Democratic Transition in Croatia: Value Transformation, Education, and Media

1. WHAT’S LOVE (OF COUNTRY) GOT TO DO WITH IT? Democratic Transition

1 WHAT’S LOVE (OF COUNTRY) GOT TO DO WITH IT? Civic Values in Democratic Transition Sabrina P. Ramet I n spite of the four-year Homeland War, as Croats call it, Croatia has also had to resolve issues of economic transformation, political demonopolization , corruption at high levels, and crime, while reforming the educational system in a manner to foster liberal values. And as in other societies in the region, the question of a civic culture has been bound up with the question of nationalism. Advocates of “liberal nationalism” argue that sentiments of attachment to national history, national symbols, and the national culture and of identification with members of the national community can serve to bind citizens together, laying the foundation for relations of trust and openness to compromise; advocates of “civic nationalism,” a kindred but distinct conception, want to build allegiance to shared political principles, arguing that “the nation” need not have any common ethnicity, language, or culture but can consist strictly of citizens committed to a common political vision, such as democracy. Critics of liberal nationalism, on the other hand, maintain that nationalism—as a collective affectivity that focuses not on the community as such but on the ethnie, whether those living in one’s own community or those living across the border, while excluding the members of other nations living in the community—serves as a divisive force that builds intolerance, fosters inequality, and supports a culture in which compromise becomes more rather than less difficult. Insofar as Franjo Tudjman, Croatia’s president from 1990 to 1999, made nationalism the centerpiece of his ideological program, the question of the possibility of 2 SABRINA P. RAMET liberal nationalism is a pivotal question for understanding Croatia’s strategy of value transformation since 1990. Critics of civic nationalism argue that what this concept’s supporters advocate is not nationalism as such but a distinct, and hence mislabeled, bond. This book represents an effort to contribute to an understanding of Croatia’s democratic transition since 1990, a transition in which, inevitably, the development of liberal-democratic values plays a central role. As such, to attempt to understand democratic transition requires of necessity attention to issues of the role of schools and textbooks, the media, and film, as vehicles of values, as well as to the themes of integration, citizenship, inclusion, and exclusion. As Marius Søberg suggests in his contribution to this volume, the Croatian democratic transition can be divided into three broad phases: the first began in 1989 when the decay of communism grew more pronounced, running through the elections of 1990, which brought Franjo Tudjman and his Hrvatska Demokratska Zajednica (HDZ, or Croatian Democratic Union) into power, and ending with the signing of the Dayton Peace Accords in 1995; the second phase, which Søberg calls the “false dawn” of Croatian democratization, corresponds to the years 1995–99, the last years of Tudjman’s presidency; and the third phase, the post-Tudjman era, again as Søberg suggests, may be divided into two subphases, the first consisting of government by a coalition headed by Social Democratic Party chair Ivica Račan and the second consisting of government by a coalition headed by Ivo Sanader, chair of the reformed HDZ. That the war had a retardant effect on Croatian democratization will be conceded by most observers. Indeed, throughout the Tudjman era there were manipulations of elections (the case of the mayor of Zagreb being among the most scandalous), manipulations and illegal acquisitions (by the HDZ) of the most influential media, manipulations of privatization for the enrichment of the “inner circle,” and rising resentment of Serbs collectively among many Croats, who felt anger at Serbs for what the Belgrade regime and its minions did during the years 1990–95. In touring Croatia in 1997, two years after the war had ended, I was struck by the occurrence of “U” (for Ustaša, plural Ustaše) in graffiti in Zagreb and other towns; cafés and bars were being named for the Ustaša, Croatia’s fascist movement, which operated an Axis puppet state during World War II—the appearance of such graffiti was a clear sign that, at least for some Croats, to love Croatia meant to embrace those who had murdered large numbers of Serbs.1 And while Ustaša nationalism is not the only kind of nationalism that exists in CIVIC VALUES...