Regime Change in the Yugoslav Successor States: Divergent Paths toward a New Europe

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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 Stabilization and Association Agreements (SAA) with the European Union. This means that they are formally committed to implementing the democratic reforms 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 reflects the victory of pro-Western sentiment in the domestic politics of these countries, but it also reflects the EU’s determination to bring the “Western Balkans” into the European and democratic fold.

It was not always this way. Engulfed by war in the 1990s, Bosnia and Herzegovina, 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 Herzegovina emerged from war in 1995 to become an international protectorate. Among the successor states, only Slovenia succeeded in constructing a democratic 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 published an illustration by the well-known political cartoonist Predrag Koraksithe 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 before Serbia. That same year, in reference to those elusive EU stars, the Slovenian daily Delo ran the headline “From red star [the old Yugoslav flag] to gold stars [the EU flag],” signifying Slovenia’s formal entry into the EU but also hinting 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 different places in which these two Yugoslav successor states found themselves in the early years of the new millennium. Slovenia had become a prosperous democracy, one of the first nations in the region to be admitted to the EU. Serbia, by contrast, was damaged by years of nationalism and failed economic policies. Its very borders were uncertain, with Montenegro 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 Republic of Yugoslavia, and Macedonia since 1991, analyzing how and why their paths diverged for the first 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 Montenegro, which only recently gained independence). It argues that the Yugoslav successor states initially followed divergent trajectories of regime change because they embarked on transition from very different starting points. These starting points were rooted in long-term disparities in economic development, 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 successor states has also been powerfully shaped by another factor: the sustained influence of the West and its desire to transfer democratic norms to the Balkans, which helps account for the more recent convergence in democratization 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 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 reflects fifteen years of thinking about political change in Eastern and Central Europe. It owes a great deal to individuals who have thought about such subjects much longer than I have. At the University of California, Berkeley, I am grateful first and foremost to my mentor, Andrew Janos, whose support was unfailing and whose contribution to my intellectual development and, indeed, to my understanding of the world will benefit me long after this book is published. I am equally grateful for the guidance provided by George W. Breslauer, Steven K. Vogel, and John Connelly. I also received encouragement, advice, and financial support from the Berkeley Program in Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies and its executive director, Ned Walker, as well as the Institute for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, under the leadership of Victoria Bonnell and Barbara Voytek. The support of my graduate school colleagues at Berkeley’s Political Science Department was indispensable, especially that of Victor Peskin, my friend and intellectual soul mate. This manuscript is based on my doctoral dissertation, for which I received the Juan Linz Prize for Best Dissertation in the Comparative Study of Democracy. I was honored to meet Professor Linz at the award ceremony, and I, along with all those who study democratization, owe a tremendous intellectual debt to him. I also wish to thank the Johns Hopkins University Press, in particular Henry Tom and Suzanne Flinchbaugh for their faith in this project and Martin Schneider, my copyeditor, for his infinite patience.

Several Foreign Language and Area Studies fellowships, funded by the U.S. Department of Education, facilitated my study of Serbian and Croatian at Berkeley (under the superb guidance of Ronelle Alexander and Charles Greer) and in Zagreb and Novi Sad. The Center for German and European Studies at Berkeley generously funded an early research trip to Croatia, and the Koíciuszko Foundation helped defray the costs of my third year of study. My research internship at the Public Policy Institute of California was a wonderful opportunity that broadened my graduate education, and I am grateful to David Lyon and Fred Silva for allowing me to work there.

My fieldwork in the former Yugoslavia was generously funded by the Ful-bright program and the International Research and Exchanges Board. There are countless individuals in the four countries that are the subject of this book who gave generously of their time to talk to me about politics in the Yugoslav successor states; there is no way that I could name them all. In Zagreb, I am especially grateful to Radovan Vukadinovi, and Milada Anna Vachudová. In 2003 and 2004 I presented this research at the University of Notre Dame, the University of Connecticut, and the School of Slavonic and East European Studies at University College London and received valuable feedback.

The writing stage of the manuscript was generously funded by the Berkeley Dean of Graduate Studies Normative Time Fellowship and the American Council of Learned Societies. I spent two years as a lecturer at the University of San Diego, and I am very grateful to Randy Willoughby for the opportunity. At USD, I would also like to thank Christy Soto and Joyce Neu, Dee Aker, and Shelley Lyford of the Joan Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice. During the 2003–2004 academic year, I taught in the Making of the Modern World Program at my alma mater, Eleanor Roosevelt College of the University of California, San Diego. I am grateful to Provost Ann Craig and Reynaldo Guerrero, both mentors to me since my undergraduate years at UCSD, and to Patrick Patterson and Doug McGetchin, my outstanding colleagues in the MMW program. I am equally indebted to my undergraduate mentors: Akos Rona-Tas, who introduced me to both social science and East European studies, and Ellen Comisso, who in supervising my undergraduate thesis always pushed me to do my best work.

The East European Studies Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars has twice contributed to furthering my graduate career: by inviting me to participate in the Junior Scholars’ Training Seminar in the summer of 2002 and by hosting me as research scholar in the summer of 2003. I cannot imagine a more supportive environment in which to have worked on my dissertation; I am grateful to Marty Sletzinger, Nida Gelazis, Meredith Rubin, Sabina Crispen, and Katy Bondy.

I have spent the past six years as a Foreign Service Officer with the U.S. State Department, serving in Albania, Kosovo, and now Japan. During this time, I have had the privilege of meeting some outstanding colleagues who have enriched my understanding of diplomacy and politics: Roxanne Cabral, Charles Morrill, Adolfo Gorriaran, Viki Thomson, Jeff Patmore, Alex Laskaris, Steve Cristina, Steve Zate, Larry Corwin, Elisabeth Corwin, Laura Hochla, Paula Thiede, Wakie Martin, Ed Dong, Stephanie Morimura, Naomi Walcott, Audu Bes-mer, Kevin O’Connor, Matt Fuller, Ambassador Marcie Ries, and Ambassador Tina Kaidanow. In Tirana, I benefited from the insights and friendship of Eno Trimçev, Bernard Zeneli, Galit Wolfensohn, Erinda Lula, Kujtim Çashku, Aki Ishiwa, Saimir Bajo, Erinda Lula, and Bato Bega. I am also grateful to my Albanian language teachers at the Foreign Service Institute, Ardiana Sinoim-ieri, Ema Tirana, and Edi Zadrima.

I will also be forever indebted to hitherto unmentioned friends and family who provided support and advice—Grzegorz Gosiewski, Ola Gosiewska, Jan Gosiewski, Stanisław Gosiewski, Maciej Gosiewski, Franciszek Gosiewski, Małgorzata Gnoińska, Stas Currier, Michael Nelson, Michael Carpenter, Rudolf Beran, Randy Ontiveros, Elisha Tilton, Krzysztof Pierícieniak, Deana Slater, Tadashi Anno, Chris Burman, Natalie Burman, Tony Burman, Laura Lamb, Greg Grassi, Steve Reichert, Barrett Heusch, Conor O’Dwyer, Marc Morjé Howard, Bill Hurst, Els De Graauw, Kristina Balalovska, Agnieszka Weinar, Istvan Zsoldos, Jerzy Bak, Anna Boduszyńska-Bak, Aleksander Bak, Wojciech Bak, Mieczysław Bak, Janina Boduszyńska, Monica Boduszyński, Thomas Boduszyński, Rick Chalk, Tyler Chalk, Alden Chalk, and Teresa Boduszyński. This book is dedicated to Dr. Mieczysław M. Boduszyński and Basia Chalk, my parents, and my fourth-grade teacher, Ms. Betty Borges, who first encouraged me to write.

Two individuals, latecomers to the project, nevertheless proved essential to its completion. Drew Lehman, among the most amazing people I know, worked tirelessly on the text and graphics. Carrie Bergstrand appeared unannounced at my apartment in Tokyo and has made this book, and my life, much richer ever since.