Antonija Petri čuši ć Assessing the Second Generation Conditionality: Minority Rights as the Component of EU Conditionality Policy for the Western Balkans Dissertation zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades einer Doktorin der Rechtswissenschaften an der Rechtswissenschaftlichen Fakultät der Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz Erstbegutachter: Univ.-Prof. Dr.iur. Joseph Marko Zweitbegutachter: Univ.-Prof. Dr.phil. Florian Bieber Zagreb/Graz, März 2013 ii Ehrenwörtliche Erklärung Ich erkläre ehrenwörltlich, dass ich die vorliegende Dissertation selbständig verfasst, andere als die angegebenen Quellen und Hilfsmittel nicht benutzt und mich auch sonst keiner unerlaubten Hilfsmittel bedient habe. Ich versichere ferner, dass ich diese Dissertation bisher weder im In- noch im Ausland in irgendeiner Form als wissenschaftliche Arbeit vorgelegt habe. Graz, im März 2013 Dipl.iur. Antonija Petri čuši ć, MA iii Acknowledgement Note I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my thesis supervisors, Professor Dr. Joseph Marko and Professor Dr. Florian Bieber, for their academic guidance which has been unwavering throughout a substantive part of my academic career and also for their trust in my academic capacities. I am also grateful for the opportunity they gave me to participate in several of their numerous research projects dealing with South Eastern Europe and minority rights. Such participation allowed me to learn from and collaborate with outstanding colleagues and progress professionally. Particularly, I am grateful to Professor Marko for allowing me to take part in his initiated European-scale project “MIRICO - Human and Minority Rights in the Life Cycle of Ethnic Conflicts”. In this project, I was part of a team that comprised the most prominent European experts dealing with minority rights. While working on this project, I developed ideas and hypotheses that became part of my thesis research. I am also grateful to Professor Bieber for his willingness to act as my second supervisor. His academic excellence has served as a motivating force since our initial meeting, which was well over a decade ago. I am eternally indebted to Professor Dr. Wolfgang Benedek, who was not only an inspiring professor in Sarajevo and Graz, but is the one who I hold responsible for directing me and my academic pursuits into the field of human rights. The truly international environment of the Karl-Franzens University provided me with an inspiring academic setting and numerous research facilities and events during my stay in Graz. South Eastern Europe is most certainly a core research interest for a number of social science institutes and departments at the University of Graz. Often, I felt much closer to the Balkans in Graz than in Zagreb. Being part of the Karl-Franzens University and particularly as a member of Professor Marko’s team, was an honour and without doubt contributed greatly to my professional development. Furthermore, I want to express my gratitude to professors at the Faculty of Law, University of Zagreb: Professor Dr. Josip Kregar, Professor Dr. Duško Sekuli ć and Professor Dr. Slaven Ravli ć for being supportive academic tutors since the time I commenced my employment at the Faculty of Law of the University of Zagreb in May 2009. I owe a great debt of gratitude to Professor Kregar who suggested exploring the concept of political culture that became an essential theoretical concept around which my thesis developed. My sincere gratitude goes to Professor Sekuli ć, who encouraged me to structure my thinking in a way that allowed me to conduct research as a sociologist. Some of my friends and colleagues from my current working place deserve to be mentioned here to: Aleksandra Čar, Andrea Grgi ć and Marko Juri ć, whose talent, wit and great sense of humour allowed me to academically prosper. There are also many students who I got in touch with in the course of the last three years and who confirmed to me that teaching is the most fulfilling part of the academic career. Several of these students have demonstrated to me intense inquisitiveness, ambition and a genuine commitment to the project in which we were jointly involved, and as such, have assured me that the next generation of lawyers is certainly going to be exceptional. With this in mind, I thank Nina, Andreja, Matea, Ivan, Marko and Vedran for their time and energy. I am also indebted to several of my colleagues and friends at the University of Graz who supported me throughout my professional engagement at this institution, from February 2006 to August 2008. I am overwhelmed to have Dr. Emma Lantschner as both a friend and a colleague. I have observed her dedication to her work and the perfection in all her professional efforts that she has been undertaking since I got to know her in Bolzano/Bozen in early 2003. She remains a dear and true friend. My working hours in Graz were enriched through the company of Dr. Edith Marko, Dr. Michaela Salamun, Mag. Marianne Pasterk, and a number of collaborators who were interns in the Kompetenzzentrum Südosteuropa. The free iv time that I had in Graz was enriched by Dr. Merima Čajlakovi ć, Dr. Gudrun Waniek, Dr. Dijana Jureša, Mag. Elma Osmanovi ć and Mag.Emina Hasovi ć who all helped me on a number of occasions to find a way through conundrums of Austrian administration and enriched my everyday life in Graz. I would also like to extend my appreciation to several colleagues I was lucky to have been introduced to during my employment at the European Academy of Bolzano/Bozen in 2003 and 2004. These colleagues are Eva Maria Moar, Sergiu Constantin, Markko Kallonen, Professor Dr. Francesco Palermo, Professor Dr. Jens Woelk, Dr. Roberta Medda-Windischer, Dr. Gabriel von Toggenburg, Dr. Guenther Rautz, Carolin Zvilling, Paulina Borowska and Elisabeth Alber. Their scientific excellence together with their warmth and kindness shaped me in the beginning of my career both as a person and as an academic. This dissertation was financially supported by grant from the Steiermärkische Sparkasse. This generous support as well as the prize of the Styrian Governor allowed me to undertake research for this thesis, to grasp knowledge, to question and to explain, in other words, to achieve the most exciting activities an academic and scientist can perform. I extend my deepest gratitude to my mother. Without her love, help, encouragement and support I would not have had the chance to achieve such professional and personal growth. Lastly, I dedicate this work to my son Marco. My life with him is ever challenging and most fulfilling. v “Because democracy depends not only on elections, but also strong and accountable institutions, and the respect for the rights of minorities. ” Barack Obama ∗ ∗ Quote from the speech “Moment of Opportunity: American Diplomacy in the Middle East and North Africa” delivered on 19 May 2011. vi Table of Contents 1. INTRODUCTION 1 1.1. Research Questions 2 1.2. Basic Research Hypothesis 6 1.3. Research Concepts 7 1.4. Methodology 9 2. DEMOCRATIZATION THAT ACKNOWLEDGES SOCIO-CULTURAL VALUES 11 2.1. Theoretical Models of Democratic Consolidation 12 2.1.1. Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan’s Five Arenas of Democratic Consolidation 15 2.1.2. Claus Offe’s Triple Transition Theory 18 2.1.3. Wolfgang Merkel’s Four Dimensions of Democratic Consolidation 20 2.2. Preprequisites of Attitudinal Consolidation in Plural Societies 28 2.2.1. Values and Attitudes Supportive to Democracy 29 2.2.2. Convergence of Socio-Cultural Values in Plural Societies 40 3. DEMOCRATIC CONSOLIDATION IN THE WESTERN BALKANS 46 3.1. Political Culture in the Western Balkans 46 3.2. Two Decades of the Western Balkans Democratic Transformation 55 4. POLITICAL CONDITIONALITY AS THE EXTERNAL DEMOCRACY PROMOTION MECHANISM 70 4.1. Europeanisation Conceptualized as External Socialization 71 4.2. Limits of the EU Conditionality on Democratization 78 4.3. Democratic Consolidaiton of the Western Balkans through Stabilisation and Integration 88 5. ASSESSING THE SECOND GENERATION CONDITIONALITY: FROM POST- CONFLICT RECONSTRUCTION TO EU INTEGRATION 102 5.1. Introduction of the First Generation Minority Conditionality for the Central and Eastern European Countries 103 vii 5.2. Second Generation Conditionality and Accommodation of Ethnic Diversity in the Western Balkans 111 5.2.1. Normative and Institutional Solutions Assuring ‘Respect for and Protection of Minorities’ 114 5.2.1. Refuge Return 136 5.2.2. Prosecution of War Crimes 143 5.2.3. Reconcilation 164 5.3. Attitudinal Consolidtion through the Second Generation Conditionality 187 6. CONCLUSIONS 195 BIBLIOGRAPHY 199 viii 1. Introduction This dissertation is about democratization of the post-conflict region through the application of the second generation conditionality, i.e. pre-accession conditionality that requires broadest integration of national minorities in the Western Balkans countries (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia) currently aspiring to attain membership in the European Union (EU or the Union). The first generation minority conditionality required ‘respect for and protection of persons belonging to minorities’ and was applied towards the Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries. In comparison to the first generation minority conditionality, which primarily required normative and institutional mechanisms for accommodation of national minorities, the second generation conditionality contains novel elements related to refugee return, prosecution of war crimes and post-conflict inter-ethnic reconciliation. Not negating the importance of socio-economic development in the democratic transformation period, nor of historical causes specific to a given country or a region, this dissertation is confined to the analysis of the importance of socio-cultural factors (e.g. citizens’ values and attitudes) in the process of democratization. I will therefore argue that the EU decided to expand its political criteria related to respect for and protection of minorities aiming at promotion of inter-personal trust in post-conflict societies of the Western Balkans.