Dawson, James Cultures of Democracy in Serbia and Bulgaria: How Ideas Shape Publics (review)

Abstract

SEER, 94, 2, APRIL 2016 382 she critiques a constitution based on human rights. It is unclear what sort of constitution McAuley would propose to replace it. Again, she asks — ‘should the Declaration on Human Rights have been taken as a founding document for the constitution? The question is intriguing but unanswerable’ (p. 317). What would the Russian constitution look like if human rights had not underpinned its foundation? The point is that the Russian government is violating the constitution, but its aspirational quality is crucial to the success of Russian civil society and its struggles in the court system. McAuley argues that giving such rights to society from on high has stopped Russians from engaging in collective action to defend their rights and interests and ‘distracted attention’ away from state corruption. This is a charge better laid at the feet of the Russian government than the human rights provisions of the Russian Constitution. School of Global and International Studies Emma Gilligan Indiana University, Bloomington Dawson, James. Cultures of Democracy in Serbia and Bulgaria: How Ideas Shape Publics. Southeast European Studies. Ashgate, Farnham and Burlington, VT, 2014. xii + 212 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. £65.00. Odd as it might sound, it is not very common to find academics who do comparative work on Serbia and Bulgaria. The two neighbouring countries are of comparable size, similar economic and social structure, languages that are, more or less, mutually comprehensible, and a great deal of shared history — of antagonism but also of mutual influences. Scholars who study Serbia are more likely to also cover far-flung Slovenia, courtesy of the common Yugoslav legacy. Those few people in the West who work on Bulgaria do not necessarily share an interest in Yugoslavia’s successor states, unless of course their principal focus is ethnopolitics (cf. Maria Koinova, Ethnonationalist Conflict in Postcommunist States Varieties of Governance in Bulgaria, Macedonia, and Kosovo, Pennsylvania, PA, 2013). It is therefore laudable that James Dawson has ventured into such a comparison, which does contribute to our understanding of the region (even if there are only a small number of sources in Serbian and Bulgarian quoted). Dawson’s argument, sketched in brief, is the following: although Bulgaria, an EU member since 2007, appears to have moved further on its democratization path, it lags behind Serbia when it comes to as key a dimension as political culture. Standard measurements of democratic governance fail to capture the significance of the public sphere. By that measure, Dawson contends, Serbia has more solid grounds for consolidating a liberal democratic regime than REVIEWS 383 Bulgaria. Through extensive ethnographic fieldwork in two major provincial centres, the cities of Niš (southeast Serbia) and Plovdiv (south-central Bulgaria), he finds that old-school nationalism directed against minorities, and especially against Roma, to be more pervasive in the Bulgarian case. Secondly, Dawson faults the post-1989 elite in Bulgaria, particularly those hailing from the ranks of the anti-Communist centre-right, for succumbing uncritically to the false promise of market fundamentalism, confusing economic and political liberalism. By contrast, even socially conservative Serbs ‘who laugh at jokes about Roma in the kafana recognize the dangers of supporting parties that are either openly intolerant or are led by politicians “compromised” by links to the Milošević regime’ (p. 130). Serbia is populated by ‘careworn democrats’ who are equally repulsed both by the nationalists-turned-Europeans as Prime Minister Aleksandar Vučić and his Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) and the corrupt politicians with roots in the 1990s anti-Milošević opposition. While it is hard to dispute Dawson’s criticism of the deficiencies and blindspots in the two countries’ public culture still the book leaves one to wonder whether it makes such a profound difference. In fact, Bulgaria and Serbia have consolidated very similar political systems which combine free elections with weak institutions, a fragile rule of law and an unhealthy (and deteriorating) media environment. And the reason democratic rule is more vulnerable in Serbia has to do less with the spread of liberal values in society than with checks and balances. In Bulgaria, Prime Minister Boyko Borisov is dependent on support from outside, in the form of political legitimacy and billions of...