Post-1989 Political Change in the Balkan States: The Legacy of the Early Illiberal Transition Years

Year 2013, Volume: 18 Issue: 2, 91 - 112, 01.07.2013

Othon Anastasakıs

Abstract

The Balkans remain one of Europe’s more unstable and varied political landscapes, with mixed and diverse national trajectories. What we see today in the Balkan political space is largely the outcome of the type of transition that these countries experienced during the 1990s, the early years of political change from one party rule to multi-party political pluralism. This paper argues that the Balkan states developed some common traits in their first decade of transition: firstly, they maintained continuity with their communist past; secondly, they pursued an illiberal start dominated by domestic elites and top-down politics; and, finally, they underwent a collapse of their early illiberal competitive order before moving into more mainstream politics. Since then, democratic politics in the Balkans have experienced many improvements as a reaction to this illiberal start, but they have also sustained some democratic deficits which have a direct link to the initial illiberal years of the transition

Keywords

Balkans, post-communist transition, democratisation, political elites, illiberal politics

References

• Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation, Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.
• Laurence Whitehead, Democratisation: Theory and Experience, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2003.
• Rosa Balfour and Corina Stratulat, “The Democratic Transformation of the Balkans”, EPC Issue Paper, No. 66 (November 2011).
• Stephen White, Judy Batt and Paul Lewis (eds.), Developments in Central and East European Politics, Durham, Duke University Press, 2003.
• Bosnia’s Incomplete Transition: Between Dayton and Europe, International Crisis Group, Brussels, March 2009.
• Denisa Kostovicova and Vesna Bojicic-Dzelilovic, “Europeanizing the Balkans: Rethinking the Post-Communist and Post-Conflict Transition”, Ethnopolitics, Vol. 5, No. 3 (2006), pp 223-241.
• Dimitar Bechev and Gergana Noutcheva, “The Successful Laggards: Bulgaria and Romania’s Accession to the EU”, East European Politics and Societies, Vol. 22 No.1 (Winter 2008), pp.114-144.
• Dankwart Rustow, “Transition to Democracy: Towards A Dynamic Model”, Comparative Politics, Vol. 2, No. 3 (April 1970), pp. 337-363.
• Srećko Horvat and Igor Štiks, “Is the Balkans a New Maghreb?”, UniNomade, at http://www. uninomade.org/is-the-balkans-a-new-maghreb/ [last visited 22 May 2013].
• Alina Mungiu-Pippidi, “Democratization without Decommunization. The Balkans Unfinished Revolutions”, Romanian Journal of Political Science, Vol. 5, No. 1 (2005), p. 10.
• Detlef Pollack and Jan Wielgohs, Dissent and Opposition in Communist Eastern Europe: Origins of Civil Society and Democratic Transition, Farnham, Ashgate Publishing, 2004, pp. 174-175.
• Misha Glenny, The Balkans 1804-1999; Nationalism, War and the Great Powers, London, Granta Books, 1999, p. 581.
• John B. Allcock, Explaining Yugoslavia, London, Hurst, 2000, p. 199.
• Glenny, The Balkans 1804-1999, pp.568-569.
• Mungiu-Pippidi, “Democratization without Decommunization”, p.15.
• Richard Crampton, The Balkans Since The Second World War, London, Longman, 2002, p. 236.
• John R. Lampe, Balkans into Southeastern Europe: A Century of War and Transition, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, p. 267.
• John Gledhill and Charles King, “Romania Since 1989; Living Beyond the Past”, in Sharon L. Wolchik and Jane L. Curry (eds.), Central and East European Politics: From Communism to Democracy, Lanham, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2011, p. 323.
• Zsuzsa Csergo, “Ethnicity, Nationalism and the Expansion of Democracy”, in Wolchik and Curry (eds.), Central and East European Politics, p. 105.
• Venelin I. Ganev, “Ballots, Brides and State Building in Bulgaria”, Journal for Democracy, Vol.17, No. 1 (January 2006).
• Elizabeth Pond, Endgame in the Balkans: Regime Change European Style, Washington, D.C., The Brookings Institution, 2006, p.43.
• Stefanos Katsikas, Bulgaria and Europe: Shifting Identities, London, Anthem Press, 2011.
• Culminating into the adoption of the ‘genocide act’ decreeing that anyone who had held senior office in the communist party would be banned from public office, thus disqualifying 139 candidates in the 1996 elections; see, Crampton, The Balkans since the Second World War, p. 304.
• Pond, Endgame in the Balkans, p.128.
• Danica Fink-Hafner, “Europeanisation and Party System Mechanisms: Comparing Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro”, Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans, Vol. 10, No. 2 (August 2008), p.173.
• Mark Baskin and Paula Pickering, “Former Yugoslavia and its Successors”, in Wolchik and Curry (eds.), Central and East European Politics, pp. 281-316.
• Sabrina P. Ramet and Vjeran Pavlaković (eds.), Serbia Since 1989: Politics and Society under Milosevic and After, University of Washington Press, 2005.
• Turkey recognises Macedonia by its constitutional name, as the Republic of Macedonia.
• Macedonian identity was the most disputed of the post-Yugoslav republics with an embryonic identity dating back to the initial years of Tito, a language that originated in 1947, and an autocephalous Macedonian Orthodox Church established in 1967; see, Crampton, The Balkans since the Second World War, p. 246.
• The League of the Communists of Macedonia- Party for Democratic Change versus the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organisation – Democratic Party for Macedonian National Unity (IMRO-DPMNE).
• Robert Bideleux and Ian Jeffries, A History of Eastern Europe: Crisis and Change, London, Taylor & Francis Group, 1998, p. 467.
• Liliana Popescu, “A Change of Power in Romania: The Results and Significance of the November 1996 Elections”, Government and Opposition, Vol. 32, No. 2 (April 1997), pp. 155-300.
• Vesselin Dimitrov, “Learning to Play the Game: Bulgaria’s Relations with Multilateral Organizations”, South East European Politics, Vol. 1, No. 2 (December 2000), pp.101-114.
• Christopher Jarvis, “The Rise and Fall of Albania’s Pyramid Schemes”, Finance & Development: A Quarterly Magazine of the IMF, Vol. 37, No. 1 (March 2000).
• Ivan Vejvoda, “Serbia After Four Years of Transition”, in Judy Batt (ed.), The Western Balkans Moving On, Institute for Security Studies (ISS), Chaillot Paper No. 70 (October 2004), pp. 37-51.
• Sumantra Bose, Bosnia after Dayton: Nationalist Partition and International Intervention, New York, Hurst, 2002.
• Gerald Knaus and Felix Martin, “Travails of the European Raj”, Journal of Democracy, Vol. 14, No. 3 (July 2003).
• Valerie Bunce, “The Political Transition”, in Wolchk and Curry (eds.), Central and East European Politics, p.50.
• Rosa Balfour and Corina Stratulat, “The Democratic Transformation of the Balkans”, EPC Issue Paper, No. 66 (November 2011), p. 22.