Competition Between Minority Ethnic Parties in Post-conflict Countries: Performance of Minority Parties in Croatia and Macedonia by Dane Taleski Submitted to Central European University Department of Political Science In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Supervisor: András Bozóki Budapest, September 2014 1 ABSTRACT Academic and policy studies argue that an inclusive approach is needed for sustainable peacebuilding. This justifies the inclusion of former combatants into political parties, but some argue that it can have negative consequences for democratization. Institutional engineering is proposed to forge cross-cutting parties; however it is puzzling to find that parties from rebels often dominate in the post-conflict period. To address this puzzle I look at minority ethnic parties in post-conflict Croatia and Macedonia. SDSS dominates the competition between Serb parties in Croatia and DUI dominates between Albanian parties in Macedonia. To answer why this is so, I first look at the process of their formation and functioning and second I compared them to other minority parties. Despite the common history in Yugoslavia, the inter-ethnic conflicts, the post-conflict conditions and institutional environments for minority politics were very different in Croatia and Macedonia. My level of analysis is the competition between minority parties in each country. Because of the similar outcomes, under varying conditions, I consider that the finding in one country control for the other. Using process tracing I analyzed data from 78 interviews, party content, media and archival sources. The findings were corroborated with quantitative analysis of electoral data from national and sub- national elections in the entire post-conflict period. I find that SDSS and DUI became most successful minority parties because they institutionalized legacies from the conflict. The parties were built on war time networks. They utilized these networks as micro social units for communication with voters and electoral mobilization. They also transferred symbolic capital from the conflict, initiated social practices to preserve it and used it as part of their electoral appeal. They channeled the post-conflict reconstruction process and gained political control over instruments for minority inclusion which gave them possibilities to extend patronage. Institutionalization of conflict's legacies in conjuction with patronage explains their electoral dominance in the post-conflict period. Other parties able to copy this model, albeit on sub-national level or to a lesser degree, were able to win or to improve their electoral support. These findings improve the understanding about post-conflict party politics, and in particular performance of parties from rebels, and contribute to literature about minority ethnic parties in competition. 2 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS At the end of this long journey, filled with professional and personal challenges, I feel obliged to express my utmost gratitude to several people for all of their support. First and foremost I want to thank my supervisor András Bozóki, for giving me enough freedom to pursue my ideas, and yet guiding me steady to the end. Without his support, understanding, comments and suggestions I would certainly loose my way. I feel the same about Zsolt Enyedi and Erin Jenne, my supervisory panel members. They helped me to clarify my work and gave me intellectual and academic guidance. I am also deeply grateful to Susan Woodward. Her comments were essential to raise the quality of my work and had a profound impact on my scientific reasoning. I want to thank the professors at CEU, and the overall staff, for creating an extraordinary and vibrant academic environment which helped me to grow as a political scientist. I also thank my peers and scholars that commented my work, but retain full responsibility for the mistakes. My research in Croatia and Macedonia would not be complete without the indispensable support from Goran Čular, Karolina Leaković, Zhidas Daskalovski, Viktor Dimovski and Bashkim Bakiu. I thank them all. And I thank all persons within the Serb and Albanian communities that shared their personal accounts with me. I am humbled by their experience and I hope my work helps to promote tolerance and understanding. I can't imagine going through the challenges and frustrations, vividly present in any doctoral program, without the support of my friends and colleagues at CEU. Elena, Elene, David, Sanja, Jana, Dato and Bojana, I cherish our friendship and feel privileged to have had your support. The support and love of my family gave me inspiration in crucial moments. I am thankful to my father, Dimitrija, mother, Violeta, and brother, Filip, for believing in me and supporting me when challenges seemed insurmountable. Most of all I want to thank my wife Ljupka for her unconditional love and for her understanding and patience. She shared my struggles and breakthroughs, and gave me the best gift in the world. This dissertation is hers as much it is mine. 3 DECLARATION I hereby declare that no parts of this thesis have been accepted for any other degrees in any other institutions. This thesis contains no materials previously written and/or published by another person, except where appropriate acknowledgment is made in the form of bibliographical reference. Dane Taleski 17 September 2014 4 Table of Contents INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................................... 12 I. LITERATURE REVIEW ...................................................................................................................... 18 I.1. Guerrilla-to-party transformation ............................................................................................. 24 I.2 Performance of parties from rebels ........................................................................................... 29 I.3. Minority ethnic parties in competition ..................................................................................... 34 I.4. The missing link: Parties and armed conflict ........................................................................... 39 I.5. An alternative approach: patronage and legacies of conflict ................................................... 43 I.5.1. Patronage ..................................................................................................................... 44 I.5.2. Legacies of the conflict ............................................................................................... 50 I.6. Concepts and definitions .......................................................................................................... 57 II. THE ARGUMENT .............................................................................................................................. 59 II.1. Operationalization of the variables ......................................................................................... 63 III. RESEARCH DESIGN ....................................................................................................................... 66 III.1. Countries and cases ............................................................................................................... 66 III.2. Data gathering ....................................................................................................................... 72 III.3. Methods ................................................................................................................................. 74 IV. SERB PARTIES IN CROATIA .......................................................................................................... 76 IV.1. The conflict and post-conflict environment for minority politics in Croatia ......................... 76 IV.2. Formation and radicalization of SDS .................................................................................... 85 IV. 3. Formation of SDSS ............................................................................................................... 92 IV.3.1. Structural Legacies: SDSS built on SDS ................................................................ 100 IV.3.2. Symbolic Legacies: Symbolic capital for electoral gains ....................................... 109 IV.3.3. Patronage and clientelism ....................................................................................... 118 IV.4. Competition between Serb parties in post-conflict Croatia ................................................. 129 IV.4.1 Why did SDSS loose elections? ............................................................................... 142 IV.4.2. Why other Serb parties didn't win? ......................................................................... 150 V. ALBANIAN PARTIES IN MACEDONIA ....................................................................................... 161 V.1. The conflict and post-conflict environment for minority politics in Macedonia .................. 161 V.2. Formation and functioning of NLA ...................................................................................... 170 V.3. Transformation of NLA to DUI ............................................................................................ 176 V.3.1 Structural Legacies: DUI built on NLA .................................................................... 183 V.3.2. Symbolic Legacies: Symbolic capital for electoral gains .......................................