Big dreams and small steps: comparative perspectives on the social movement struggle for democracy in Serbia and North Macedonia

ABSTRACT

This paper provides a comparative analysis of social movements’ characteristics and capacities to struggle against illiberal tendencies and incite political change in Serbia and North Macedonia. First, we discuss the illiberal elements of political regimes in the countries in question, Serbia and North Macedonia. Then, we provide a comprehensive overview of progressive social movements in the two countries, formed and organized as a response to different authoritarian and non-democratic tendencies. Finally, we point to some differences in their organizing, coalition-forging and issue-defining principles, which, we believe, may help to explain the relative success of social movements in North Macedonia in producing relevant political outcomes, compared to the weak political impact of social movements in Serbia. Empirical data were collected during the summer of 2018 through in-depth interviews with members of social movements in North Macedonia and Serbia.     

Political mobilization in East Central Europe

This article provides an introduction to the special thematic section on political mobilization in East Central Europe. Based on a brief presentation of the main arguments of the individual articles, the authors discuss the recent political volatility in East Central Europe. They highlight the tension between fierce political rhetoric and populist policies on the one hand, and low levels of voter turnout and overall political participation in the region on the other. The authors argue that recent cases of successful as well as unsuccessful political mobilization in East Central Europe point to structural re-alignments in the region’s political landscape. In particular, the parties that are successful are those that manage to communicate their visions in new ways and whose messages resonate with nested attitudes and preferences of the electorate. These parties typically rally against the so-called establishment and claim for themselves an anti-hegemonic agenda. The introductory essay also asserts that these developments in East Central Europe deserve attention for their potential Europe-wide repercussions – especially the idea of “illiberal democracy,” which combines populist mobilization and autocratic demobilization and finds adherents also in more established European democracies.     

Macedonia after the 2001 conflict: towards social cohesion and reconciliation?

The paper aims to contribute to the on-going debate in the literature about reconciliation after an armed conflict through presentation of the Macedonian experience. It focuses upon the following questions: Is the Ohrid Framework Agreement (OFA), which put an end to the armed conflict in the country, supported by the process of reconciliation? Has the state found the right way to deal with the past? In order to answer the questions, the paper describes briefly the Agreement and the process of its implementation. In this context, it identifies the type of power-sharing system established by the OFA through analysis of the Agreement within the integrative and consociational theory. Then, the paper examines how the state dealt with the past. Further, it discusses the impact of the amnesty for grave crimes on reconciliation in the country using the existing literature. The paper argues that it is questionable whether the state chose the best approach to dealing with the past.     

Comparing public attitudes on EU membership in candidate countries: the cases of Croatia,Macedonia and Turkey from 2004 to 2011

Past enlargements of the European Union (EU) have demonstrated that public attitudes on European integration can influence the course of accession processes. Beyond the literature on public EU support in member states and former candidates, the dynamics that shape public attitudes on EU membership within recent candidate countries have not been systematically examined. Analysing nine Eurobarometer (EB) surveys from 2004 to 2011, we argue that evaluations of EU membership in Croatia, Macedonia and Turkey are shaped by utilitarian considerations, belief in various political institutions as well as the fear of losing national identity. The economic crisis of 2008 has changed public opinion towards EU membership in all three countries, but Turkey appears to have been affected the most compared to Croatia and Macedonia.     

Cyprus and EU enlargement to the Western Balkans: a balancing act*

Abstract

Cyprus’ commitment to the European perspective of the Western Balkans is shaped by a range of factors. As well as balancing its national interests, it also aims to stand by a ‘position of principles’ on conflict issues. It equally seeks to be a reliable partner to the EU and move closer to its Western allies, while accommodating its Eastern ones. Nevertheless, over the last 10 years, Nicosia has Europeanised its policies and thinking. This has seen it reach out to Kosovo to try and build de facto relations. However, since the ‘national problem’ remains at the core of its foreign policy, relations with ‘motherland’ Greece are also key. This has in turn complicated dealings with the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. Overall, Cyprus remains more firmly focused on the Middle East, making it a rather peripheral actor in the Western Balkan countries’ EU integration process.     

Challenges to democracy building and the role of civil society

This article addresses the issue of the challenges of democracy building and the role of civil society in this process by focusing on three countries in southeastern Europe, Albania, Bulgaria, and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. Since the 1990s, when these three post-communist states undertook the democratization process, formidable challenges and obstacles to the democratization process have been encountered by all three states which facilitates a comparative analysis, while differences remain as well, especially since Bulgaria became a member of the European Union in 2007. The development of an indigenous civil society is perceived as both a necessary prerequisite for a qualitative democracy to develop and be maintained in these societies, and as a project under construction that needs to be culturally contextualized to be relevant to the population it purports to serve.     

Institutional and symbolic aspects of illiberal politics: the case of North Macedonia (2006–2017)

ABSTRACT

The paper discusses the underlying characteristics of Macedonian illiberal politics during the 11-year rule of the centre-right party VMRO-DPMNE (2006–2017) focusing on two aspects: institutional and symbolic. We argue that the unfair political competition was enabled by the weakness of pre-existing institutions and the population’s clientelist preferences, which were systematically exploited and expanded by VMRO-DPMNE. We also argue that the multi-ethnic character of the country, the disputed Macedonian national identity and the lack of viable international prospects allowed VMRO-DPMNE to construct a strong nationalist narrative that appealed to voters and further isolated the opposition.     

Mitochondrial DNA control region population data from Macedonia

Mitochondrial DNA sequences of the entire control region were analyzed in 200 unrelated individuals from Macedonia. A total of 163 different haplotypes were found as determined by 177 polymorphic sites. The probability of a random match was calculated as 1:121 (0.83%). The basic phylogenetic structure of the Macedonian population as derived from its haplogroup distribution is in agreement with other West-Eurasian populations. Upon publication, the population data are going to be available in the EMPOP database (www.empop.org) [W. Parson, A. Dür, EMPOP—a forensic mtDNA database, FSI:Genetics 1 (2) (2007) 88–92; W. Parson, A. Brandstätter, A. Alonso, N. Brandt, B. Brinkmann, A. Carracedo, et al., The EDNAP mitochondrial DNA population database (EMPOP) collaborative exercises: organisation, results and perspectives, Forensic Sci. Int. 139 (2–3) (2004) 215–226.].     

Constitutional courts as arbiters of post-conflict territorial self-government: Bosnia and Macedonia

Constitutional and supreme courts frequently end up examining the political and legal questions at the heart of peace agreements and post-conflict constitutions. Where a peace agreement has included territorial self-government (TSG) provisions courts are often endowed with the capacity to adjudicate disputes between state and sub-state levels of government. The effectiveness of courts in fulfilling this role as not been comprehensively examined. This article fills this important gap examining whether the results of existing research on the role of constitutional and supreme courts in resolving disputes in traditional federalism also apply in these particular circumstances. It finds that where TSG is used as a conflict management mechanism judicial review can have centralizing tendencies if this occurs it can largely be attributed to the processes used to select though the devolutionary multinational nature of the states is also relevant.     

Regulating party politics in the Western Balkans: the legal sources of party system development in Macedonia

Party regulation in general and its systemic consequences in particular have not been a matter of concern for scholars until very recently. Despite recent efforts to study how political parties are regulated in post-authoritarian democracies and in conflict-prone societies, the question of how party legislation affects party formation and party system development in the Western Balkans still remains a mystery. Adopting a multi-disciplinary (that is, legal and political) approach, this article attempts to fill a gap in the literature by analysing how different party (finance) regulations shaped the party system in Macedonia, one of Europe's most recent (and under-researched) democracies, while controlling for changes in electoral regimes. There are two main findings. On the one hand, registration requirements had the strongest impact on the party system format, even when the electoral system pushed in the opposite direction. On the other, public funding, rather than “cartelizing” the system, mainly facilitated the survival of (both big and small) parties. Finally, the article also points to the need to explore the role of shadow financing and corruption when analysing the effects of party finance in new democracies.