Democratization, state-building and war: The cases of Serbia and Croatia

Democratization

Volumn 15, Issue 3, 2008, Pages 588-610

  Zakošek, Nenad ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

Croatia; Democratization; Nationalism; Serbia; State building; Wars of Yugoslav succession

Indexed keywords

EID: 46249084100     PISSN: 13510347     EISSN: 1743890X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/13510340801991130     Document Type: Article

References (59)

1. Slobodan Miloŝević started his authoritarian-populist coup against his opponents in the League of Communists of Serbia in September 1987. This action marked the beginning of the lethal crisis of the Yugoslav federation and of a political dynamic that has not yet come to an end, with the issue of the future status of Kosovo still to be resolved.
2. A comprehensive overview of a vast literature dealing with the causes of the dissolution of Yugoslavia and the 'wars of Yugoslav succession' is now offered in Sabrina P. Ramet, Thinking about Yugoslavia. Scholarly Debates about the Yugoslav Breakup and the Wars in Bosnia and Kosovo (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
3. The impact of the 'Ten Days War' in Slovenia in 1991, although indirectly important for the political processes in Serbia and Croatia, will be left aside. The conflict in 2001 in Macedonia between the Macedonian army and the Albanian rebels is not considered a war; also, it was of no importance for the processes under scrutiny
4. The problem of 'stateness' as a prerequisite for democracy is especially emphasized in Juan J. Linz and Alfred Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), pp. 16237.
5. The best-known formulation of the thesis is given in Claus Offe, 'Das Dilemma der Gleichzeitigkeit. Demokratisierung und Marktwirtschaft in Osteuropa', Merkur, Vol. 45, No. 4 (1991), pp. 279292.
6. Jon Elster formulated a similar thesis a year before in his text 'The Necessity and Impossibility of Simultaneous Economic and Political Reform', in: Piotr Poszajski (ed.), The Philosophy of Social Choice (Warsaw: IfiS Publishers, 1990), pp. 309216.
7. Slovenia is ranked first in the Bertelsmann Transformation Index 2006 (see www.bertelsmanntransformation- index.de) and since 1991 the Freedom House Index has rated Slovenia as free in both dimensions of Civil Liberties and Political Rights.
8. This does not mean that the former processes didn't have a significant impact upon the transformation paths of the two analysed cases - in fact we think that they did - but rather that the accumulated outcomes of the more protracted historical developments combined to produce this initial framework from which the transformation started (in form of social and economic structures, socialization patterns, features of the dominant political discourse, presence or absence of certain types of actors) and can be accounted for through the analysis of this framework.
9. Juan Linz, characterizes Yugoslavia in the mid-1970s as 'democratizing and pluralistic authoritarianism'; cf. his article 'Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes' in Fred I. Greenstein and Nelson W. Polsby (eds), Handbook of Political Science (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., 1975), Vol. III, pp. 1752357, here pp. 34526.
10. A theoretical analysis of the 'structural' deficits of the Yugoslav economic model is given for example in Svetozar Pejovich, 'A Property-Rights Analysis of the Yugoslav Miracle', The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 507, No.1 (1990), pp. 123-232.
11. His diagnosis: 'The conclusion is that the labor managed economy is not a viable institutional arrangement' (p. 132).
12. John R. Lampe, 'The Two Yugoslavias as Economic Unions', in Dejan Djokić (ed.), Histories of a Failed Idea 1918-1992 (London: Hurst & Company, 2003), pp. 180295.
13. Dijana Pleština, Regional Development in Communist Yugoslavia: Success, Failure, and Consequences (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1992).
14. A detailed analysis of the Serbian programme is given in the following section.
15. Ivo Bićanić and Vojmir Franičević, 'Understanding Reform: the Case of Croatia', available at http://www.wiiw.ac.at/balkan/files/GDN_UnderstandingReform_Croatia.pdf, pp. 229.
16. This all-Yugoslav reform concept was not able, for institutional and political reasons, to achieve the objectives for a successful democratic transition in multinational states recommended by Linz and Stepan (note 4) (pp. 3327 and 38126): The sequence of elections (federal before 'regional') and the importance of state-wide democratic parties. The first strategy was precluded by the Yugoslav constitution, since all-Yugoslav direct elections were not provided by any of the federal institutions and no political consensus necessary to introduce them was possible. Prime Minister Marković established his all-Yugoslav Reformist party, which competed in most of the founding elections in the Yugoslav republics, but was not successful.
17. A detailed account of the war is offered in Branka Magaǎs and Ivo Žanić, Rat u Hrvatskoj i Bosni i Hercegovini 1991-1995 (Zagreb and Sarajevo: Jesenski i Turk/Dani, 1999), pp. 27-158.
18. Cf. Hannes Grandits and Carolin Leutloff, 'Diskurse, Akteure, Gewalt - Betrachtungen zur Organisation von Kriegseskalation am Beispiel der Krajina in Kroatien 1990/91', in, Wolfgang H÷opken and Michael Riekenberg (eds), Politische und ethnische Gewalt in Südosteuropa und Lateinamerika (K÷oln: B÷ohlau, 2001), pp. 227-57.
19. For a description of the causes, dynamics and consequences of this war see Magaš and Žanić (note 15), pp. 161-287.
20. A description of this is given by the retired general of the Bosnian Army Jovan Divjak, 'Prva faza rata 199221993: Borba za opstanak i nastanak Armije RBiH', in Magaš and Žanič (note 15), pp. 181-205.
21. Ibid. This involvement has to be distinguished from actions of the Croatian army on B-H territory in autumn 1994 and spring and summer 1995, which were carried out in preparation of the final military action against Serb forces in Croatia (operation 'Storm' in August 1995) and which were agreed upon between the Croatian and the B-H government.
22. Cf. Jens Reuter and Konrad Clewing (eds), Der Kosovo Konflikt: Ursachen, Verlauf, Perspektiven (Klagenfurt and Wien: Wieswer Verlag, 2000).
23. This is aptly recalled in Dušan Pavlović's essay 'Ko je zasluzan za uspeh srpske tranzicije' ('Who can claim credit for the success of the Serbian transition'); in Pavlović, Akteri i modeli (Belgrade: Samizdat B92, 2001), pp. 153-70.
24. Ibid., pp. 16-24.
25. Laura Silber and Allan Little, The Death of Yugoslavia (London: Penguin Books, 1996), pp. 58-69.
26. Milošević obtained 65 per cent and his party, SPS, 46 per cent of votes, but nearly 80 per cent of seats; see Vladimir Goati, Izbori u SRJ od 1990. do 1998 (Belgrade: Centar za slobodne izbore i demokratiju, 1999), pp. 27250 and 285-7.
27. See Silber and Little (note 23), pp. 111-33.
28. Goati (note 24), pp. 187-201. Indicative of this dominant position is the fact that Milošević was accepted as key player by all international actors, although he was the president of only one federal state, Serbia, in Yugoslav federation. After the end of his second term in office as Serbian president, Milošević was elected by the Yugoslav federal assembly as president of FR Yugoslavia in July 1997. The mode of election was changed to direct election and it was in the election for his second term as Yugoslav president in September 2000 that he was defeated by Vojislav Koštunica. An attempt to manipulate the election result prompted mass political revolt and the Serbian 'October revolution' that brought Miloševic' down.
29. Marija Obradovic', 'Vladajuća stranka', in Nebojša Popov (ed.), Srpska strana rata (Belgrade: Republika, 1996), pp. 472-500.
30. Under the conditions of party pluralism and after it became clear that Serb mass meetings and protests couldn't be used against Slovenia and Croatia, the regime had to change the way in which it mobilized support. On the one hand, the impetus of the movement was used to mobilize electoral support for SPS in Serbia; on the other hand, many movement activists were now used as militants in the ensuing wars in Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina,and Kosovo.
31. Obradović (note 27), pp. 490-3.
32. cf. also Silber and Little (note 23), pp. 119-33. This ominous coalition is well described by one of the protagonists of the events, the federal defence minister Veljko Kadijević, in his book Moje vi - denje raspada: Vojska bez države (Belgrade: Politika, 1993).
33. According to terminology proposed by Giovanni Sartori, Parties and Party Systems: A Framework for Analysis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976).
34. Persistent electoral fraud is well documented, and also the fact that the regime used state electronic media as its propaganda instruments; cf. Goati (note 24), pp. 128-32, 146-7, 166-8.
35. Pavlović (note 21), p. 222-35.
36. According to the official report, Koštunica won 50.5 per cent and Milošević 38.6 per cent of votes. The Serbian 'October revolution' is discussed in Ivana Spasić and Milan Subotić (eds.), Revolucija i poredak. O dinamici promena u Srbiji (Belgrade: Institut za filozofiju i druśtvenu teoriju, 2001).
37. Mirjana Kasapović, 'Strukturna i dinamička obilježja političkog prostora i izbori', in Ivan Grdešić et al., Hrvatska u izborima '90 (Zagreb: Naprijed, 1991), pp. 15-48.
38. Formulation by Rogers Brubaker, as cited in Linz and Stepan (note 4), p. 25. It should be stressed, however, that under international pressure (since this was a precondition for recognition as a state) Croatia adopted a constitutional law on minorities, which guaranteed substantial rights to the Serbian and other national minorities.
39. See Mirjana Kasapović and Nenad Zakošek, 'Democratic Transition in Croatia: Between Democracy, Sovereignty and War', in: Ivan Šiber (ed.), The 1990 and 1992/93 Sabor Elections in Croatia (Berlin: edition sigma,) 1997), pp. 11-33. It is important to stress that parliamentary elections - without any special mechanisms - produced a proportional share of Serbian representatives reflecting their share in the population (12 per cent in 1991). Most of these parliamentarians left the parliament within a year of the elections.
40. Even the referendum question in May 1991 sought approval for the option of Croatia as a sovereign state being member of a confederative union.
41. The implication, of course, was that Serbs could unilaterally impose the new borders by force, given JNA support and their military superiority. They did not recognize the same right for the Kosovo Albanians - who in fact were a huge majority in Kosovo - on the ground that they were only a 'national minority' and not a nation.
42. Silber and Little (note 23), pp. 291-302.
43. Ibid., pp. 319-23.
44. Mirjana Kasapović, 'Demokratska konsolidacija i izborna politika u Hrvatskoj', in: Mirjana Kasapović (ed.), Hrvatska politika 1990-2000 (Zagreb: Fakultet politickih znanosti, 2001), pp. 15240.
45. Nenad Zakošek, 'Political Parties and the Party System in Croatia', in Šiber (note 36), pp. 34-49.
46. Goran Čular, 'Vrste stranacke kompeticije i razvoj stranacikog sustava', in Kasapović (note 41), pp. 123-46.
47. Nenad Zakośek and Goran Ćular, 'Croatia', chapter 13 in Sten Berglund, Joakim Ekman, and Frank H. Aarebrot (eds), The Handbook of Political Change in Eastern Europe, 2nd ed. (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2004), pp. 451-92.
48. Goran Čular, 'Politicike stranke i potpora demokraciji', in Goran Ćular (ed.), Izbori i konsolidacija demokracije u Hrvatskoj (Zagreb: Fakultet politicikih znanosti, 2005), pp. 123-79. Nevertheless, participation in national elections remained 65-75 per cent higher in Croatia than in some comparable post-communist democracies (e.g., Poland, Hungary).
49. On the definition of defective democracy and its varieties see Wolfgang Merkel, 'Embedded and Defective Democracies', in Aurel Croissant and Wolfgang Merkel (eds), Democratization, Special Issue, 'Consolidated & Defective Democracy? Problems of Regime Change', Vol. 11, No. 5 (2004), pp. 33-58.
50. Bičanić and Franičević (note 13), pp. 1629.
51. James Gow, Triumph of the Lack of Will: International Diplomacy and the Yugoslav War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997).
52. Julie Mertus and Vojin Dimitrijević, 'The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia' available at http://www.salzburgseminar.org/ihjr/si/si/Team_10_Full_Text_Report.pdf, p. 24.
53. It seems therefore that even the independence of Kosovo could be justified on the basis of this opinion, since the province was a territorial entity recognized by the last constitution of Yugoslav federation from 1974.
54. Mertus and Dimitrijević (note 47), p. 25.
55. Ibid., p. 28.
56. Ibid., pp. 8526.
57. Since the beginning of 1998, when an official coalition between SPS and SRS was established, the regime adopted repressive measures against the remaining independent media, opposition parties, independent student groups, and academic institutions. Some prominent intellectuals and opposition leaders were killed, such as Slavko Ćuruvija, publisher of an independent daily newspaper, in April 1999, and former president of Serbia, Ivan Stambolić, in August 2000; two attempts at assassination of Vuk Draš- ković, leader of SPO, failed in October 1999 and June 2000.
58. Cf. Houchang E. Chehabi and Juan J. Linz, 'A Theory of Sultanism' in Houchang E. Chehabi and Juan J. Linz (eds), Sultanistic Regimes (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), pp. 3-48.
59. It must be stressed however that the judiciary and state administration remain weak points in Croatia, as is repeatedly stressed in the Progress reports of the European Commission, see the Croatia 2007 Progress Report, available at http://ec.europa.eu/enlargement/pdf/ key_documents/2007/nov/croatia_progress_reports_en.pdf,esp. pp. 7-15.