Western Balkans Regimes Between European Democracy and Autocracy

Abstract

The Regime Index has divided 45 European countries into five categories according to the level of their democracy. The Western European countries and some of the states that experienced Communist regimes in the past are “liberal democracies”, Mitteleuropa is dominated by “liberalising democracies” and almost the whole of the Western Balkans is “Populist democracy”, with Bosnia-Herzegovina joining some post-Soviet states and Turkey as “populist autocracy”. Azerbaijan and Belarus are “full autocracies in the Regime Index. Hungary, Turkey, Serbia, and Poland are described as “autocratizing states”. It is competitive authoritarianism that is possibly a good description of the hybrid regimes in the Western Balkans. All countries share several of the characteristics of failing democratic institutions. Widespread clientelism keeps the same elites in power who make use of the status-quo that keeps them out of the EU but permanently in the position of “making progress” in European integrations. European institutions refrain from confronting “budding autocrats of the Balkans”. This is how stabilitocracy has been developed across the Western Balkans. Europe has chosen stability over democracy in this region. All six Western Balkans countries are run or have been recently governed by autocrats creating suppressed societies.KeywordsDemocracyAutocracyStabilitocracyPopulistLiberalAutocrat