The political economy behind the gradual demise of democratic institutions in Serbia

ABSTRACT

This paper aims to accomplish two goals. First, to present recent empirical evidence supporting the claim that Serbia is on the path towards embracing a more radical version of electoral authoritarianism. This is accomplished by examining most recent illiberal politics aimed at controlling electoral processes and the media sphere, and extracting public funds for partisan purposes. I claim that the incomplete design of democratic institutions in Serbia set up between 2001 and 2012 is primarily responsible for the democratic decline. The second goal is more general and aims to emphasize the importance of extracting public funds for hybrid regimes. Extractive institutions matter because they directly impact other critical segments of electoral authoritarianism (notably, elections and media freedom), but also because they explain the type of leadership they promote in politics. If public resources remain without proper institutional oversight and are simply ‘up for grabs,’ this will attract leaders more willing to dismantle democratic institutions and violate democratic procedures. Serbia serves as a good and current example of this linkage.

KEYWORDS:

• Electoral authoritarianism
• Serbia
• Aleksandar Vučić
• illiberal politics
• competitive authoritarianism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. This term is borrowed from Greene (2007). Some level of incumbency advantage is inevitable even in democratic systems. Hyper-incumbency goes beyond this, indicating a massive abuse of public posts and resources in favour of the incumbent.

2. I borrow the concept of extractive institutions from Acemoglu and Robinson (2012). Extractive institutions hamper economic growth and lead to stagnation and poverty. Such institutional design allows one group of people privileged access to the nation’s public and private resources.

3. This is why some authors call such regimes competitive authoritarianism (Levitsky and Way 2010). Electoral authoritarianism is a term proposed by Andreas Schedler (2006). I take these two concepts – electoral and competitive authoritarianism – to be cognates.

4. See Section 6 in this article for details.

5. Nations in Transit’s score for one year always reflect the previous years’ events. Therefore, a gradual decline that can be observed in the year 2014 actually took place in 2013. Freedom House’s methodology for constructing the score can be accessed here: https://freedomhouse.org/report/nations-transit-methodology .

6. I selected these four categories because they reflect the major areas of manipulations in EAs, thus constituting the essence of illiberal politics (see Kapidžić, 2020).

7. Identical pattern applies to the Vojvodina Assembly which appoints the RTV supervisory board.

8. The incumbents deliberately keep the REM Council incomplete, and appoint people who had poor, or no experience in broadcasting and sometimes media in general. At the end of 2018, the Serbian Assembly, with no official explanation, still failed to elect the three missing members of the REM Council, including the head of the Council. Out of six members, two previously had no professional journalistic or media experience (one previously worked in an association for the deaf, and the other as a clinical psychologist). Although this is a regulatory body that should not reveal its political preferences, one of the members is constantly quarrelling with several opposition leaders.

9. http://uns.org.rs/sr/desk/UNS-news/42197/vucicevic-septembarski-tiraz-informera-106-603-lista-danas-3-966.html.

10. The Belgrade Waterfront contract itself was made public in 2015, but the details contained by the Belgrade Waterfront Investment Plan are still a secret. This Plan contains the detailed cost structure.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministry of Education and Science, Republic of Serbia [179076].

Notes on contributors

Dušan Pavlović

Dušan Pavlović is a political economist. He has taught at the Faculty of political science, University of Belgrade in Serbia since 2005. His areas of interest are political economy of democratic institutions, rational and public choice theory. His latest book is Money Wasting Machine. Five Months in the Ministry of Economy (in Serbian).