Regime Change in the Yugoslav Successor States Boduszyński, Mieczysław P. Published by Johns Hopkins University Press Boduszyński, Mieczysław P. Regime Change in the Yugoslav Successor States: Divergent Paths toward a New Europe. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010. Project MUSE. doi:10.1353/book.473. https://muse.jhu.edu/. For additional information about this book https://muse.jhu.edu/book/473 [ Access provided at 25 Sep 2021 03:15 GMT with no institutional affiliation ] This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Regime Change in the Yugoslav Successor States Democratic Transition and Consolidation Jorge I. Domínguez and Anthony Jones, Series Editors Regime Change in the Yugoslav Successor States Divergent Paths toward a New Europe Mieczysław P. Boduszyn´ski The Johns Hopkins University Press Baltimore © 2010 The Johns Hopkins University Press All rights reserved. Published 2010 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 The Johns Hopkins University Press 2715 North Charles Street Baltimore, Maryland 21218-4363 www.press.jhu.edu Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Boduszyn´ski, Mieczysław P., 1974– Regime change in the Yugoslav successor states : divergent paths toward a new Europe / Mieczysław P. Boduszyn´ski. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-8018-9429-9 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-8018-9429-8 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Regime change—Former Yugoslav republics. 2. Self-determination, National—Former Yugoslav republics. 3. Post-communism—Former Yugoslav republics. 4. Democracy—Former Yugoslav republics. 5. Former Yugoslav republics—Politics and government. 6. Former Yugoslav republics—Foreign relations. I. Title. DR1255.B63 2010 949.703—dc22 2009023832 A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. 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For my parents and Ms. Betty Borges who fi rst encouraged me to write This page intentionally left blank Contents List of Figures and Tables ix Preface xi Abbreviations and Acronyms xvii Introduction: Explaining Regime Change in the Yugoslav Successor States 1 1 Post-communist Diversity 9 2 Characterizing Regime Type 39 3 The Development of Disparity 50 4 Simulated Democracy: Croatia’s Transition in the 1990s 74 5 Substantive Democracy: Slovenia’s Transition in the 1990s 115 6 Illegitimate Democracy: Macedonia’s Transition in the 1990s 140 7 Populist Authoritarianism: The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia’s Transition in the 1990s 172 8 The Yugoslav Successor States in the New Millennium 211 9 Conclusions 247 Notes 283 References 305 Index 323 This page intentionally left blank Figures and Tables figures Map of the Yugoslav Successor States, 2010 xxi 3.1. Regional Inequalities in Yugoslavia, 1947 54 3.2. Unemployment Rates by Republic or Region, 1990 68 4.1. Croatia, Rate of GDP Growth, 1990–1999 107 4.2. Croatia, Unemployment Rate, 1990–1999 112 5.1. Slovenia, Rate of GDP Growth, 1991–1999 137 6.1. Macedonia, Unemployment Rate, 1990–1999 169 7.1. Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Rate of GDP Growth, 1990–1999 206 tables I.1. Post-communist Regime Types in the Late 1990s 7 1.1. Approaches to Explaining Post-communist Regime Diversity 16 2.1. Freedom House Scores of Procedural Correctness, 1991–1999 45 2.2. Liberal Quality of Legitimizing Strategies, 1990s 47 2.3. Nature of Public Divisions as Exhibited in Party Orientations, 1990s 48 3.1. Indicators of Development in Republics and Regions, 1953 57 3.2. Regional Disparities during Communism 62 5.1. Primary Slovenian Exporters, 2001 136 6.1. External Assistance to Macedonia in Comparative Perspective, 1990–1998 167 x Figures and Tables 7.1. Distribution of Selected Values within the Main Political Parties 195 8.1. Progress on Accession to the EU and NATO as of December 2009 243 8.2. Democratic Progress and Liberal Content after 2000 244 9.1. EU Share of Total Trade, 2007 253 9.2. Economic Indicators, Yugoslav Successor States, 2006 254 9.3. Extent of Communist Industrialization and Per Capita Output Collapse 258 9.4. External Impetus for Liberalism and Regime Outcomes 267 9.5. Public Opinion on Key Issues, Fall 2008 275 Preface The states that emerged from the former Yugoslavia followed divergent paths of regime change in their first decade of post-communist transition, only to converge on the road to Europe in the second. As of 2009, all the Yugoslav successor states, save for newly independent Kosovo, are at some stage of the European integration process, at the very minimum having signed Stabiliza- tion and Association Agreements (SAA) with the European Union. This means that they are formally committed to implementing the democratic re- forms necessary to join the EU. Slovenia has already been a EU member since 2004. Croatia has been engaged in accession negotiations since 2005 and, if all goes well, will join in 2011. Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia are also on the European path, as is Bosnia and Herzegovina, despite its problematic internal divisions and slowness on reform. This refl ects the victory of pro- Western sentiment in the domestic politics of these countries, but it also re- fl ects the EU’s determination to bring the “Western Balkans” into the Euro- pean and democratic fold. It was not always this way. Engulfed by war in the 1990s, Bosnia and Her- zegovina, Croatia, and Kosovo made headlines on a daily basis. The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY; also called Serbia and Montenegro) and Croatia were ruled by varying kinds of authoritarian-nationalist regimes; Macedonia owed its existence to Western aid and political support; and Bosnia and Her- zegovina emerged from war in 1995 to become an international protectorate. Among the successor states, only Slovenia succeeded in constructing a demo- cratic order in the first decade of transition. Even in the early 2000s, after electoral revolutions in Serbia and Croatia, the democratic and European prospects of the Yugoslav successor states were not nearly as bright as they are today. In 2004 the Serbian weekly Vreme pub- lished an illustration by the well-known political cartoonist Predrag Koraksi´c, better known as “Corax,” showing then–Prime Minister Vojislav Koštunica peering into the sky at a ring of stars representing the European Union. Only xii Preface the prime minister is looking through the wrong end of the telescope, making the stars appear even farther away. Even Albania managed to sign an SAA be- fore Serbia. That same year, in reference to those elusive EU stars, the Slove- nian daily Delo ran the headline “From red star [the old Yugoslav fl ag] to gold stars [the EU fl ag],” signifying Slovenia’s formal entry into the EU but also hint- ing at the paradox of leaving one failed federation only to enter another, still rather insecure multinational grouping thirteen years later. The two images spoke powerfully to the very diff erent places in which these two Yugoslav suc- cessor states found themselves in the early years of the new millennium. Slove- nia had become a prosperous democracy, one of the fi rst nations in the region to be admitted to the EU. Serbia, by contrast, was damaged by years of national- ism and failed economic policies. Its very borders were uncertain, with Monte- negro pushing for independence and Kosovo’s largely Albanian population, governed by the international community, demanding sovereignty as well. This book explains the paths traveled by Slovenia, Croatia, the Federal Re- public of Yugoslavia, and Macedonia since 1991, analyzing how and why their paths diverged for the fi rst decade of transition and then converged as they sought to become members of the EU and NATO in the second (owing to its status as an international protectorate for most of this period, Bosnia and Herzegovina does not play a major role in the study, nor do Kosovo and Mon- tenegro, which only recently gained independence). It argues that the Yugo- slav successor states initially followed divergent trajectories of regime change because they embarked on transition from very diff erent starting points. These starting points were rooted in long-term disparities in economic devel- opment, reproduced over time and through regimes of varying characters, which in turn shaped the prospects for liberalism after independence and the fall of communism. But post-communist regime change in the Yugoslav suc- cessor states has also been powerfully shaped by another factor: the sustained infl uence of the West and its desire to transfer democratic norms to the Bal- kans, which helps account for the more recent convergence in democratiza- tion and the growth in Euro-Atlantic aspirations. The kinds of regimes that emerged in the post-communist Yugoslav space were a function of the parameters in which they developed: the structural conditions they inherited from the past and the grand design of the Western liberal project. In this way, the Yugoslav successor states are not unlike other post-communist states in Eastern and Central Europe, but they have rarely been studied as cases of democratization. Yet, their transitions away from a Preface xiii common state, through varying trajectories of regime change and ultimately toward Euro-Atlantic integration, can teach us a lot about post-communist transformation more generally. This book refl ects fi fteen years of thinking about political change in Eastern and Central Europe.