramet, C. M. Hassentab, & O. Listhaug (Eds.), Building Democracy in the Yugoslav Successor States: Accomplishments, Setbacks and Challenges since 1990 (pp. 345–368). Cambridge University Press. Pavlovi´c, S. (2016). Montenegro’s ‘Stabilitocracy’: The West’s Support of Ðukanovi´c is Damaging the Prospects of Democratic Change, LSE blog, https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2016/12/23/monten Available at egros-stabilitocracy-how-the-wests-support-of-dukanovic-is-damaging-the-pro spects-of-democratic-change/ , Last accessed on 11 November 2022. Pavlovi´c, S. (2017). West is Best: How Stabilitocracy Undermines Democracy in the Balkans, LSE blog, Available at https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/ 2017/05/05/west-is-best-how-stabilitocracy-undermines-democracy-bui lding-in-the-balkans/ , Last accessed on 11 November 2022. Snyder, T. (2018), The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America, London: The Bodley Head.

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Wildenmann, R. (1986). The Problematic of Party Government. In F. G. Castles & R. Wildenmann (Eds.), Visions and Realities of Party Government (pp. 1–30). de Gruyter. Zivanovi´c, M., & G. Andri´c (2018). Balkan States ‘Embracing Authoritarian Leadership’: Report, 10 January 2018, Balkan Insight, Available at https://balkaninsight.com/2018/01/10/western-balkans-countries-turnto-authoritarian-leadership-report-01-09-2018/, Last accessed on 11 August 2022.

CHAPTER 12

Conclusions

While close attention has been paid to how democracies have declined or backslid in the beginning of the twenty-first century (Bermeo, 2016; Foa & Mounk, 2016; Levitsky & Ziblatt, 2018; Lindberg, 2018; Norris, 2017; Tilly, 2007), there is less interest in how this backsliding actually takes place. In democracies around the world today as varied as Turkey, India and Nicaragua, we see elected governments pushing democracies downhill, without, however, reaching the point of installing a full, outright dictatorship. It is worth exploring the strategies elected governments employ in order to facilitate the backsliding of democracy to their own benefit, as they prolong their stay in power. The strategies in question are strategies of control. They affect democratic processes and institutions, such as national and local elections, parliament, public administration, the judiciary, independent authorities, mass media and civil society organizations. The main research question of this book was why and how contemporary democracies backslide, even if they have started on and have progressed along the road to further democratization. I have offered an answer to this question on the basis of field research in three democratizing countries in which I have conducted 47 personal interviews and consulted official reports, including reports of international organizations, such as the EU, the OSCE and the Venice Commission, government © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 D. A. Sotiropoulos, The Irregular Pendulum of Democracy, New Perspectives on South-East Europe, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25609-7_12

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documents and articles of the press and electronic media. I have analysed this data following the theoretical approach of historical institutionalism (Thelen, 1999) and more concretely “systematic process analysis” (Hall, 2006). I have placed the backsliding of democracy in a wider perspective of movements to and from democracy, namely to and from the political regime usually understood as contemporary liberal democracy. This approach is couched in a metaphor, namely the irregular pendulum of democracy. The metaphor which I have constructed implies that democratic regimes may swing between a democratic end (fully developed liberal democracy) and a semi-authoritarian end (competitive authoritarianism). It is not a typical, regular pendulum, as it does not follow a predictable rhythm, nor does it always swing all the way from one end to the other. The pendulum is irregular because it may start and stop, rush to one end and then slowly swing to the other. Moreover, there is always a risk that when a democracy reaches the semi-authoritarian end and its movement freezes, the regime under question stops being a democratic regime.

12.1

The Irregular Pendulum of Democracy

To put it differently, having followed analyses suggesting that democratization is a never-ending project (Whitehead, 2002) and discussing the academic literature on the backsliding or deconsolidation of democracy, I have suggested in the beginning of this book that a suitable way to understand how democracy evolves is to use the metaphor of an irregular pendulum. This may apply both in long-established and in relatively new democracies. To the extent that it does not reach a breaking point, as it did in many European countries in the inter-war period of the previous century, democracy may move back and forth. Sometimes, democratic regimes move towards the democratic end of the pendulum. This movement may occur during periods of pressure “from below” (from civic associations and social movements) to enlarge the scope of civil, political and social rights. On other occasions, as has happened in many countries since the mid-2000s, democratic regimes shift towards the semi-authoritarian end of the same pendulum (overall assessments in Freedom House, 2019 and Freedom House over various years; V-Dem Institute, 2019, 2022;

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Bertelsmann Transformation Index, 2022). Instead of becoming outright dictatorships, such ailing democracies backslide and may become competitive authoritarian regimes. The process through which the pendulum shifts is not uniform and, therefore, the analysis of the pendulum’s movement is not mono-causal. I have focused in this book on specific contexts which facilitate the movement away from the fully democratic end of the pendulum. My main point is that historical legacies of non-democratic rule, predominant political parties and party polarization, economic underdevelopment, and ethno-nationalist and intolerant political culture may have nurtured continuous or reappearing populist, clientelist and corruptionridden state-society relations. The latter, in turn, have made the erosion of democracy possible through concrete strategies, choices and mechanisms employed by elected governing elites. In methodological terms, statesociety relations are intervening variables. State-society relations stand in between historical, socio-economic and cultural conditions, on the one hand, and elite strategies, choices and mechanisms on the other. In other words, state-society relations are critical antecedents of elite actions. I understand populism, clientelism and corruption as varieties of state-society relations rather than as simply an ideology (populism), a mode of political participation and linkage between elites and the masses (clientelism) and an abuse of public office for private gain (corruption). Under populism, clientelism and corruption, not all social strata and groups relate to the state in the same way. For example, social groups which experience downward mobility or are socialized to think about politics along Manichean terms may support populist leaders in their rise to power. Such groups may benefit from populist governing policies, which are selectively targeted towards the electoral pool of a governing populist party. Middle—and low-income groups accustomed to benefiting from preferential, i.e., clientelist, access to individual or collective rights and state resources, may prefer the continuation of clientelist government policies, which are implemented in their favour and discriminate against supporters of opposition political parties. Lastly, some business entrepreneurs or groups of businessmen may prefer to walk on the well-trodden paths of dimly-lit business deals with government and administrative officials. Compared to populism and clientelism, which potentially may structure the relations of most, if not all, social groups with the state, corruption has a relatively limited scope. There are social groups, for

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instance, the poor and the unemployed, who do not enjoy many opportunities to partake in corrupt relations with state actors, such as government officials and public sector managers. By contrast, insiders of a regime, for instance, business entrepreneurs with ties to a governing elite, constitute a social group tending to engage in corrupt state-society relations. Of course, not only the aforementioned, but also other social strata and groups may be accustomed to one or more of the three state-society relations, depending on the case under study. To find out which historical, socio-economic and cultural conditions have given rise to the one or the other type of state-society relations would require an additional analysis in each of the national cases under study.

12.2

State-Society Relations in Three Post-Yugoslav Successor States

In view of the above, as the topic of this book is the backsliding of democracy, I have assumed that the state-society relations manifested as populism, clientelism and corruption are shaped by legacies of the past; and that each country has its own set of legacies. I have suggested that in the post-Yugoslav successor states such varieties of state-society relations are significant for the analysis of democracy’s backsliding. In this book, I have focused on the current political regimes in Serbia, Montenegro and North Macedonia. My case selection was guided by theoretically informed reasons. I have picked out these three postYugoslav successor states not only because they are less frequently studied in the comparative politics of democratization, but also because these cases present real-life examples of the irregular pendulum of democracy. Being unconsolidated democracies, all three have travelled some way towards democratization, before starting to backslide away from democracy. Since 2017, one of the three, North Macedonia, seems to have shifted back towards the democratic end of the pendulum. In the meantime, Serbia has continued moving towards the semi-authoritarian end of the pendulum for a longer time period. As for Montenegro, it can be considered as an intermediary case. It may be placed in between North Macedonia and Serbia because the government change of 2020 in Podgorica has yet to prove to be a turning point, namely a reversal of the backsliding. There was no substantive government change in Montenegro until the elections of August 2020. Then, the 30-year-long rule of the

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DPS party ended with the formation of fragile new government coalitions in 2020–2022. However, the government coalitions have followed the path of populist and clientelist state-society relations. They have not clearly steered Montenegro towards the democratic end of the pendulum. In other words, in the three examples I analyse in this book, democracy is in a more fluid state than in older, long-established or consolidated democracies. To put it metaphorically, I assume that it is more fascinating, if not also easier, to see movement when a material is in a fluid state instead of a solid one. The Context of Democracy’s Backsliding The main argument of the book is that while the backsliding of democracy is caused by concrete strategies, choices and mechanisms which governing elites employ, there are “critical antecedents” (Slater & Simmons, 2017) which help elites embark on an undemocratic route. Populism, clientelism and corruption are such critical antecedents. They are neither necessary nor sufficient conditions for democracy’s backsliding. It is not possible always to fit the context of political phenomena into the categories of “necessary or sufficient causes”. In this, I follow Arend Lijphart, who summarized his view of background conditions for consociationalism. He has stated that “they must be seen as no more than favourable or facilitating conditions in the common meanings of these terms” (Lijphart, 2008: 5). The three types of state-society relations, which are noted above, are not necessary conditions: one can think of West European and North American democracies where populism, clientelism or corruption are not rampant, and yet democracy may have started backsliding, if not “deconsolidating”. On the other hand, it is not sufficient to have populism, clientelism and corruption or a mix thereof for democracy to start going downhill. As Nancy Bermeo has put it, “in contemporary times, as in times gone by, it seems that democracies do not break down unless political elites deliberately destroy them” (Bermeo, 2003, 254). Populism, clientelism and corruption create a context in which governing elites enjoy the political space or room for manoeuvre which facilitates their return to or prolonged stay in power. Such space or room is located at the intersection of elite strategies and responses by the people to such strategies. To employ Peter Hall’s terms, interaction between political elites and the people takes place in “ideological and institutional

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fields” where practices, frameworks and networks evolve (Hall, 2006). Different mixes of populism, clientelism and corruption, depending on the country and the historical period in question, provide for ideological and institutional fields which are familiar to political elites and the people. People who have tasted, so to speak, varying degrees of populism, clientelism and corruption in their country in the past may find familiar the destructive, anti-democratic strategies, choices and mechanisms which elites employ to prolong their term in government. Moreover, they may find it difficult to rise, as they may wish, against embedded populist, clientelist and corrupt-ridden state-society relations inherited from the past. Governing elites, on the other hand, have a freer hand to proceed with their democracy-eroding strategies to the extent that people tolerate or even accept the formal and informal institutional practices, i.e., rules and routines, associated with these three kinds of state-society relations. Elites and the people share the cognitive and normative frameworks associated with populism, clientelism and corruption, and they partake in networks (cliques, formal organizations) embedded in these state-society relations. To the extent that governing elites have seen their predecessors in power benefit from populist, clientelist or corruptible state-society relations, they push the limits of tolerance of the people which have elected them to government. I assume that—depending on the country and the historical circumstances under study—people unaccustomed to mixes of populism, clientelism and corruption are less tolerant of backsliding. Such people may be citizens of a long-established liberal democracy. In other words, in such an imaginary case (not studied in this book), people’s tolerance of elite strategies that place constraints on democracy would be low. By contrast, in the countries I have analysed in this book, such tolerance of undemocratic practices is high. Governing elites erode democracy by making smaller or larger strides away from liberal democracy, and in fact, some of them only stop short of abolishing democracy altogether. Their main aim in doing this is obviously to prolong their stay in power. Elites achieve this aim without necessarily resorting to violence. They limit any challenges on the part of political parties of the opposition, any barriers set by independent political and administrative institutions and any resistance from civil society. To put it in Robert Dahl’s terms, elites aim to lower “the costs of suppressing” their opponents, in order to restrict political competition (Dahl, 1971, 15).

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Populism, clientelism and corruption are just three varieties of statesociety relations found in the West Balkan countries under study, namely Serbia, Montenegro and North Macedonia. In these countries, where democracy has slid backwards in the early twenty-first century, the interaction between governing elites and the people did not take place in a void. It took place within a context, namely a set of the three aforementioned critical antecedents. This context was conducive for the elites to proceed with the control of political and administrative institutions and processes, such as the electoral system and the actual conduct of elections, the parliament, the mass media, the justice system and independent authorities as well as civic associations (Chapters 8–10 of the book). In the book, I have discussed three other explanations for the further erosion of democracy in the post-Yugoslav successor states (Chapter 4). The first of these three explanations privileges either the socio-economic context or the level of economic development. It argues that democracy is not sustainable in a wild variety of capitalism, i.e., the unregulated or untamed type of contemporary Balkan capitalism. It is a type of economy in which capital moves in and out almost completely unregulated, is rarely taxed and relies on very low wages and lax labour relations (Horvat & Šticks, 2015). The second explanation underlines the impossibility for democracy to flourish in a political culture still marked by state socialism and post-socialist experience with semi-authoritarianism in the 1990s. It is a nationalist culture that still bears the scars left by wars among former Yugoslav republics and inter-ethnic conflict within these republics. The third explanation focuses on the type of political party systems in the countries under study. It underlines the recurrent extreme polarization between personalistic parties fighting over the capture of state resources and the continuing presence of predominant parties in party systems. Recognizing the significance of these three explanations, I have also considered their limits. Despite being valuable analyses, they refer to rather abstract structural conditions, which are removed from the immediate context of human agency. These conditions must somehow be linked to the concrete choices that political actors make. The type of capitalism, the content of political culture and the shape of the party system, in and by themselves, would not facilitate governing elites in their drive to retain ostensibly democratic authority, while simultaneously eroding democracy. I have argued that governing elites, which have felt free to exploit and bend democratic and administrative institutions to their own interests,

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do so in a context provided by suitable state-society relations, such as populism, clientelism and corruption (Chapters 5–7). Using the language of positivist social science methodology, one would say that these state-society relations would be variables intervening between structural conditions (type of capitalism, political culture and party system) and the strategies, choices and mechanisms to which the democratically elected but democracy-eroding elites resort. Variable Routes to the Erosion of Democracy and a Chance to Halt It In Chapters 8–10, which are devoted to my three case studies, I analyse such elite strategies, choices and mechanisms. Governing elites bend the rules of democratic institutions to a large degree, but stop short of breaking them altogether. I focus on how elected governments control democratic institutions in each of the three countries under study. In the three national case studies, populism, clientelism and corruption do not appear in equal measure. Rather, one finds different mixes of these three types of state-society relations in Serbia, Montenegro and North Macedonia. In Serbia, populism is more prominent in a context in which clientelism and corruption are also widespread. Since 2012, when the SNS party won elections for the first time, populism has been the most marked aspect of Serbia’s political environment. Populism permits the ruling party to employ strategies and mechanisms that erode democracy. It does so to the point of largely suppressing whatever level of democracy had been achieved after the fall of Miloševi´c from power in 2000. In Montenegro, for reasons having to do with the extremely long presence of the DPS party in power between 1991 and 2020, populism, although “sponsored” by the DPS-ruled state, is much less important. In Montenegro, it is clientelism and corruption, rather than populism, which have set the stage for the government’s control of political and administrative institutions. The government change which occurred in 2020 has not significantly altered this type of elite behaviour. With some variations, since 2020, the new Montenegrin governing elites have followed in the steps of the previous ones. In North Macedonia between 2006 and 2017, all three state-society relations in shifting and indissoluble mixes have been observed. In 2006, a coalition government led by the social democratic SDSM party

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was replaced by a coalition government led by the nationalist VMRODPMNE party, under PM Nikola Gruevski. The latter remained in power until 2017, actively eroding the unconsolidated democracy of that country. The Gruevski government was deposed after 20,000 wiretapped telephone conversations of government ministers were leaked to the opposition and the press. The leaked conversations revealed government manipulation of political and administrative institutions and under-thetable business deals. Between 2017 and 2022 a coalition government ruled the country, headed by the social democratic SDSM party of Zoran Zaev and his successor Dimitar Kovaˇcevski. In sum, the VMRO-DPMNE primarily used populist and clientelist strategies and mechanisms to retain power, but in 2015–2017 it was revealed that the party also relied on extensive corruption. Contrary to the Serbian example, it has been possible to analyse how the erosion of democracy can be halted primarily in the case North Macedonia (and less so in Montenegro). In North Macedonia, the political opportunity to halt the backsliding of democracy was provided by the large-scale wiretapping affair. This opportunity offered social movements the chance to largely challenge governing elites. External players such as the EU and the USA also shifted their attention to North Macedonia because they considered the country a weak link in the chain of regional stability in Southeastern Europe. The combination of pressure from below and intervention from abroad would not suffice to bring about the downfall of Gruevski’s governing elite. What made the difference in North Macedonia was that there was a strong opposition political party. This was the SDSM, which had lost all parliamentary and presidential elections for almost ten years since 2006, but never fell below a threshold of electoral influence (about twenty percent of the vote). The SDSM did not dissolve into smaller parties which could have engaged in in-fighting, as was the case with opposition parties in Serbia and Montenegro. The existence of a credible alternative to the governing party, to which smaller parties—in the case of North Macedonia, ethnic Albanian parties—drifted, made the government turnover possible in 2017. In other words, in North Macedonia, the opposition was more unified than in the other two countries. Until 2006, the minor coalition partners, i.e., the Albanian parties, participated in the past in successive coalition governments with the main opposition party, the SDSM. No comparable credible alternatives existed in Serbia. In Montenegro, the opposition

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became unified in 2020, after the DPS government provoked the reaction of church authorities by claiming church land as state-owned land. The Montenegrin opposition parties rode on the waves of large-scale antigovernment protests and after the parliamentary elections of August 2020 formed a government coalition, under Zdravko Krivokapi´c, excluding the DPS. However, in early 2022, a government coalition under Dritan Abazovi´c, which succeeded the previous one, relied on the DPS too. In fact, the successors in power of the DPS and VMRO-DPMNE parties respectively also walked—in varying degrees—the well-trodden paths of populism, clientelism and corruption (Chapters 9 and 10). It would be unrealistic to expect that a government change, such as the one that occurred in North Macedonia in 2017 and Montenegro in 2020, would also completely upset the dominant state-society relations that for a long time had created a context conducive to the erosion of democracy. Why It is Hard to Curb Populism, Clientelism and Corruption in Post-Yugoslavia In addition to the negative impact of populism, clientelism and corruption on any effort to stop the backsliding of democracy, there are economic factors and international and regional political constraints that help consolidate populism, clientelism and corruption and consequently hinder further democratization. These factors and constraints are the equivalent of structures which the political will of reformers cannot bend. The situation differs by country as argued below. Indeed, there are more than one structures impeding the movement of the pendulum of democracy towards the democratic end. Starting with the case of Serbia, three such factors and constraints can be discerned. First, there are inter-wined political-economic structures which facilitate the spread of corruption (Chapter 7), while thwarting any drive to enhance democratic control over the state. For example, in 2022, in Serbia, the government announced that the Rio Tinto project, a large-scale foreign investment in lithium extraction in Western Serbia, was over. Serbia’s environmentalist movement had put up strong resistance against the project, staging massive rallies. Protesters claimed that the environmental damage in terms of soil and water pollution would be huge. Yet, knowledgeable observers noted that this was a tactical movement on the part of the Serbian government. The scale of investment (US $ 2.4 billion) and foreign interests at play were too big to tolerate the

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severing of long-term ties between the Rio Tinto company and the SNS government (Dragoljio, 2023). The resources available to social movements and political parties fighting to expand and deepen, instead of curtail, democracy in Serbia cannot measure up to the economic power of that political-economic structure. Second, there are ideational structures, namely sets of political values and ideas which may not be openly anti-democratic, but are tolerant towards a “strongman” type of leadership (Ben-Ghiat, 2020) and reflect the extensive influence of Russia and Putin’s model of governance in the public sphere of the Western Balkans (Rogaˇc & Darmanovi´c, 2022). Third, in the winter 2022–2023, Serbia was presented with a FrancoGerman plan for the resolution of the Kosovo issue. Briefly, in exchange for any further progress in EU-Serbia accession negotiations, the plan required Serbia to recognize Kosovo’s territorial integrity and to avoid blocking petitions by Kosovo to join international organizations. The plan, which had been endorsed by EU authorities, did not require Serbia to recognize Kosovo’s national independence (Brzozowski et al., 2022). The plan imitated the diplomatic solution of the recognition problem of East Germany by West Germany in 1971 (the so-called Model of Two Germanies). For the SNS government, the dilemma is to promote Serbia’s integration into the EU without alienating its electorate, which has been galvanized by nationalist ideas promoted over the last 30 years by various Serbian parties and by the SNS since its inception (2008). The SNS government may want to bring Serbia closer to the West, along the way benefiting from EU financial assistance, without severing Serbia’s ties with Russia, on which it relies for oil and natural gas supplies and diplomatic support at UN’s Security Council (Bechev, 2019; McBride, 2022). Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 was a complicating factor, even before the formulation of the aforementioned Franco-German plan. Serbia kept a delicate balance between officially condemning the invasion in international fora and simultaneously refusing to follow Western countries in imposing sanctions against Russia. As long as the Kosovo issue is not resolved, opportunities to curb populism, clientelism and corruption and to open a road towards further democratization in Serbia will not rise. The pro-Western opposition is too fragmented and weak to threaten the SNS, while small, but vocally pro-Russian parties to the right of SNS will challenge any compromises it might make in foreign policy. More generally, as long as foreign policy

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issues prevail in the domestic scene of Serbian politics, there is little hope for shifting the dominant cleavage in Serbian democracy. Currently, the main cleavage is the division between the nationalist and the proWestern camp, which is fuelled by Serbia’s complicated foreign relations and favours the nationalist side. This cleavage also allows the backsliding of democracy to occur with little resistance from Serbian citizens. After Serbia’s relations with the West and more specifically the EU are mended, a shift to a new cleavage between an authoritarian versus a democratic camp in domestic politics will be required for the erosion of democracy to be halted. Even if the democratic opposition to SNS in Serbia was much stronger, it would run against the unresolved regional and foreign policy issues which have tormented Serbia since its transition from state socialist rule. These issues are external constraints bearing a strong domestic negative impact for democracy. In other words, at the moment, the impasse in regional relations in Western Balkans and in Serbia’s foreign policy dilemma is a functional equivalent to a structural barrier to removing populism, clientelism and corruption and to proceeding with further democratization. There is a similar but also somewhat different situation in the other two countries studied in this book. North Macedonia has overcome its dispute with Greece, but its foreign policy problems are not over and they prevail in the domestic political scene too. First, after Bulgaria vetoed the start of North Macedonia’s accession negotiations with the EU in November 2020, almost two years passed before an agreement between the two countries was reached. After diplomatic interventions of France and EU authorities, in June 2022 Bulgaria lifted its veto. North Macedonia is required to amend its Constitution in 2023 in order to implement the agreement with Bulgaria (Maruši´c, 2023). Constitutional amendments should include the recognition of a Bulgarian minority residing in North Macedonia as a constitutive ethnic group of the North Macedonian republic. Constitutional amendments require a two-thirds majority, but the ruling SDSM party commands far fewer than 80 votes in the 120-seat Parliament in Skopje (Table 10.1, Chapter 10). The SDSM-led government cannot easily overcome the opposition of VMRO-DPMNE. The latter party has outright rejected the agreement with Bulgaria and has called the government to resign. Just before

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Christmas 2022, the VMRO-DPMNE was leading in the polls and had repeatedly called for parliamentary elections to take place. The relative popularity of the opposition is directly linked to the meanders which North Macedonia has followed in its trajectory towards the EU. North Macedonia’s dispute with Bulgaria and EU’s initiative to accommodate Bulgarian claims have provoked the resurgence of nationalist sentiments in North Macedonia and the rise of Euroscepticism among what used to be a pro-European population (Maruši´c, 2022). The cleavage between pro-EU and nationalist citizens has widened. This is a division caused by regional developments out of the grasp of domestic political forces. In other words, North Macedonia has repeatedly stumbled upon impediments on its road to EU integration, which have negatively impacted on its domestic political scene too. External constraints on North Macedonia’s EU integration and relations with the country’s neighbours have repeatedly taken centre place in North Macedonian domestic politics. Elites and the people are constantly preoccupied with North Macedonia’s foreign relations. Foreign constraints and relations in practice function as structural impediments to bend clientelism and corruption and consequently to promote democratization in the country. Indeed, as in the case of Serbia, in North Macedonia too, little has been done to curb clientelism and corruption. There are rigid politicaleconomic structures of collusion between political and economic elites which facilitate the spread of corruption (Chapter 7). There is strong resistance against diffusing meritocracy and transparency, as politicians and bureaucrats follow routines of action that have been transferred from the communist regime to the first post-1991 governments of North Macedonia and further on to past and current ruling political elites. The fact that such embedded political-economic structures prevent, not only further democratization, but also economic modernization, is evident from the performance of North Macedonian economy. In October and in November 2022, the country, which remains one of the poorest in Europe, faced its highest inflation rate (19%) over a 25-year-long period (Trading Economics, 2022). Moreover, inflation in the food and beverages sector was much higher. The acute social cleavages created between salaried strata, which are hard-hit by inflation, and the rest of social strata are a symptom of unreformed economic structures, but do not surface in the domestic political system as long as the latter is preoccupied with foreign policy-related structures.

384

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To sum up, the political will of reformists to bring about change in a democracy can easily run against an insurmountable wall of structures which preserve clientelism and corruption and thus dampen democratic reforms. In the case of North Macedonia, national governments, even if reform-minded, such as the government that assumed power in 2017, are consumed by battles unrelated to promoting economic development and democracy. In Montenegro, constraints on curbing clientelism and corruption are domestic rather than external. A formidable constraint is the longterm symbiosis of strong private economic interests with the political and administrative elites of Montenegro, jointly bred under the longterm presence of the DPS party in government. Personified by Milo Ðukanovi´c, who in 2018 became President of the country and stayed in power until his electoral defeat in April 2023, this symbiosis has formed a quasi-impenetrable nexus of political-business relations. More generally, DPS politicians who act more in the capacity of businessmen rather than elected representatives of the people have liaised with bureaucrats of the Montenegrin state and private businessmen for a period of 30 years (1991–2020). Similarly with the case of Serbia, in Montenegro, these actors have formed a political-economic structure which facilitates the preservation of clientelism and corruption. It is a structure, which temporary political volition, in the form of political party coalitions loosely held together and united only by their opposition to DPS, could not disassemble in 2020–2022, assuming that the anti-DPS coalitions wanted to do so. In brief, in all three cases discussed above, a common pattern emerges: in pushing for further democratization, human agency runs into structures which preserve populism, clientelism and corruption and limit opportunities for thwarting the backsliding of democracy.

12.3 Why Populism, Cleintelism and Corruption Matter in Explaining the Erosion of Democracy Populism, clientelism and corruption provide fertile ground for democratic erosion for two reasons. Firstly, these three types of state-society relations contribute to a political socialization of citizens and political elites that is alien to fully developed liberal democratic standards. Secondly, they facilitate interactions among factions of political and

12

CONCLUSIONS

385

economic elites and between elites and the people which reflect an instrumentalist understanding of democratic processes (e.g., elections) and institutions (e.g., the judiciary, the public administration). The Importance of Political Socialization When it comes to political socialization in the countries under study, citizens and elites share cognitive frameworks imbued with populism, clientelism and corruption and gradually become accustomed to illiberal institutionalized practices. Take, for example, the case of political socialization to populism which typically thrives on polarization (Chapter 5). Post-Yugoslav republics went through repeated periods of war and ethnic strife in the 1990s and witnessed sharp and persistent, if not widening, income and wealth inequalities before and during the post2008 economic crisis. It was not, then, surprising that extensive pools of voters would tend to understand politics in terms of “us” vs. “them”, i.e., in typical populist terms. Clientelism involves political socialization, in other words, adaptation and learning of political elites and the people, too. In many democracies around the world, after national elections, incoming governments tend to colonize the public administration with their own party cadres and supporters (Chapter 6). In many democracies, there is no experience of a public administration that is detached from political party disputes and relatively autonomous from the government of the day. Elites and people may tend to perceive political clientelism as the natural way of managing a state organization. In that case, citizens will have very low expectations of non-partisan behaviour on the part of governing elites. As far as recruitment to the public sector and the formulation of public policy measures are concerned, citizens may be socialized into expecting governing parties to fully control the state and public policy-making. As for the third type of state-society relations, while no one approves of corruption, in cultures where negative social (or “bonding”) capital is abundant, it is not surprising that people tolerate corruption (Chapter 7). In post-Yugoslav republics, there is lack of generalized trust and interpersonal trust, coupled with low participation in associations and unions (Chapter 4). After all, in many societies, East and West, people participate in value systems that emphasize social identities anchored in ethnicity, local origin in a certain town or village, and kinship. In this context,

386

D. A. SOTIROPOULOS

government officials may see it justifiable to cater to the business interests of entrepreneurs who come from their own ethnic group or from the same town or are members of one’s extended family. Interactions Between Political Elites and the People Concerning interactions between elites and the people, similar observations can be made with regard to populism, clientelism and corruption. First, even if populists claim to authentically represent the people, in practice, once in government, they implement strategies that selectively support only specific population categories and social groups. For instance, populist governments probably tend to provide more enhanced social welfare protection to pensioners (e.g., in North Macedonia), civil servants (e.g., in Serbia) or war veterans (e.g., in Bosnia-Herzegovina). Through such an array of government policies, populists attempt to obtain renewed political legitimacy. Second, in post-Yugoslav economies, the unemployment rate does not fluctuate from high to low and vice versa. For a long time, it remains comparatively high or very high. Under those circumstances, it is normal, so to speak, that low-income groups and precarious workers and employees will seek to participate in and benefit from political patronage networks. Such poor or powerless citizens know that, by participating in patronage networks, they are being “used” by political parties. Yet citizens will tend to take every job opportunity comes their way. Powerless or poor citizens will strive to become dependent on political party elites, which, after ascending to government, will offer them public sector jobs. Lastly, in various post-Yugoslav economies, the private sector is still relatively anaemic and state interventionism is very visible (Chapter 4). It would be unrealistic for local businessmen to think that their private business enterprise could survive without corrupt ties that informally bind government officials and business entrepreneurs. The latter may see the construction and preservation of corrupt ties with government officials as a convenient, if not the only viable, way to stay in business and survive competition in their business sector.

12.4

Concluding Thoughts

To conclude, the government-driven backsliding of democracy is part of a larger phenomenon which I have characterized as the irregular pendulum

12

CONCLUSIONS

387

of democracy. The pendulum is not of the same nature in all democracies, nor does it move with a predictable frequency or direction across all democracies in the world. In post-communist and probably other transition democracies, where democracy might not be consolidated, it may be easier to unravel the different factors influencing the pendulum’s movement. In such fragile democracies that may slide towards competitive authoritarianism, there are lingering historical legacies of socio-economic, cultural/ideological and party system conditions, which act as preconditions or background conditions of backsliding. These conditions do not, in themselves, make democracies falter or fall. The erosion of democracies should be attributed to governing elites which employ strategies and mechanisms convenient for prolonging their stay in power. However, governing elites do not tamper with democratic institutions in a social vacuum. There are specific types or varieties of statesociety relations, such as clientelism, populism and corruption, facilitating governing elites to push the political regimes away from the democratic end of the pendulum of democracy and towards the semi-authoritarian end. In such circumstances, to end the erosion of democracy, a suitable political opportunity must arise and bring about a loss of legitimacy for the governing elites. Such an opportunity, however, does not in itself suffice to turn the tide against the further erosion of democracy. Moving the pendulum in the other direction, away from its semi-authoritarian end, requires much more. It requires a combination of pressures from below, i.e., from civil society, and interventions from abroad, i.e., by international actors, coupled with the mobilization of an opposition political party that will be able to effect government change and halt the backsliding of democracy. And, even if these combined pressures from below and interventions from abroad coincide, the outcome is far from certain, as long as democratic life evolves in a context of populism, clientelism and corruption. These three types of state-society relations are sustained by external and domestic structural constraints. The constraints are blocks erected by the interaction between domestic politics, regional relations and the international conjuncture within which the action of democratic actors unfolds. To sum up, democratic actors may face an uphill battle to prevent the erosion of democracy.

388

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Maruši´c, S. J. (2022, February 25). North Macedonia’s Faith in EU Influence Plummeting, Survey Shows, Balkan Insight, Available at https://balkan insight.com/2022/02/25/north-macedonian-faith-in-eu-influence-plumme ting-survey-shows/. Last accessed on 31 January 2023. Maruši´c, S. J. (2023, January 25). North Macedonia in 2023: All Eyes on the Constitution, Balkan Insight, Available at https://balkaninsight.com/ 2023/01/25/north-macedonia-in-2023-all-eyes-on-the-constitution/. Last accessed on 31 January 2023. McBride, J. (2022). Russia’s Influence in the Balkans, Council on Foreign Relations, Available at https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/russias-influencebalkans. Last accessed on 21 January 2023. Norris, P. (2017). Is Western Democracy Backsliding?: Diagnosing the Risks, Harvard Kennedy School Working Paper No. RWP17–012, March 2017, Available at https://www.hks.harvard.edu/publications/western-democracybacksliding-diagnosing-risks. Last accessed on 7 August 2022. Rogaˇc, A., & Darmanovi´c, S. (2022). Words as Weapons: Russian Digital Footprint in the Western Balkans, Center for Democracy and Human Rights. Slater, D., & Simmons, E. (2010). Informative Regress: Critical Antecedents in Comparative Politics. Comparative Political Studies, 43(7), 886–917. Thelen, K. (1999). Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Politics. Annual Review of Political Science, 2, 369–404. Tilly, C. (2007). Democracy. Cambridge University Press. Trading Economics. (2022). North Macedonia Core Inflation Rate, Available at https://tradingeconomics.com/macedonia/core-inflation-rate. Last accessed on 31 January 2022. V-Dem Institute. (2019). Democracy Facing Global Challenges, Annual Democracy Report, Available at https://www.v-dem.net/static/website/files/dr/ dr_2019.pdf. Last accessed on 11 November 2022. V-Dem Institute. (2022). Autocratization Changing Nature?, Annual Democracy Report, March 2022, Available at https://v-dem.net/media/publications/ dr_2022.pdf. Last accessed on 7 August 2022. Whitehead, L. (2002). Democratization: Theory and Experience. Oxford University Press.

List of Interviews and Online Exchanges / Online Meetings

List of 47 interviews: Interview 1: Anonymous interview with former Member of Parliament elected with the opposition party SDSM, Skopje, 17 November 2015. Interview 2: Anonymous interview with pro-VMRO-DPMNE government executive director of NGO, Skopje, 16 November 2015. Interview 3: Anonymous interview with pro-VMRO-DPMNE government academic researcher, Skopje, 16 November 2015. Interview 4: Anonymous interview with journalist, Skopje, 14 November 2015. Interview 5: Anonymous interview with MP, formerly supporting the VMRO-DPMNE parliamentary majority, Skopje, 16 November 2015. Interview 6: Anonymous interview with academic, Skopje, 14 November 2015. Interview 7: Anonymous interview with head of NGO, Skopje, 17 November 2015. Interview 8: Anonymous interview with political activist, participant in the anti- Miloševi´c movement of the 1990s and former Member of Parliament, Belgrade, 9 November 2015. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 D. A. Sotiropoulos, The Irregular Pendulum of Democracy, New Perspectives on South-East Europe, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25609-7

391

392

LIST OF INTERVIEWS AND ONLINE EXCHANGES / ONLINE …

Interview 9: Anonymous interview with foreign journalist, Belgrade, 12 November 2015. Interview 10: Anonymous interview with journalist, formerly working for the Tanjung news agency, Belgrade, 25 April 2015. Interview 11: Anonymous interview with director of major, antigovernment NGO, Belgrade, 27 April 2015. Interview 12: Anonymous interview with political analyst and author, Belgrade, 27 April 2015. Interview 13: Anonymous interview with journalist, critical of the government, Belgrade, 30 April 2015. Interview 14: Anonymous interview with civic activist and head of anti-government blog, Belgrade, 30 April 2015. Interview 15: Anonymous interview with former trade union activist, Skopje, 6 April 2016. Interview 16: Anonymous interview with retired high-ranking diplomat of Montenegro, Podgorica, 26 May 2016. Interview 17: Anonymous interview with retired high-ranking diplomat diplomat of North Macedonia, Skopje, 14 November 2015. Interview 18: Anonymous interview with NGO manager, Skopje, 16 November 2015. Interview 19: Anonymous interview with Professor of the University of Montenegro, Podgorica, 19 May 2016. Interview 20: Anonymous interview with journalist and employee of international organization, Belgrade, 25 April 2015. Interview 21: Anonymous interview with Professor of History at the University of Belgrade, 26 April 2015. Interview 22: Anonymous interview with Montenegrin academic, Podgorica, 19 May 2016. Interview 23: Anonymous interview with Podgorica-based foreign diplomat, Podgorica, 20 May 2016. Interview 24: Anonymous interview with Podgorica-based foreign correspondent, Podgorica, 20 May 2016. Interview 25: Anonymous interview with journalist and NGO official, Skopje, 14 November 2015. Interview 26: Anonymous interview with Professor of the Cyril and Methodius University, Skopje, 14 November 2015. Interview 27: Anonymous interview with Professor of Law at the University of Belgrade, 29 April 2015.

LIST OF INTERVIEWS AND ONLINE EXCHANGES / ONLINE …

393

Interview 28: Anonymous interview with Professor of Political Science, Belgrade, 30 April 2015. Interview 29: Anonymous interview with head of pro-European NGO, Belgrade, 29 April 2015. Interview 30: Anonymous interview with Professor of Political Science, Belgrade, 13 November 2015. Interview 31: Anonymous interview with retired high-ranking diplomat of Serbia, Belgrade, 27 April 2015. Interview 32: Anonymous interview with foreign diplomat, serving in Belgrade, 12 November 2015. Interview 33: Anonymous interview with Montenegrin political analyst, Podgorica, 26 September 2016. Interview 34: Anonymous interview with Montenegrin mass media association representative, Podgorica, 28 September 2016. Interview 35: Anonymous interview with former advisor to DPS government minister, Podgorica, 27 September 2016. Interview 36: Anonymous interview with Montenegrin top journalist, Podgorica, 20 May 2016. Interview 37: Anonymous interview with pro-government NGO director, Podgorica, 19 May 2016. Interview 38: Anonymous interview with opposition newspaper journalist, Podgorica, 26 September 2016. Interview 39: Anonymous interview with Montenegrin public opinion researcher and political analyst, Podgorica, 26 September 2016. Interview 40: Anonymous interview with director of NGO, Podgorica 25 September 2016. Interview 41: Anonymous interview with leading member of NGO, Podgorica 28 September 2016. Interview 42: Anonymous interview with NGO activist, Podgorica, 18 May 2016. Interview 43: Anonymous interview with lawyer, Podgorica 27 September 2016. Interview 44: Anonymous interview over Zoom with academic, expert in politics, from North Macedonia, 13 June 2022. Interview 45: Anonymous interview over Zoom with journalist from North Macedonia, 27 June 2022.

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LIST OF INTERVIEWS AND ONLINE EXCHANGES / ONLINE …

Interview 46: Anonymous interview over Zoom with political analyst/foreign investment consultant from North Macedonia, 12 July 2022. Interview 47: Anonymous interview over Zoom with political analyst and academic, Podgorica, 20 July 2022. Additional follow-up communications (short interviews over Zoom or Skype, exchanges to clarify issues) between 2019 and 2022, as follows: Personal communication via e-mail with Montenegrin political analyst, 3 and 11 February 2019. Personal communication via e-mail with top representative of the defeated side in the Macedonian Presidential Elections of 2019, 24 June 2019. Personal communication via e-mail with Professor of the Cyril and Methodius University, Skopje, 28 May 2019. Personal communication via e-mail with legal expert, Professor of the Cyril and Methodius University, Skopje, 24 June 2019. Personal communications via e-mail messages and/or Zoom with public opinion researcher and political analyst, Podgorica, 26 September 2016, 23 November 2020 and 26 July 2022. Personal communication via e-mail with Professor of Political Science, University of Belgrade, 26 November 2020. Personal communication/interview via Zoom with foreign expert, professional working and residing in Skopje, North Macedonia, 7 December 2020. Personal communication via e-mail with Montenegrin political analyst, Podgorica, 16 December 2020.

Index

A A1 TV channel, 180, 341 Abazovi´c, D., 158, 218, 219, 284, 285, 288, 289 Accession negotiations, 367 Accountability, 7, 13, 14, 26 Administration, public, 170, 171, 173, 182–184, 186–189 Aggrandizement, executive, 50 Ahmeti, A., 315, 338 Alliance for Albanians, 315, 321, 330 Alliance for Serbia, 242, 266 Antecedents, critical, 3, 7 Anti-corruption, 53, 123, 150, 176, 203, 205, 208–215, 217–219, 228, 255, 284, 295–297, 333 Anti-Corruption Agency, 208, 209, 214, 215, 217, 218, 254, 255, 296, 297, 300 Anti-Corruption Council, 208 Arsovska, D., 334 Assembly, National, 245–249, 251–253, 267

Association, of Independent Journalists, 260 Authoritarianism, competitive, 1, 2, 5, 6, 72, 91, 357

B B92, 255, 258 Backsliding, democracy’s, 44, 47–51 Bar, 295–297 Bases, social, 145, 152, 155, 159 Beˇci´c, A., 285, 289 Be´ckovi´c, O., 258 Beko, M., 174, 176, 240 Belgrade, 150, 151, 153, 154, 169, 177, 178, 278 Belgrade Waterfront (BW), 265 Bermeo, N., 3, 6, 9, 21, 22, 43, 49–51 Besa, 315, 321, 323, 328 Bieber, F., 71, 76, 78, 91–93, 98 Blagoevski, S., 225 Bojani´c, M., 280

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 D. A. Sotiropoulos, The Irregular Pendulum of Democracy, New Perspectives on South-East Europe, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25609-7

395

396

INDEX

Boycot, boycotting, 241, 242, 244–246, 266 Brnabi´c, A., 226 Budva, 296 Bulatovi´c, M., 77, 277 Bulgaria, 332–334, 345, 347, 357, 366

C Capitalism, 86, 99, 106–108, 113, 117 Ceausescu, 84 Cetinje monastery, 288 CGO, 300 Christian Democratic Union (CDU), 108 Church, Montenegrin Orthodox, 283 Church, Serbian Orthodox, 218, 283–285, 288, 289, 291, 301, 304 Civil society organizations (CSOs), 261–264, 284, 291, 300, 301, 303, 342–344 Cleavages, political, 126 Cleavages, social, 122 Co-habitation, 286 Cohen, L., 75–78, 96, 168, 175, 184, 186, 190 Consolidation, 71, 73, 78, 82, 83, 92, 97, 98 Consolidation, democratic, 71, 73, 78, 82, 92, 97, 98 Council, High Judicial (HJC), 155, 247–249, 251–254 Council, High Prosecutorial (HPC), 247, 251–254 Council, Judicial (JC), 292, 293, 295, 336–338 Council of Europe, 137, 208, 209, 219 Council, of Public Prosecutors, 336

Council, Prosecutorial, 216, 219, 292–294 Court, Constitutional, 219 Court, Supreme, 219 COVID-19, 109, 112, 120, 238, 242, 267 Crime and Corruption Reporting Network (KRIK), 260 Crisis, financial, 109–111, 117 Croatian Civic Initiative (CCI), 282 Culture, political, 75, 95, 96, 99, 106, 122, 128 D Daˇci´c, I., 245, 362 Dahl, R., 46, 49 Debt, public, 110, 111, 116, 117 Democracy, deconsolidation of, 46 Democracy, defective, 47 Democracy, illiberal, 47 Democracy, quality of, 46, 47 Democracy, unconsolidated, 72, 77, 80, 87, 97, 357, 360 Democratic Front (DF), 125, 126, 157, 158, 361–363 Democratic Party (DS), 75, 125, 127, 146–150, 155, 176, 186, 238, 239, 245, 249, 250, 257, 361–363 Democratic Party of Albanians (DPA), 314, 315, 317, 330, 331 Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS), 75, 186 Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS), 58, 61, 73, 77, 78, 92, 122, 124–127, 134, 135, 156–158, 168, 172, 177–179, 182, 183, 187, 188, 197, 215–218, 225, 273–291, 293–304, 359–362, 365, 367 Democratic Union of Integration (DUI), 139, 141, 189, 190, 211,

INDEX

221, 314, 315, 321, 323, 324, 329–331, 334, 335 Democratization, 2–4, 6, 13, 17, 21, 29, 43, 45–49, 52, 57, 65, 355–357, 361 Democratization, two-step, 73, 74, 76, 78, 80, 81 Demokrate, 284, 285, 289, 290 Deripaska, O., 223 Deskoska, R., 213 Ðilas, D., 148, 150 Ðind-i´c, Z., 75, 186 Dimitriev, E., 322 Discourse, populist, 133, 143, 152, 158 Dolenec, D., 91, 94, 95, 98 DOS, 242, 360 Draškovi´c, A., 198 Ðukanovi´c, M., 11, 15, 30, 76, 77, 158, 159, 167, 177–179, 187, 197, 198, 217, 218, 220, 223–225, 277, 280–282, 285, 286, 358, 367 Ðurovi´c, G., 295 Dveri, 242, 245

E EBRD, 223 Ecology, social, 21, 23 Elections, local, 151, 154 Elections, parliamentary, 139–141, 143, 146–148, 152–154, 157 Elections, presidential, 140, 147, 149, 150, 152 Electocracy(ies), 22, 71 Employment, public, 168, 169, 187, 189 Enterprises, state-owned (SOEs), 86, 169, 170, 177, 184, 186, 188, 191, 241, 257

397

European Commission, 201, 204, 205, 208–211, 215, 216, 218, 356, 357 European Union (EU), 44, 45, 50, 52, 57, 58, 76, 80, 83, 86–90, 92, 93, 98, 107, 112–115, 119, 128, 173, 181, 250, 251, 253, 262–264, 314, 317–323, 325–328, 330, 332–334, 338, 340, 344, 345, 347, 356, 359, 360, 364, 367 Exclusion, political, 4, 21, 46, 59 Exclusion, social, 106, 111, 115, 128 F Fishman, R., 4, 22, 46, 59 Foa, R., 2, 7, 21 Framework, cognitive, 47, 51, 55, 62 Freedom House (FH), 237, 260, 261 G Gashi, A., 315 GERB, 333 Globalization, 7, 8 Greece, 322, 326, 327, 332, 333, 344, 345, 347, 366 Growth, economic, 110–112, 114, 116, 128 Gruevski, N., 14, 16, 29, 51, 58, 62, 72, 93, 98, 99, 135–137, 139–141, 143–146, 158, 159, 174, 180, 181, 197, 198, 205, 211–214, 219, 220, 299, 315, 318, 321, 322, 324, 325, 328, 331, 335, 336, 338, 339, 341, 342, 347, 358, 359, 361, 367 Grzymala-Busse, A., 123 H Hall, P.A., 18, 20, 21, 23–25, 27, 28, 31, 47, 49, 51, 53, 55, 60

398

INDEX

Hobsbawm, E., 90 Hoxha, E., 84

I Inclusion, political, 4, 22 Income, per capita, 112 Inequality, economic, 111, 115–117 Institutionalism, historical, 23, 60 Institutions, abuse of, 62, 63 Institutions, financial, 86 Institutions, misuse of, 61–63 Institutions, re-use of, 61–63 Ivanov, G., 317, 322, 324, 327, 330

J Janakieski, M., 212 Janeva, K., 211, 212, 214, 347 Jankovi´c, S., 149, 154, 256 Jankulovska, G., 211, 212 JAT, 178 Joanikije, 287 Journalists, 150–152, 250, 257–261, 278, 298, 299, 303, 324, 335, 338, 341, 342, 347 Jovanovi´c, D., 298

K Kadija, A., 299 Kamcev, O., 347 Kasami, B., 315 Kezarovski, T., 341 Kneževi´c, D., 216–218 Knezevi´c, M., 174 Kolarevi´c, A., 179 Kolarevi´c, E., 179 Kontominas, D., 220 Kopecky, P., 170 Koštunica, V., 75, 167, 186 Kovaˇcevski, D., 334, 346 Krastev, I., 84, 87

Krivokapi´c, Z., 158, 183, 218, 219, 284–289, 291, 294 Kuburovi´c, N., 226 Kumanovo, 318 L Laki´c, O., 298 Lampe, J.R., 168, 175, 184, 186, 190 Law on Religious Organizations, 282, 287 Lazovi´c, Z., 218 Levitsky, S., 1, 3, 12, 21, 71, 72, 98 Linz, J., 118 Lobbying, 173 M Macron, E., 334, 345 Mafia, Italian, 198 Mair, P., 170 MANS, 200 Marovi´c, S., 77, 200, 216, 219, 228, 296 Marx, K., 9 Medenica, M., 219 Medenica, V., 219 Media Coalition, 151, 152, 259, 260 Mickoski, H., 330 Mi´cunovi´c, V., 299 Mijalkov, S., 199, 212, 219 Milaˇci´c, F., 91, 96–98 Mill, J.S., 28 Miloševi´c, S., 29–31, 65, 73–76, 89, 92, 94, 98, 119, 126, 135, 136, 149, 155, 156, 167, 176, 186, 223, 239, 245, 249, 257, 275, 277, 281 Miškovi´c, M., 174, 176, 200, 228, 240 Montenegro Media Trade Union, 298 Morrison, K., 167, 177, 188 Mounk, Y., 2, 6, 21

INDEX

MRT, 341

N Nationalism, 106, 120, 121, 128, 139, 140, 142, 143, 160, 320, 332, 333 NATO, 126, 128, 218, 281, 326–328, 333, 347 Neoliberalism, 87 Networks, informal, 55, 56, 65 Networks, of patronage, 56 NGOs, 209, 250, 278, 289, 342 Nikoli´c, T., 75, 136, 146, 147 Nikši´c, 287 Nikši´c bank, 178 Novachevski, R., 181

O Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), 219 Ohrid Framework Agreement, 320 Ombudsman, 154, 254–256, 297, 339 Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), 16, 137, 150, 280, 281, 283, 292, 296, 312, 313, 318, 319, 328, 329 OSCE/ODIHR, 150, 279, 281, 283, 312, 314, 316, 317, 319, 328–330

P Pajovi´c, S., 295 Participation, 7, 14, 15, 21, 25, 26 Party for Democratic Prosperity (PDP), 315 Party organization, 144, 152, 154 Party polarization, 136, 289, 322, 373

399

Party system, 75, 105, 106, 122–125, 127, 128 Party system, predominant, 124, 127, 367, 377 Patronage, 167–172, 179, 184, 186, 188–190, 275, 276, 279, 284, 294 Pavlovi´c, S., 177 Pejovi´c, V., 223 Pendarovski, S., 329, 343 Petkov, K., 333, 345 Podgorica, 169, 179, 189, 200, 217, 284, 289, 298, 300 Polarization, 289, 291, 301 Policy capture, 173, 174, 178–180 Politicization, 138 Ponoš, Z., 242 Poverty, 106, 111, 115, 128 Prespes agreement, 326, 327, 330, 344, 345, 347 Priebe Group, 338 Process analysis, 27, 31 Process tracing, 27 Prosecutor, Public of Serbia, 247 Prosecutor, Special, 211, 212, 214, 217, 219, 318, 328, 347 Protests, 241, 243, 244, 259, 261, 263–267, 323, 333, 343, 359–361, 366, 367 Prva Bank, 178, 179 Pržino agreement, 210, 318, 322, 323 Pustec, 313 Putinism, Soft, 358 R Radojiˇci´c, Z., 150 Ramet, S., 74, 76, 78, 79, 91, 95, 96, 98 Ramkovski, V., 221 Rashkovski, D., 212 Recovery, democratic, 355, 365, 367

400

INDEX

Regime, authoritarian, 2, 10, 22, 26 Regime, semi-presidential, 74, 77, 80 Regulatory Body for Electronic Media (REM), 254, 255 Reporters Without Borders, 151, 259, 260, 341, 342 Representation, proportional (PR), 74, 77, 80 RTS, 153, 258, 267 Rule of law, 340, 346 Russia, 334

S Saliji, B., 213 Šapi´c, A., 151, 242 SDP, 289 Sector, public, 167–171, 181–189, 191 Securities and Exchange Commission, 225 Sela, Z., 315 Semi-authoritarianism, 1 Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), 58, 61, 72, 75, 76, 92, 119, 124, 125, 127, 135, 136, 146–156, 158, 209, 223, 226, 237–247, 249–268, 356–358, 360, 361, 363, 365 Serbian Radical Party (SRS), 119, 125, 146–150, 362, 363 Šešelj, V., 147, 149 Siljanovska-Davkova, G., 329 Skopje, 136, 140, 144, 145, 169, 181, 213, 220, 224, 322, 323, 325–327, 331, 334, 342, 343 Social Democratic Union of Macedonia (SDSM), 80, 125–127, 135, 139–143, 145, 167, 172, 180, 189, 198, 211, 220, 221, 311, 313–315, 317, 318, 320–325, 328–332, 334,

335, 341, 343, 346, 357, 359, 361, 362, 365–367 Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY), 85, 95, 98, 120 Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS), 74, 75, 92, 125, 127, 172, 176, 186, 242, 243, 245, 247, 249, 261 Sofia, 333 Softi´c, T., 298 Special Prosecutor’s Office (SPO), 277, 296, 303 Sperbank, 178 Spirova, M., 170 Stabilitocracy, 17 State Audit Office (SAO), 245, 317, 336, 337, 340 State capture, 169, 175, 176, 180, 191, 311, 321, 339 State Electoral Commission (SEC), 281, 312–314, 323, 328, 342 State socialism, 206 Stefanovi´c, B., 244, 259, 262, 266, 359 Stepan, A., 118 Štip, 329 Street politics, 359, 360, 364 Strumica, 329 Suboti´c, S., 209 Systems, most similar, 28

T Tadi´c, B., 146, 148, 155, 238, 249, 257 Tepi´c, M., 243 Tilly, C., 3, 21, 48, 49 Tito, 74, 80, 84, 172 Transparency International (TI), 201–204, 220 Trust, political, 99, 315 Tud-man, F., 135

INDEX

U Unemployment, 106, 109, 111–117, 128 United Reform Action (URA), 157, 158, 280, 284, 285, 288, 294 USA, 360, 364 US Treasury, 219 UZPS, 148, 149, 151, 243

V Vachudova, M.A., 88–90 Values, democratic, 120, 122 Values, illiberal, 121 Vasilev, A., 333 Venice Commission, 219, 252, 253 Vergina Sun, 326 Vijesti, 217, 297 VMRO-DPMNE, 80, 92, 114, 125–127, 135, 136, 139–142, 144–146, 158, 167, 180, 189, 197–199, 210–212, 214, 220, 221, 225, 311, 313, 314, 316–330, 332, 334–338, 340–343, 346, 355, 358, 359, 365–367 Vneshtorgbank, 178

401

Vodno neighbourhood, 181 Vuˇci´c, A., 11, 15, 31, 51, 75, 135–137, 146, 147, 149–154, 158, 159, 209, 226, 239–243, 251, 256, 258–261, 264, 299 Vuˇcinovi´c, M., 282 Vujanovi´c, F., 277 W Weber, M., 9, 56, 57, 93, 199 Wiretapping affair, 318, 325, 341, 355, 366 World Bank, 199, 201–204 Wunsch, N., 262, 263 X Xhaferi, A., 315 Xhaferi, T., 324 Z Zaev, Z., 29, 141, 211–213, 321, 322, 324, 326–328, 330–334, 338, 342, 347 Zekiri, M., 212 Ziblatt, D., 3, 12, 21, 98