Hunger and Fury. The Crisis of Democracy in the Balkans

Enough studies have been written on democracy, or democratisation, and discontent to fill libraries. Typically, these studies highlight the valuable, or even essential contribution by the European Union to the consolidation of democracy if they deal with the newly independent successor states of Yugoslavia. A core argument has thus been a negative assessment of these societies’ capacities to democratise from within. With regard to Serbia, for example, democratisation began in earnest only with the ouster from office and then extradition to the International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) of Slobodan Milošević in 2000 and 2001 respectively, and this is usually claimed despite setbacks such as the stand-off of several oppositional parties, or the return of nationalist parties to power in recent years. In reality the optimistic claim has never been substantiated that Serbia’s democratisation is a chequered but irreversible process thanks to the EU membership perspective and the support from Brussels. Only a sizable minority of the literature on democracy in Southeastern Europe takes a more critical stance, for example by applying a postcolonial framework. In this perspective, Brussels and its imposed conditionalities rather wreck genuine democratisation and effective parliamentary participation in decision-making processes. Eurocrats rather than elected representatives of the people determine Serbia’s future in an undemocratic manner.

Jasmin Mujanović, a political scientist from Sarajevo who lives and works in New York, has to find his study its niche in this vast and polarised literature, of which a part is overly Euro-optimistic and another part sceptical of any international interference. The alternative perspective that Mujanović presents certainly is not an optimistic one, neither as far as the democratising power of the European perspective is concerned, nor in terms of a self-healing capacity of Serbia’s democracy, pervaded as it is by authoritarian tendencies and kleptocratic elites. It is the European context, however, which has most conspicuously changed in recent times: the rise of nationalist, xenophobic parties in the EU-27/28; the Polish and Hungarian authoritarian turn; as well as the antidemocratic examples of Moscow and Istanbul. Today, the latter two, moreover, directly and quite openly interfere with the electoral processes in democratic nations, and not least in the affairs of the neighbouring Balkan states.

Mujanović’s study is half historical and half an analysis of current politics. The first two chapters deal with the particularities of nation and state building in the Balkans and Tito’s Yugoslavia. The second half of the book addresses the above debate on democracy and democratisation in Serbia and its neighbours. In the final chapter, the author unfolds his raven-black prognoses for post-Yugoslav democracy. Indeed, Mujanović debunks the core assumptions of the optimistic view that the slow—but irreversible—progress of democracy is a done deal thanks to Brussels and the EU ‘as the only game in town’ (13). Arguably, neither kleptocratic politicians nor external wreckers are in the least concerned with democracy. The only hope the author displays is in the emergence in the 2010s of grass roots movements of genuine participation. While Mujanović’s narrative of Balkan exceptionalism, or of the centuries of warlords and brigands ruling the Balkans, may be overstated for the sake of his argument, the analysis of the present and outlook into the future is both illuminating and chilling.

The three antagonists on the current political scene of the Balkans are, first, external forces, be they Russian, Chinese, Arab, or Turkish, that are interested in economic profit and in thwarting the weakened EU’s illusions of construing ‘a ring of democratic well-governed friends’ (Roman Prodi). Second, there is the authoritarian and criminal political establishment; and third, the citizens, who have been pushing an agenda of radical participation. Mujanović coins the term ‘elastic authoritarianism’ as an idiosyncrasy of the Balkan political establishment that manages to continue its economic agenda of corruption and exploitation while flexibly adapting its political appearances. In his sweeping, albeit also disputable analysis, the ‘West’s’ genuine commitment to nurturing civil society in the Balkans has been thwarted by its short-term preference of stability over the risk that a more profound democratisation might nurture an unruly civil society. Mujanović argues that, unlike historical processes of democratisation elsewhere, the Balkan states have not seen any genuine instances of radical mass uprising against the political establishment. At the same time, he admits that the first instance of this phenomenon in former Yugoslavia, the Serbian Otpor movement and the ouster of Milošević in the year 2000, was short-lived, followed by various reactionary backlashes till today. Mujanović’s core argument is that imbuing the political culture with the conventions of popular opposition is what matters, not the content of their agendas or sustainability. Quite contradictorily, he names as proof that Otpor was genuine (rather than a CIA puppet) and its quick dissolution after the so-called Bulldozer Revolution. At the same time, he hails the Orange Revolution and Euromaidan in Ukraine as examples of establishing a culture of mass participation in politics. To be sure, the leaders and the masses of Euromaidan explicitly rejected the tradition of the Orange Revolution. No less inconsistently, the author argues that he expects the salutary uprising of the ‘plebes’ to occur in the most blatantly exploited and corrupted nation states: ‘hunger and fury’, precisely. However, following this statement is the one that the Slovenian protests of 2012 can be identified as a direct successor to Otpor, mainly because their leaders adopted an Otpor-style slogan. The contradiction, once more, is obvious, as the Slovenes undoubtedly are the most prosperous of the successor societies to Yugoslavia. What is more, to take the impact of street protests on shifts in parliamentary politics as a yardstick for the quality of civil society is highly questionable. The meteoric rise (and fall) of ‘popular’ parties has been typically assessed rather as a symptom of a malfunctioning democracy: be that King Simeon or Ataka in Sofia; the ‘Golden Dawn’ in Athens; or the ‘Five Stars Movement’ in Rome.

In sum, this is a wonderfully thought-provoking book; actually a pamphlet in some respects. One may disagree with Mujanović’s philosophical concepts of ‘democracy’ and ‘plebes’; one may question his sweeping historical generalisations and the implicit ‘catching up’ processes in the transition to democracy; one may (and probably should) find fault with his reshuffling and reinterpreting of the evidence from recent events in the Balkans. Be that as it may, many of Mujanović’s assertions may be overstated or controversial, but he certainly succeeds in reopening a debate long characterised by repetitions of either pessimism (the incompatibility of the Balkans and democracy) or optimism (the collusion of the EU perspective and democratisation). This book, moreover, is one of the first to address the emergence of new external forces (Ankara, Moscow, Beijing) in the Balkans, ending the EU’s illusion of being the only game in town.