Is There Any Hope for the Balkans?

Abstract

Is There Any Hope for the Balkans? Branislav Radeljić (bio) Balázs Vizi, Norbert Tóth and Edgár Dobos, eds. Beyond International Conditionality: Local Variations of Minority Representation in Central and South-Eastern Europe. 272 pp. Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2017. ISBN 9783848730674. Patrice C. McMahon. The NGO Game: Post-Conflict Peacebuilding in the Balkans and Beyond. xiv + 221 pp. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2017. ISBN 9781501709241. Jasmin Mujanović. Hunger and Fury: The Crisis of Democracy in the Balkans. xii + 229 pp. London: C. Hurst & Co., 2018. ISBN 9781849048927. So much has been said and written about the Balkans or, more specifically, the collapse of the Yugoslav Federation and the post-Yugoslav states. Since the early 1990s, academics, journalists, and policy experts have tried to figure out what went wrong and whom to blame, and to identify lessons learned so they could propose recommendations, the purpose of which is to help the region make progress and hopefully come closer to the rest of Europe, if admittedly not capable of catching up with it fully. But, figuring out what the region itself really wants has been extremely difficult. Back in 2013, while completing a volume on the post-Yugoslav space, I observed that it has been the EU that is more interested in providing the Western Balkans with a European perspective than the respective states themselves. As often outlined, actors involved in transnational organized crime and monopolistic businesses, although seriously affecting the development and stability of the Balkans, have shown no interest whatsoever in European integration. Indeed, some of them have tried to establish close links with political elites, so that their position could be even more protected.1 [End Page 125] In such a complicated setting, corruption flourishes, institutions are rarely independent, and development of civil society is stuck. As a result, decisions of vital importance are too often pursued under unclear circumstances, aimed at strengthening the position of the ruling elites at the cost of ordinary citizens. Accordingly, this review article looks at three important books, carefully exposing a whole range of dilemmas and wrongdoings, some deep-rooted and probably never-ending. Jasmin Mujanović has every right to insist that democracy has never had an easy time in the Balkans. He examined a long period of time and produced a good overview of the decisions adopted by the local oligarchic elites whose corrupt practices and clientelistic modus operandi have prevented the region's development. His disappointment is obvious: "The region is today, as it was at the end of the nineteenth century, overwhelmingly rural, economically backward, and politically dominated by a handful of socio-economic (and criminal) clans of supposedly mutually incompatible ethno-national persuasions."2 In an environment of coercive control, with highly problematic distribution of resources and accumulation of wealth, the development of capitalist structure or political culture has never properly materialized. Looking back, the Ottoman authorities welcomed the Balkan gangsters since they served the imperial order and its military machine, so when the empire started to face dissolution problems and eventually collapsed, functioning political and economic institutions were not in place. By employing ethnonationalist rhetoric, the new elite consolidated its power and continued to accumulate wealth through dispossession, not trade and commerce. At the same time, criticism of the post-Ottoman order was marginalized; as correctly observed, "[t]he system was virtually designed to prevent the kinds of class and social conflicts that had necessitated the emergence of complex representative and democratic bodies in the West."3 Later on, during the Austro-Hungarian presence, the situation did not change substantially, and the Obrenović and Karadjordjević dynasties focused on militarization and irredentism, both prerequisite for consolidation of power and future expansionist aspirations, while democratic reforms lagged behind. In addition, prominent nationalists successfully manipulated local populations (largely peasant and undereducated) and used the good us vs. bad you/them narrative to spread fear and simultaneously offer protection, altogether aimed at furthering their own agenda. In the 20th century, Yugoslavia experienced a brief period of parliamentarianism, royal dictatorship, and then, in the post-1945 context, a communist regime with workers' councils and self-management as a backbone: "In theory, it was a kind of federalist direct democracy writ...