Crossing the line: partisan party assistance in post-Milošević Serbia

Abstract

This contribution explores one of the most widely discussed examples of pro-democracy international intervention: regime change in Serbia. It takes the contemporary scholarship on regime change one step further, however, examining not only the international effort leading up to Milošević's ouster, but also, and most importantly, that which followed. As is explained, despite the widely cited premise that democracy aid to political parties does not seek to determine electoral outcomes, political party assistance in Serbia has often been designed to do precisely that. The study examines how partisan party aid has detracted from donors' larger efforts to promote democracy abroad. In so doing, it demonstrates that a partisan approach to party aid has the potential not only to compromise the legitimacy of democracy's promotion abroad, but also to undermine fledgling democratic processes in post-authoritarian states. In such circumstances, partisan party assistance may very well be less desirable than no party assistance at all.

Keywords:

• political party assistance
• Serbia
• regime change
• democratization

Notes

Acronyms frequently employed throughout this contribution include: CeSID – Center for the Free Elections and Democracy; DOS – Democratic Opposition of Serbia; DS – Democratic Party; DSS – Democratic Party of Serbia, FES – Friedrich Ebert Stiftung; GOTV – Get Out the Vote; IRI – International Republican Institute; KAS – Konrad Adenauer Stiftung; NDI – National Democratic Institute; NGO – non-governmental organization; SNS – Serbian Progressive Party; SPS – Socialist Party of Serbia; SRS – Serbian Radical Party; ZES – For a European Serbia.

C.f. Bunce and Wolchik, ‘Favourable Conditions and Electoral Revolutions’, 12–14; Carothers, ‘Ousting Foreign Strongmen’, 1–7; Kuzio, ‘Civil Society, Youth and Societal Mobilization in Democratic Revolutions, 365–86.

Kumar, ‘Reflections on International Political Party Assistance’, 506.

Burnell, Building Better Democracy: Why Parties Matter, 6–8.

C.f. Lipset, ‘The Indispensability of Political Parties’, 48–55; Schmitter, ‘Twenty-Five Years, Fifteen Findings’, 23–24.

Carothers, Confronting the Weakest Link, 3–20.

Ibid., 142.

USAID, USAID Policy Paper: Democracy and Governance, Section III, 12–13.

NIMD, NIMD: Partner in Democracy, 1.

As quoted by WFD Chief Executive David French in: WFD, Annual Review 2002/3, 5.

Author's interview with FES representative, conducted on 10 May 2007 in Berlin, Germany.

Weissenbach, ‘Political Party Assistance in Transition: The German ‘Stiftungen’ in Sub-Saharan Africa'.

Author's interview with former FES Director for Serbia, conducted on 22 September 2009 (phone).

NDI, A Guide to Political Party Development, 19.

NDI, Minimum Standards for Democratic Functioning of Political Parties, 12.

Interview with USAID officer in Washington, DC conducted on 12 April 2007.

Interview with US State Department officer in Washington, DC conducted on 20 April 2007.

There are exceptions to this rule. The Alfred Mozer Stichting, for example, worked with communist successor parties in Poland and Hungary almost immediately after regime change.

Carothers, Confronting the Weakest Link, 153–6.

Please refer also to the studies by Hulsey (‘“Why Did They Vote for Those Guys Again?”’) and Nenadović (‘An Uneasy Symbiosis’) in this collection. There are, however, exceptions to this rule. In Kosovo, for example, party aid providers have worked freely with the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo, despite the party's strong links to the Kosovo Liberation Army.

Kumar, ‘Reflections on International Political Party Assistance’, 520.

Burnell, Building Better Democracy: Why Parties Matter, 11.

Such documents include the Quarterly Reports, Annual Workplans, and grant agreements issued by NDI and IRI to their chief donor, USAID. Such data was obtained primarily through the US Freedom of Information Act.

Levitsky and Way, ‘Elections without Democracy: The Rise of Competitive Authoritarianism’. For more on Serbia, see also: Gordy, The Culture of Power in Serbia; Thomas, The Politics of Serbia in the 1990s; Bieber, ‘The Serbian Opposition and Civil Society: Roots of the Delayed Transition in Serbia’; Batt, ‘The Question of Serbia’.

By 2001, Freedom House had labelled Serbia an electoral democracy (Freedom House, 2003). By 2009, Serbia was considered ‘free’ according to Freedom House's Freedom in the World Survey.

This is in spite of the fact that both Slobodan Milošević and Vojislav Šešelj were extradited to The Hague in 2001 and 2003, respectively, on charges of war crimes.

William Montgomery, ‘Let's Stop Talking about a Democratic Block in Serbia’, b92, 21 May 2007, http://www6.b92.net/eng/news/in_focus.php?id=152&start=0&nav_id=41324 (accessed October 21, 2010).

The speed of Nikolić's concession is all the more surprising when one takes into account the close nature of 2008's electoral contest. Nikolić lost by just two percentage points, after having won the first round of presidential elections held several weeks earlier. By contrast, it took Ukraine's Yulia Tymoshenko six days to concede her defeat to Victor Yanukovych after it was determined that she had lost 2010's presidential race by more than three percentage points.

In my interviews from 2007 onwards, many practitioners privately confided their own doubts concerning the partisan approach to party aid. Yet all felt powerless to bring about a change in policy, citing the issue as being ‘above one's pay-grade’. In fact, the decision seems to have been largely driven by the US Embassy, with Ambassador Polt barring all American engagements with SRS and SPS officials. For more on this, please refer to: Spoerri, ‘US Policy Towards Ultranationalist Political Parties in Serbia: The Policy of Non-Engagement Examined’.

The party aid community made several initial ventures into Serbia during the very early 1990s. Given, however, that Yugoslavia was then embroiled in a violent civil war, no large-scale assistance programs were developed until the second half of the decade.

Regime change is understood here to mean the transfer for rule from one form of government to another, in this case from semi-authoritarian to electoral democratic rule. Though in Serbia's case regime change has been treated synonymously with Milošević's ouster, in fact, regime change need not require the unseating of a given leader, but rather the unseating of a given form of government.

Author's interview with Thomas C. Adams, Coordinator of US Assistance to Europe and Eurasia, conducted on 19 April 2007 in Washington, DC.

Author's interview with former FES Director of Serbia, opting to remain anonymous, conducted 22 September 2009.

C.f. Carothers, ‘Ousting Foreign Strongmen’; Bunce and Wolchik, ‘Favourable Conditions and Electoral Revolutions’; Birch, ‘The 2000 Elections in Yugoslavia: The ‘Bulldozer Revolution’; Schoen, The Power of the Vote.

In the aftermath of the political change the distributors of US aid credited their assistance for having played a ‘key role’ in this by providing Serbia's citizens ‘the tools [they] needed to liberate themselves’ (SEED, SEED Act Implementation Report Fiscal Year 2000, 1, 149). Similarly, the Office of Transition Initiative (OTI) identified its assistance as one of but three factors accounting for the ‘surprising and extraordinary defeat of Milošević (OTI, Final Evaluation of OTI's Program in Serbia-Montenegro, 2). Scholars have offered similar, if less hyperbolic, praise of the foreign aid effort. C.f. McFaul, The National Endowment for Democracy's Program in Serbia Surrounding the Breakthrough Elections of 2000; Carothers, ‘Ousting Foreign Strongmen’; Bunce and Wolchik, ‘Favourable Conditions and Electoral Revolutions’; Birch, ‘The 2000 Elections in Yugoslavia: The ‘Bulldozer Revolution’.

Author's interview with Michael Weichert, former FES Director Serbia, conducted on 22 September 2009 (phone). This enthusiasm is also reflected in: FES, 10 Godina u Srbiji.

Author's interview with Robert Benjamin, NDI Director of Central and Eastern Europe, conducted on 19 April 2007 in Washington, DC.

Ibid.

Ibid.

In the months leading up to December 2003's elections, NDI reported that the ‘parties of the Milošević regime are clearly on the wane’ (NDI, Quarterly Report April–June 2003). The SPS, it predicted, would fail to pass the electoral threshold, while its ultranationalist counterpart, the SRS, was ‘losing support’ (NDI, Quarterly Report April–June 2003).

As one party aid practitioner remarked, DOS ‘parties fell victim to a phenomenon you've seen just about everywhere in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, which is to say that expectations were higher than they could deliver once they were in government’. Author's interview with former IRI Serbia Resident Director, 6 April 2008 in Washington, DC.

If in 2003 for every $1 spent on economic development, $2.2 was spent on democratic development; by 2006 those numbers were reversed: for every $1 spent on democracy, $2.5 was dedicated to the economy.

This is evident in NDI and IRI Quarterly Reports, the evaluations of the Stiftungen, as well as the author's conversations with party aid practitioners.

In semi-presidential systems such as Serbia's, party aid is frequently directed both at political parties as well as presidential candidates, who, more often than not, are political party leaders. By virtue of these candidates' close affiliation with their respective parties, party aid to presidential candidates often directly influences parties themselves. Party members are not only the beneficiaries of their presidential candidates' success, but are directly involved in their campaigns – mounting GOTV efforts, providing the necessary electoral infrastructure, and bearing the financial burden.

NDI, Serbia: Demographic Analysis for Voter Targeting.

NDI, Quarterly Report April–June 2004.

IRI, Quarterly Report April–June 2004.

Ibid.

This was confirmed in interviews with US aid providers and political party aid practitioners. As one party aid practitioner commented, ‘The “surge” for SRS was more apparent than real, when viewed from this perspective. Voters were seldom persuaded to switch from ex-DOS parties to SRS or SPS. However, voters did move in quite large numbers into and out of abstention.’ Author's interview with former party aid practitioner (by email), 16 March 2009.

Author's interview with former NDI Resident Director of Serbia (by email), 16 March 2009. This point was also reiterated in NDI's evaluation of its NED-sponsored ‘Demographic Analysis for Voter Targeting’ project. In its words, ‘since turnout among democratic voters wavers more than support for the nationalist parties, targeting practices that address absenteeism provide a fundamental advantage for the democratic parties’ (NDI, Serbia: Demographic Analysis for Voter Targeting).

Author's interview with former party aid practitioner (by email), 16 March 2009.

IRI Quarterly Report July–September 2004, emphasis added.

IRI Quarterly Report January–March 2004, emphasis added.

Author's interview with Ana Manojlović, FES Programme Coordinator for Serbia, conducted on 6 March 2007 in Belgrade.

IRI Quarterly Report January–March 2006 and NDI, Workplan – Country: Serbia June 1, 2004–May 31, 2005. In its annual work plan for 2004–2005, NDI pledged to concentrate on the following three areas: ‘assisting democratic political parties in contesting presidential, municipal and possible early parliamentary elections, striving to stem the tide of radical political support, while bolstering democratic forces before and after elections (NDI, Workplan – Country: Serbia June 1, 2004–May 31, 2005, emphasis added).

Tom Kelly, as quoted in: NDI, ‘Review of Parliamentary Elections in Serbia’, 2.

Bussey, ‘Campaign Finance Goes Global’, 75.

IRI, Quarterly Report July–September 2006 Serbia; see also NDI, Quarterly Report October–December 2006.

Author's interview with former Director of Democracy and Governance, USAID Serbia, conducted on 2 March 2007, in Belgrade, Serbia.

IRI, Quarterly Report April–June 2004.

IRI, Associate Award No. 169-A-00-06-00103-00, 24.

NDI, Workplan – Country: Serbia June 1, 2006–May 31, 2007.

IRI, Quarterly Report April–June 2008.

C.f. Bob Woodward, ‘Findings Link Clinton Allies to Chinese Intelligence’, Washington Post, February 10, 1998, A01.

Moveon.org now lists US citizenship or US permanent residency as a requirement for all donations. See: https://pol.moveon.org/donate/email.html (accessed October 21, 2010).

Goati, Partije i Partijski Sistemi u Srbiji, 182–4; Pavlović and Antonić, Konsolidacija Demokratskih Ustanova u Srbiji Posle 2000 Godine, 275; Orlović, Politićki život Srbije, 402–3; Stojiljković, Partijkski Sistem Srbije.

Pavlović and Antonić, Konsolidacija Demokratskih Ustanova u Srbiji Posle 2000 Godine, 279.

This was confirmed in interviews with US party aid practitioners.

IRI, Serbia June 2006, 60.

IRI, Quarterly Report January–March 2008.

IRI, Quarterly Report April–June 2008.

Ibid.

USAID, Letter to Mr Craner Associate Award No. 169-A-00-06-00103-00.

IRI, Quarterly Report January–March 2007.

C.f. Djurković, Srbija 2000–2006, 55.

The public opinion poll, conducted on 13–20 April 2008, included 2732 respondents. CeSID, Public Opinion Survey, 12.

Author's interview with SRS member wishing to remain anonymous, conducted on 15 March 2007 in Belgrade.

C.f. CeSID, Public Opinion Survey; and IRI, Serbia June 2006.

IRI, Quarterly Report April–June 2004.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Author's interview with former officer of the US Embassy Belgrade conducted on 25 April 2009.

Author's interview with Michael Weichert, former FES Director of Serbia, conducted 22 September 2009.