Anti-politics as ‘culture of rejection’: the case of Serbia

ABSTRACT

In this article, Fiket, Pudar Draško and Uroševic situate the notion of ‘anti-politics’ within a broader theory of ‘cultures of rejection’, redefining it as a specific culture of rejection in the political sphere. They describe the lack of participation of Serbian citizens in political life, their lack of trust in political actors, institutions, democratic procedures and, in the end, in democracy itself. They show how political elites constantly demonstrate the impotence of institutions through various examples of ‘institutional silence’, which leads to the further rejection of political engagement. The authors’ aim was to show that rejection of politics is a concept that offers an adequate theoretical framework for our empirical analyses and deeper understanding of the social phenomena reflected in the withdrawal from political life. They present the data from their qualitative research, based on interviews with the retail and logistics workers in Serbia as well as an ethnographic study of digital spaces that those workers often visit, where politics and culture meet in the discursive practices of everyday life.

KEYWORDS:

• anti-politics
• crisis
• cultures of rejection
• democracy
• distrust
• Serbia

Notes

1 Irena Fiket, Zoran Pavlović and Gazela Pudar Draško, ‘Cartography of political perceptions’, Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Belgrade report (online), December 2017, available at https://library.fes.de/pdf-files/bueros/belgrad/14006.pdf (viewed 13 September 2023); Jelena Pešić, Tamara Petrović Trifunović and Ana Birešev, ‘Politička kompetencija i konsolidacija kapitalizma u Srbiji: analiza (ne) davanja odgovora na stavove o poželjnom političkom i ekonomskom poretku’, in Mladen Lazić and Slobodan Cvejić (eds), Stratifikacijske promene u periodu konsolidacije kapitalizma u Srbiji (Belgrade: Univerzitet u Beogradu, Institut za sociološka istraživanja 2019), 247–74; Jelena Pešić, Ana Birešev, and Tamara Petrović Trifunović, ‘Political disaffection and disengagement in Serbia’, Sociologija, vol. 63, no. 2, 2021, 355–80.

2 Fiket, Pavlović and Pudar Draško, ‘Cartography of political perceptions’; Vujo Ilić and Darko Stojilović, Stavovi građana Srbije o učešću u demokratskim procesima 2020 (Belgrade: Center for Research, Transparency and Accountability 2020)

3 Besides procedural irregularities, observation missions have warned about constant government-directed negative campaigns against other political actors, heavily state-controlled media and the pressures put on voters and stakeholders by the ruling party in the election process.

4 Slaviša Orlović and Despot Kovačević (eds), Trideset godina obnovljenog višepartizma u Srbiji: (Ne)naučene lekcije, (Belgrade: Univerzitet u Beogradu, Fakultet političkih nauka Univerziteta i Centar za demokratiju Hanns Seidel Stiftung 2020).

5 Zoran Stojiljković, ‘Politički kapital i kultura (ne)poverenja: slučaj Srbija’, in Milan Podunavac (ed.), Ustav i demokratija u procesu transformacije (Belgrade: Univerzitet u Beogradu, Fakultet političkih nauka Udruženje za političke nauke Srbije 2011), 161–81 (164).

6 Irena Fiket and Gazela Pudar Draško, ‘Mogućnost vaninstitucionalne političke participacije unutar neresponsivnog sistema Srbije: uticaj (ne)poverenja i interne političke efikasnosti’, Sociologija, vol. 63, no. 2, 2021, 400–18.

7 ‘Membership of the ruling SNS [Srpska napredna stranka, Serbian Progressive Party] has grown to 730,000 members, making it the biggest party in Europe by far. In comparison, Germany’s CDU [Christlich Demokratische Union, Christian Democratic Union] party has ‘only’ 407,000 members, despite Germany being eleven times bigger than Serbia’: Maarten Lemstra, ‘The destructive effects of state capture in the Western Balkans: EU enlargement undermined’, Clingendael Institute Policy Brief, September 2020, 3, available at www.clingendael.org/sites/default/files/2020-09/Policy_brief_Undermining_EU_enlargement_Western_Balkans_September_2020.pdf (viewed 13 September 2023).

8 Slobodan Cvejić, ‘On inevitability of political clientelism in contemporary Serbia’, Sociologija, vol. 58, no. 2, 2016, 239–52; Branislav Radejić and Vladimir Đorđević, ‘Clientelism and the abuse of power in the Western Balkans’, Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies, vol. 22, no. 5, 2020, 597–612; Dragan Stanojević, Dragana Gundogan and Marija Babović, ‘Clientelistic relations between political elite and entrepreneurs in Serbia’, Sociologija, vol. 58, no. 2, 2016, 220–38.

9 Jelisaveta Petrović and Dragan Stanojević, ‘Political activism in Serbia’, Comparative Southeast European Studies, vol. 68, no. 3, 2020, 365–85.

10 CeSID, ‘Javno mnenje Srbije: Politički aktivizam građana Srbije’, CeSID (Center for Free Elections and Democracy) Report, June 2017, available at www.cesid.rs/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/POLITI%C4%8CKI-AKTIVIZAM-GRA%C4%90ANA-SRBIJE-2017.pdf (viewed 13 September 2023).

11 Stojiljković, ‘Politički kapital i kultura (ne)poverenja: slučaj Srbija’.

12 Bojan Todosijević and Zoran Pavlović, ‘Nepoverenje u demokratske institucije i podrška nedemokratskim sistemima vladavine: Populistički mehanizam’, in Zoran Lutovac (ed.), Populizam (Belgrade: Univerzitet u Beogradu, Institut društvenih nauka, Centar za politikološka istraživanja i javno mnjenje 2017), 67–85; Zoran Pavlović, ‘Prihvatanje demokratije i demokratske orijentacije u Srbiji u kontekstu društvenih promena’, Psihološka istraživanja, vol. 13, no. 1, 2010, 35–58; Zoran Pavlović, ‘Demokratska politicka kultura u Srbiji pre i posle demokratskih promena’, Nova srpska politička misao, vol. 16, no. 3–4, 2008, 157–76.

13 Ivana Spasić, ‘Političari kao apsolutni drugi: kako građani Srbije opisuju profesionalne političke delatnike’, in Podunavac (ed.), Ustav i demokratija u procesu transformacije, 181–93 (185–9).

14 Fiket and Pudar Draško, ‘Mogućnost vaninstitucionalne političke participacije unutar neresponsivnog sistema Srbije’.

15 Benjamin Opratko, Manuela Bojadžijev, Sanja M. Bojanić, Irena Fiket, Alexander Harder, Stefan Jonsson, Mirjana Nećak, Anders Neegaard, Celina Ortega Soto, Gazela Pudar Draško, Birgit Sauer and Kristina Stojanović Čehajić, ‘Cultures of rejection in the Covid-19 crisis’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, vol. 44, no. 5, 2021, 893–905.

16 Aleksandar Miladinović, ‘Protesti u Srbiji: Do kad se može na ulicu bez strategije’, BBC News (online), 13 July 2020, available at www.bbc.com/serbian/lat/srbija-53391679 (viewed 13 September 2020.)

17 Mladen Lazić, Čekajući kapitalizam: Nastanak novih klasnih odnosa u Srbiji (Belgrade: Službeni glasnik 2011).

18 Srđan Prodanović, Gazela Pudar Draško and Marija Velinov (eds), Otete institucije u Srbiji: Teorija i praksa (Belgrade: Univerzitet u Beogradu, Institut za filozofiju i društvenu teoriu 2019).

19 Gerry Stoker and Mark Evans, ‘The “democracy-politics paradox”: the dynamics of political alienation’, Democratic Theory, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014, 26–36; David Easton, ‘A re-assessment of the concept of political support’, British Journal of Political Science, vol. 5, no. 4, 1975, 435–57; David Easton, A Systems Analysis of Political Life (New York: John Wiley 1965); Nick Clarke, Will Jennings, Jonathan Moss and Gerry Stoker, The Good Politician: Folk Theories, Political Interaction, and the Rise of Anti-Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2018); John Boswell and Jack Corbett, ‘Stoic democrats? Anti-politics, élite cynicism and the policy process’, Journal of European Public Policy, vol. 22, no. 10, 2015, 1388–1405.

20 Bernard Crick, In Defense of Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1962).

21 Zoran Stojiljković and Dušan Spasojević, ‘Populistički Zeitgeist u “proevropskoj” Srbiji’, Politička misao: časopis za politologiju, vol. 55, no. 3, 2018, 104–28.

22 Henri Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life, Volume I: Introduction, trans. from the French by John Moore (London and New York: Verso 1991), 42.

23 Vanja Dolapčev, ‘A lack of transparency: the COVID-19 pandemic in Serbia’ (blog), 25 April 2020, available on the European Policy Centre website at https://cep.org.rs/en/blog/a-lack-of-transparency-the-covid-19-pandemic-in-serbia (viewed 13 September 2023).

24 Stoker and Evans, ‘The “democracy-politics paradox”; Easton, ‘A re-assessment of the concept of political support’; Easton, A Systems Analysis of Political Life; Clarke, Jennings, Moss and Stoker, The Good Politician; Boswell and Corbett, ‘Stoic democrats?’.

25 Crick, In Defense of Politics.

26 Joseph S. Nye Jr, Philip D. Zelikow and David C. King (eds), Why People Don’t Trust Government (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1997).

27 Torcal Mariano and José Ramón Montero, Political Disaffection in Contemporary Democracies: Social Capital, Institutions, and Politics (London and New York: Routledge 2006).

28 See Jacques Rancière, Hatred of Democracy, trans. from the French by Steve Corcoran (London and New York: Verso 2006); and Colin Crouch, Post-Democracy (Cambridge: Polity Press 2004).

29 See Slavoj Žižek, The Ticklish Subject (London: Verso Books 1999); and Chantal Mouffe, On the Political (London: Routledge 2005).

30 Matteo Truffelli and Lorenzo Zambernardi, ‘Taking modernity to extremes: on the roots of anti-politics’, Political Studies Review, vol. 19, no. 1, 2021, 96–110.

31 Vittorio Mete, ‘Four types of anti-politics: insights from the Italian case’, Modern Italy, vol. 15, no. 1, 2010, 37–61; Keith Popple, ‘Peter Somerville (2011), Understanding Community: Politics, Policy and Practice’, Journal of Social Policy, vol. 4, no. 1, 2011, 442–44; Colin Hay and Gerry Stoker, ‘Revitalising politics: have we lost the plot?’, Representation, vol. 45, no. 3, 2009, 225–36; Truffelli and Zambernardi, ‘Taking modernity to extremes’.

32 Alexander Harder and Benjamin Opratko, ‘Cultures of rejection at work: investigating the acceptability of authoritarian populism’, Ethnicities, vol. 22, no. 3, 2021, 425–45 (429).

33 Michel Foucault, ‘Questions of method’, in James D. Faubion (ed.), Power: The Essential Works of Foucault, 1954–1984, trans. from the French by Robert Hurley (New York: New Press 2001), 223–39 (225).

34 Martina Löw, The Sociology of Space: Materiality, Social Structures, and Action, trans. from the German by Donald Goodwin (New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2016), 188.

35 Peter J. S. Duncan, ‘Political alternatives on the western left: Podemos, Syriza, Sanders and Corbin’, in Peter J. S. Duncan and Elisabeth Schimpfössl (eds), Socialism, Capitalism and Alternatives: Area Studies and Global Theories (London: UCL Press 2019), 181–212.

36 Spasić, ‘Političari kao apsolutni drugi’, 188–9.

37 Andreas Schedler, ‘Introduction: Antipolitics—closing and colonizing the public sphere’, in Andreas Schedler (ed.), The End of Politics? Explorations into Antipolitics (Basingstoke: Macmillan/ New York: St Martin’s Press 1997), 1–20 (2). See also Easton, ‘A re-assessment of the concept of political support’; Easton, A Systems Analysis of Political Life; Clarke, Jennings, Moss and Stoker, The Good Politician; and Crick, In Defense of Politics.

38 Sladjana Danković and Paula M. Pickering, ‘Public scepticism of internationally supported civil society organisations: norms, citizen priorities, and local groups in post-socialist Serbia’, East European Politics, vol. 33, no. 2, 2017, 210–32.

39 Prodanović, Pudar Draško and Velinov, Otete institucije u Srbiji.

40 Marija Pantelic, ‘What were the protests in Serbia really about?’, Aljazeera Opinion (online), 21 July 2020, available at www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2020/7/21/what-were-the-protests-in-serbia-really-about (viewed 14 September 2023).

41 ‘Mass vaccination in Serbia starts today’, government press release, Belgrade, 19 January 2021, available at www.srbija.gov.rs/vest/en/166398/mass-vaccination-in-serbia-starts-today.php (viewed 14 September 2023).

42 Lejla Biogradlija Aksan and Furkan Abdula, ‘Low vaccination rates recorded in Western Balkan countries’, Anadolou Agency (online), 21 October 2021, available at www.aa.com.tr/en/latest-on-coronavirus-outbreak/low-vaccination-rates-recorded-in-western-balkan-countries/2397799#countries (viewed 14 September 2023).

43 Marija Vucic, ‘Hate, lies and vigilantes: Serbian “anti-vaxxer” brigade plays with fire: how vaccine doubts have put the handbrake on Serbia’s rapid rollout’, Balkan Insight (online), Belgrade, 21 September 2021, available at https://balkaninsight.com/2021/09/21/hate-lies-and-vigilantes-serbian-anti-vaxxer-brigade-plays-with-fire (viewed 14 September 2023).

44 Ivana Spasić, ‘Promene u Srbiji u perspektivi socijalnog učenja: retrospektiva jedne ideje’, Filozofija i društvo / Philosophy and Society, vol. 19, no. 37, 2008, 89–109.

45 ‘Brnabić o protestima: Ovo nema veze sa ekologijom’, Danas (online), 4 December 2021, available at www.danas.rs/vesti/politika/brnabic-o-protestima-ovo-nema-veze-sa-ekologijom (viewed 15 September 2023).

46 ‘Vučić: Protesti su politički, ali građani na njima zavređuju pažnju’, RTS (online), 29 December 2018, available at www.rts.rs/lat/vesti/politika/3372817/vucic-protesti-su-politicki-ali-gradjani-na-njima-zavredjuju-paznju.html` (viewed 15 September 2023).

47 Fiket and Pudar Draško, ‘Mogućnost vaninstitucionalne političke participacije unutar neresponsivnog sistema Srbije’; Miroslava Pudar, ‘Savo Manojlović: Pravnik u pokretu’, Danas (online), 30 November 2021 available at www.danas.rs/vesti/drustvo/savo-manojlovic-pravnik-u-pokretu (viewed 15 September 2023).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Irena Fiket

Irena Fiket is Senior Research Fellow and academic coordinator at the Laboratory for Active Citizenship at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade. Her current research interests are deliberative democracy, democratization, citizens’ participation, democratic innovation, social movements and the Western Balkans. She has published in journals such as Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, Italian Political Science Review, Javnost—The Public and European Union Politics. She is currently serving as academic coordinator of the Jean Monnet Network ‘Active Citizenship: Promoting and Advancing Innovative Democratic Practices in the Western Balkans’m and principal investigator of the Serbian team for the Horizon 2020 project EnTrust. Email: [email protected] http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3939-4089

Gazela Pudar Draško

Gazela Pudar Draško is a political sociologist, and director of the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory at the University of Belgrade. Her fields of interest are deliberative democracy, participatory democratic innovations, social movements and gender. Email: [email protected] http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8361-4144

Milan Urošević

Milan Urošević is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade and Professor of Sociology of Culture in the Faculty for Musical Arts at the University of Arts in Belgrade. He received his Ph.D. in Sociology from the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Belgrade. The topic of his dissertation was ‘Self-help Culture as a Technology of the Self: The Discourse Analysis of Contemporary Self-Help Manuals’. Email: [email protected] http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9754-0454