Democratization and electoral violence in post-communism. A study of Montenegro

Abstract

Taking as its starting point the existing theoretical debate on electoral violence, this paper analyses election-related violence in Montenegro in the country’s post-communist era. The objective is to gather data concerning violence tied to national elections for president and parliament, and to identify patterns present in the data. The role played by electoral violence in Montenegro during the period of democratization is subsequently evaluated. The analytical portion of the discussion, follows target shortcomings in the existing theoretical framework and puts forward tentative ways in which they might be addressed. Aggregated data concerning electoral violence in Montenegro are provided in simple matrix form, ready for further analysis.

Keywords:

• Montenegro
• electoral violence
• democratization
• elections

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Erratum

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Věra Stojarová and two anonymous reviewers for their suggestions and comments.

Notes

1. Nenad Koprivica, Executive Director of the Centre for Democracy and Human Rights, says ‘Montenegro has never had problems with its minorities’ (pers. comm. 8 April 2013).

2. The terms electoral violence and election-related violence are treated as identical and employed as a single concept.

3. Some benefits of using the OSCE monitoring mission reports, (a) data validity of the indirect information is reinforced by having members of the mission check it continuously; (b) the data is durable – monitoring programmes have been conducted for more than two decades; (c) coverage usually, is usually over a fairly long time frame of a few months; (d) outcomes are presented using standardized reports amenable to further analysis; (e) any violence noted by the monitoring mission may be labelled straightaway as ‘electoral’, if links are confirmed to the organization of elections monitored by mission members; (f) report results are usually accepted by the governments concerned, as well as the international community; and (g) the level of ethnocentric bias is lower by virtue of the international character of the team used to monitor elections in a given country.

4. During the 1990s, the Montenegro political scene was characterized by a blurred division between the state and the ruling party, which may be seen as the natural heritage of the former socialist Yugoslavia (Bieber 2010, 119–121; Morrison 2009, 89–90).

5. League of Communists (56.18%, 83MP); United Reform Forces (13.56%, 17MP); People's Party (12.82%, 13MP); Democratic Coalition (10.8%, 12MP); and Others (3.8%) (Bieber 2003, 16).

6. DPS (43.78%, 46MP); People’s Party (13.08%, 14MP); Liberal Alliance (12.40%, 13MP); Serbian Radical Party (7.76%, 8MP); Social Democratic Party of Montenegro (4.53%, 4MP); and Others (18.40%) (Bieber 2003, 23).

7. The attack occurred in town Pljevlja on 4 October 2012.

8. Only one incident of provocation was reported by the media; however, no actual harm was done (Vijesti 2013b).

Additional information

Funding

Support for this research was provided by the Department of Political Science, Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University (specific research; rector's programme: Volby, politické strany a prosazování zájmů II; MUNI/A/0846/2013).