Südosteuropa 63 (2015), no. 4, pp. 596-617 NEW ECONOMIC ELITES IN SERBIA MILICA VESKOVIć ANđELKOVIć Political Orientations of the Economic Elite in Serbia Abstract. Based on the findings of empirical research conducted in 2012, the author analyzes the orientation of the economically dominant stratum of the emerging capitalist class in Serbia towards the political parties which stood for election that same year. In addition, survey data from 1997 and 2003 was used, which was collected as a sample of the economic elite. This data is compared with a sample on other citizens, collected in the same years, in order to compare the political orientation of the emerging capitalist class and the rest of the population. Furthermore, the author analyzes the influence of factors such as gender, age and ownership structures on the political orientation of the economically elite. Milica Vesković Anđelković is a Research Assistant at the Institute for Sociological Research at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Belgrade. Introduction Methodologically, the present paper draws on Charles Wright Mills, who studied American society in the middle of the 20th century and came to the conclusion that the economic, political and cultural elites could be regarded as homogenous groups.1 Taking prior knowledge into account about the unity of the ruling class’ characteristic of Serbian society,2 the hypothesis to be proven is the following: The economic, political and cultural elites in Serbia, differentiated according to basic social subsystems, are tightly connected and interdependent in terms of mutual control and support, and they are unitary when it comes to making decisions that not only influence the promotion of their interests, but are also significant for the entire Serbian society and the international politics of the country. The first section of the paper includes a brief historical overview of mutual relations within the ruling class of Serbian society from the period of the socialist 1 Č. Rajt Mils, Elita vlasti, Belgrade 1998; cf. the original Charles Wright Mills, The Power Elite, New York 1956. 2 Mladen Lazić, Čekajući kapitalizam. Nastanak novih klasnih odnosa u Srbiji, Belgrade 2011 . Political Orientations of the Economic Elite in Serbia 597 system, through the period of ‘“blocked” and “unblocked” transformation’,3 to the establishment of the current form of capitalist relations. The focus is thus the interrelationship of elite groups of different social systems in Serbia, including systemic thresholds which are relatively extensive. The second section analyzes survey data from 2012 on the political orientation of the economic elite. Party affiliations are examined as the most reliable means of showing political orientation. For comparison, data collected in 1997 and 2003 are used whenever possible. In the third section, the impact of potentially relevant factors (age, gender and ownership structure) is analyzed, based on the ownership structure of companies managed by respondents, their connec- tion with the political elite, and active participation in the political life of Serbia through parties. The concluding section examines ideological identifications in terms of a ‘left-right’ scale of political orientation. The Economic Elite and Political Life Of the differing concepts of ‘elite’ that exist,4 the definition used for this paper pertains to a structural approach according to which ‘holding dominant institu- tional positions is a criterion used for separating members of the elite from other parts of the society’.5 The great importance of this group for Serbia’s political life has manifested itself in historical events that characterize the establishment and shift of social systems, such as the socialist state after the Second World War, its collapse in the late 1980s, and the subsequent transition to a capitalist order, which has yet to be sustainably consolidated. Monitoring and analyzing relationships within the ruling group reveals the power relations among various strata, which have been changing over time and with the change of the social system, as well as their emergence, grouping and regrouping, all dependent on conditions characteristic of a given historical period. In the socialist period, the members of the ruling class ‘who had political control over society, at the same time had key economic roles’.6 The fusion of political, economic, and cultural social subsystems, controlled by higher strata of the ruling class of collective owners—nomenklatura (the predominant if not exclusive party at the time being the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, KPJ), brought about homogenized action in the entire social system. Members of the ruling class ‘who had (contingently speaking) political control over the society, played at the same time key eco- 3 Mladen Lazić, Uvod, in: Mladen Lazić, ed, Ekonomska elita u Srbiji u periodu konsolidacije kapitalističkog poretka, Belgrade 2014, 9-35. 4 Cf. Mladen Lazić, Elite u postsocijalističkoj transformaciji srpskog društva, in: Mladen Lazić, ed, Račji hod. Srbija u transformacijskim procesima, Belgrade 2000, 21-64. 5 Lazić, Elite u postsocijalističkoj transformaciji srpskog društva, 22. 6 Lazić, Čekajući kapitalizam, 38. 598 Milica Vesković Anđelković nomic roles (also contingently speaking) of the global command planning’.7 Given that the top layer of this class had an absolute control over the social system and that it played an active role in maintaining (and later changing) the social order, distinguishing the concept of class from the concept of elite is theoretically necessary but it practically does not apply to a socialist order. In addition, a lack of autonomy of basic social subsystems results in a unity of the elite as a systemic feature of socialism: ‘The attempt to differentiate between parts of the elite (by strictly separating eco- nomic and cultural elite from the political one and by increasing their autonomy) was a consequence of—but immediately afterwards a factor in—a systemic crisis.’8 In the postwar period in Serbia, a key role was played by a single elite group—the nomenklatura, i.e. a small number of individuals who made decisions related to the entire society, from those relevant to the military, to culture and economy, in accordance with political objectives, that is, in order to maintain their own positions. Even though the transition from socialism to capitalism differed from country to country, it can be stated that Serbia’s transition differed more radically. In Eastern Europe, the collapse of state socialism in the late 1980s and the intro- duction of liberal democracy, with a multiparty system and a capitalist market economy, resulted in the relative autonomy of the social subsystems and thus in a differentiation between the economic, political and cultural elites. This mode of social production was modeled on the West and introduced almost overnight, mainly by intellectuals who often were members of the communist party in their respective countries. The politicians who took control set up a market economy and started to implement privatization. They seized the opportunity to develop the new system in line with their own interests, by converting the organizational and political resources they had during socialism into economic capital. In Serbia during the 1990s as well as during socialism, around two- thirds of the economic elite or their closest relatives held important political positions.9 Other enterprises were sold to foreign companies and investment funds. The privatization of these enterprises, also controlled by the state, was accompanied by numerous scandals about which the media comprehensively reported. Only a small number of capitalists emerged as a result of small and medium-sized enterprise growth, yet having remained in the shadow of other, larger owners of capital. The process of privatization, in which the political elite was both seller and broker, has resulted in casting a shadow of doubt on the newly emerging capi- 7 Lazić, Čekajući kapitalizam, 38. 8 Lazić, Čekajući kapitalizam, 44. 9 Lazić, Čekajući kapitalizam. Political Orientations of the Economic Elite in Serbia 599 talist class. Proponents of privatization have argued that the manner in which it is carried out is not the most important thing, as the market will regulate itself. The success of competent owners, they argued, will contribute to the develop- ment of the entire society.10 However, owners who had accumulated capital by political means as opposed to economic competence have not disappeared. Indeed, the emergence of political competition created a need for political parties to receive support of large capitalists. Thus, in spite of the (formal) separation and autonomy of the economic and political subsystems, a symbiosis of politi- cally and economically dominant social strata continues to coexist. During the first years after the demise of socialism and the ‘import’ of capi- talism, Serbia developed without genuine domestic capitalists, and the rise of big business occurred mainly by converting political privileges of the former nomenklatura into economic capital. The delayed or ‘blocked transformation’11 during the war years of the 1990s benefited these actors to strengthen their positions. However, after completing the ‘primitive accumulation of capital’, the regime of Slobodan Milošević pursued a risky foreign policy that led Serbia into conflict and international isolation—a policy which no longer benefited the newly emerging capitalists. Viewing the