To resist or not to resist: “Skopje 2014” and the politics of contention in North Macedonia

ABSTRACT

The urban project “Skopje 2014” was not particularly welcomed by citizens, however, despite the popular discontentment, and controversial implementation, it did not instigate mass resistance at its outset. We analyze the role of social activism, the state's deployed strategy of coercion, and the inability to form a broader unity to contest the project at its outset. Subsequently, we contextualize the project within the social movements that emerged between 2013-2016. By juxtaposing two periods, we explain why mass resistance occurred in 2016 but not at the project's outset, analyzing the activist scene, the political landscape and the nature of the regime.

KEYWORDS:

• Colorful revolution
• authoritarianism
• social movements
• Skopje 2014
• North Macedonia
• city

Introduction

In 2010, the mayor of Skopje announced in a short video presentation a massive urban revamp of Skopje’s city center, which included the building of over 25 new neoclassical and baroque objects, and over 150 monuments and sculptures in the framework of a project dubbed “Skopje 2014”, envisioning a wholesale reconstruction of the city centre, along the river Vardar. Apart from this, the video presentation revealed an intention to baroque-ise existing objects, mostly built after the devastating earthquake that hit the town in 1963. The project found ideological inspiration in the glory times of Alexander the Great and his ancient kingdom family, to which massive monuments have been dedicated. Other narratives, such as committed anti-communism, conservatism, exclusive ethno-nationalism, also found their place in the heart of the city (Koteska 2011). The project stirred controversies as it is seen as top-down and a strictly mono-ethnic undertaking in a city historically populated by different nationalities and religions. The 2002 census data show that 66% identified as Macedonians in Skopje, followed by 20% Albanians, 5% Roma, and the rest is composed of other nationalities.

The project did not have widespread support and the authorities did not engage in any public consultation, yet there was very disconcerted opposition to it. While protests were held in 2009 to oppose the building of a church on Skopje’s main square, they were quickly subsumed within a context where the rally was suppressed by organizing counter-protests supported by government’s friendly media to showcase the determination of the state to redesign the urban character of the capital (Ignatova 2009). The protesters in opposition to the Skopje 2014 project failed to attract wider support in the context in which the suppressive nature of the regime made any attempts to oppose it difficult by creating an environment characterised by fear and powerlessness. However, this changed when students protested against reforms in the higher education laws in 2014, which would endanger university autonomy. The 2014 Student Movement (Pollozhani 2016) led to concessions by the government, which marked the first time the government authorities acknowledged and chose to engage with activists, thus enabling an opening in the political opportunity structures (Tilly 1978; Tarrow 2011; Kriesi 2004). This article will show how the nature of the regime and the changing political opportunities firstly hindered and then enabled contentious action in opposition to the regime through the reclamation of the city space. This analysis will be placed within a larger framework of democratisation as “spatial citizens engage and reclaim public spaces in their quest for democracy” (Sbicca and Perdue 2013, 3). Thus the two periods analysed display both a shift from authoritarianism towards democracy and a move from a repressive repertoire (Johnston 2015) of contention towards more open and critical forms of contention.

Framing the research: Skopje 2014 and politics of contention in North Macedonia

The literature on social movements and protests has burgeoned in the last decades (e.g. Tilly and Wood 2013; Della Porta and Diani 2015). Scholars have extensively explored different socio-political processes and agencies in relation to the emergence of social movements, looking at the cultural contexts, networks, resources, the role of leadership, agency and ideas in shaping social action (Snow and Benford 2000; Snow, Soule and Kriesi 2004; Tarrow 2011). Scholars' focus expanded geographically, thus advancing the knowledge on the emergence and persistence of social movements and politics of protest. Over the last decade, the region of South-eastern Europe has witnessed social resistance and mass public demonstrations (Bieber and Brentin 2019; Fagan and Sircar 2017). Athens and Istanbul’s Gezi Park protests have evoked global interest (Milan and Oikonomakis 2019). Other major cities in the Balkans have shown resistance too, albeit motivated by different goals and reasons. While the literature has fairly advanced our knowledge on social resistance politics, the causes for the lack or low social mobilisation have received less attention in the scholarship.

When it comes to the project Skopje 2014, the urban undertaking has been studied from different academic disciplines, attracting scholars dealing with nationalism and mobilisation (Stefoska and Stojanov 2017; Janev 2011; Dimova 2013) neoliberalism and nation-branding, (Graan 2013; 2016; Véron 2021), urban space and the authoritarian background (Mattioli 2020; Blazhevski 2021; Čamprag 2019) to scholars dealing with the urban aspect (Grcheva 2018; Mojanchevska 2020). The role of artistic performances and grassroots organisations that emerged as a result of the new urban project have also attracted scholars’ interest (Mattioli 2014a; Véron 2016).

While scholars acknowledged the lack of critical mass for political action by the groups involved in resisting the massive urban redevelopment of Skopje (Mattioli 2014a, 82), they do not systematically discuss the causes for the absence of a larger social and political resistance against the project, which was largely disliked by Skopje’s citizens. The popular narrative about the politics of protest in North Macedonia, often encountered in informal discussion, holds that the reluctance to protest represents a sign of cultural and political apathy to express resistance against political elites. However, the massive protests against the VMRO-DPMNE¹ government in 2014, 2015 and 2016 have challenged this perception (Petkovski and Nikolovski 2016; Stefanovski 2021). In fact, during that period the country and the capital have seen unprecedented mobilisation of several social organisations and categories, from students, sex workers, artists, to more diverse and comprehensive movements that challenged Nikola Gruevski’s government daily. The so-called Sharena Revolucija [Colorful Revolution], a movement that emerged in support of the Special Prosecutors Office (SPO) and against the rising authoritarianism and corruption in the country in 2016, played an important role in challenging and discrediting the former government. The work of the SPO was endangered by a blanket pardon issued by President Ivanov (Marusic 2016), which prompted activists to take to the streets in defense of rule of law and SPO, marking the start of the Colorful Revolution (Револуција 2016).

The movement was characterised by its social diversity and heterogeneity of discourses and demands. Besides containing calls for freedom, justice and solidarity (Rizankoska and Trajkoska 2019), the movement incorporated the grievances against the project Skopje 2014 by throwing color balloons on the objects and buildings built as part of Skopje 2014. In addition, it was supported by opposition political parties, thus playing an important role in the movement’s endurance. The resentment towards Gruevski’s government led up to the creation of the platform called “Citizens for Macedonia,” which included “seventy nongovernmental organisations”, over 15 political parties and thousands of unaffiliated citizens (Stefanovski 2021, 211). Such mass, inclusive and persistent mobilisation failed to emerge against the monumental revamp of Skopje prior to the Colorful Revolution, despite the highly corrupted nature of the project, the high costs (publicly financed), exclusion of the citizens from the planning, and the popular disapproval of this urban undertaking (Kolozova et al. 2013; Blazhevski 2021).

The paper draws theoretically on social movement theory (Tarrow 2011; Snow and Benford 2000; della Porta and Diani 2006). The first part of the paper examines the reasons for the lack of mass social mobilisation against Skopje 2014 in the context of the large popular disapproval of the project. Besides the successful attempt of Gruevski’s government to crack down any opposition to the project by relying on various political and coercive strategies, we look also at the existing grassroots movements and their engagement in the project, the role of the political oppositions, attempting to understand our research goal in the wider sociopolitical context in North Macedonia. The second part of the paper analyses the Colorful Revolution within the context of the city and the relation to it. Namely, the Colorful Revolution became famous for the coloured balloons and hoses that demonstrators threw and sprinkled on governmental buildings. Although the claims of the movement were not related to the city specifically, the way that Skopje 2014 was built and developed was one of the reasons which made several activists become involved in the movement. Namely, city itself became a crucial element to framing the repertoire of contention for the movement as it both influenced the methods that the activists chose and formed an important part of the motivation behind their activism.

The study contextualises the research against the backdrop of rising authoritarianism and populism during Gruevski’s rule between 2006 and 2016, the popular discontent with the project and its exclusive mono-ethnic character. We rely on interviews with activists, secondary sources, as well as participant observation of the Colorful Revolution protests during 2016. The interviews with activists were conducted in three different intervals, one phase was conducted in 2016 during the protests, the second phase was conducted two years after, and the last round of interviews was conducted in 2021. The participant observation involved attending the protests in Skopje during 2016 and the observations are taken from notes on the development of the protests at that time. The analysis reflects the views and experiences of the various activists having attended or organised the contentious actions and protests. Their views of the protest as well as the context they inhabited provide for a closer investigation of the mechanisms and the decisions behind mobilisation or its lack thereof. Looking at the causes for the lack of a broader social and political mobilisation, this study seeks to advance the knowledge on civic engagement in a post-socialist context, but also to direct the attention to other political subjects and processes that have been overlooked by the scholarship dealing with Skopje 2014 and social mobilisation in North Macedonia.

Contextualizing the research

Skopje 2014 was implemented in the context of what scholars conceptualise as a “competitive authoritarian regime”, where democracy is institutionalised and elections represent the “opening” for a regime change, but at the same time, the democratic institutions are bypassed through informal channels (Levitsky and Way 2010; Bieber 2020). In the period between 2006 and 2015, the country has seen a consistent decline in the democratic index, most notably the media freedom, civil liberties and judicial independence (Ristevska 2015). When Skopje 2014 was announced in 2010, the VMRO-DPMNE party controlled both the national and local level government, exercising power in the major municipalities in Skopje. Labels such as illiberal regime (Gjuzelov and Ivanovska Hadjievska 2020), Gruevism, authoritarian populism (Petkovski 2016), ethnocracy (Janev 2011), competitive authoritarian regime (Bieber 2018) were applied to understand the nature of the regime that gradually was intensifying its populist and authoritarian course.

The illiberal and populist turn affected also processes related to urban space, the implementation of which was highly non-transparent, being designed exclusively in a top-down manner, and micro-managed by the former prime minister Nikola Gruevski. Besides the authoritarian background, the project Skopje 2014 drew criticism due to its ethnonational character and absence of monuments representing Albanian culture (Marusic and Andonovska 2016). The city has been physically divided by the river Vardar, which is also seen as a symbol of division between Macedonians and Albanians, with the former living mostly in the southern part of the city and the latter in the north (Mattioli 2014b). Since the resolution of the inter-ethnic conflict in 2001, the state is shaped by a power-sharing model that makes the political landscape more complex. Political parties use ethnic politics and have traditionally resorted to nationalistic rhetoric to win elections (Piacentini 2019b). The Albanian political establishment since the country’s independence has attempted to build a narrative of co-ownership of the multi-ethnic state, which has stood in friction with ideas of a national state for ethnic Macedonians (Piacentini 2019a). This battle over ownership or co-ownership of the state has also been reflected within the city of Skopje (Mattioli 2014b), where different parts of the city have been involved in different nationalistic projects, including Skopje 2014 and the construction of the Skenderbeg square (Véron 2021).

The Skopje 2014 project was condemned by part of the architectural community and urban experts because of its aesthetics and refurbishing of the objects deemed as a valuable historical legacy of the post-earthquake and socialist Skopje (Marusic 2013; Koteska 2011). After the project was presented to the public in 2010, it became an object of mockery in the domestic and foreign media, social networks and informal encounters. It has often been portrayed as an embodiment of urban kitsch and a culturally divisive undertaking (Crevar 2016; Gillet 2015). Research that was carried out in 2013 showed broad disapproval of the project in society, both among Albanians and Macedonians (Kolozova et al. 2013). According to different polling data from 2010, 58% of Skopje’s citizens did not support the project (Utrinski 2010). Another survey shows that only 26% supported the revamp, whereas 66% were against Utrinski (2010). Similar numbers displayed in 2012 (Stojanchova 2012). Ethnographic researchers alike note that the vast majority of citizens dislike the undertaking (Mattioli 2014b, 82). Besides that, the main opposition party SDSM² and some civil society organisations have criticised the project – both the content that is disseminated through the buildings and monuments and the implementation process.

A few organisations, such as Arhi Brigada, Ploshtad Sloboda and Raspeani Skopjani, voiced discontentment on the streets of Skopje, often by relying on artistic performances aiming to emphasise the poor architectural value of the revamp and to protest against the refurbishment of the modern architecture. These methods of contention fall within the framework of a repressive repertoire which is defined by Johnston as having three main characteristics: duplicity, creativity and triggering (Johnston 2015, 626). Duplicity refers to the different personas or voices that activists have, where they are active in private or within their confined spaces, whereas silent in the open spaces where they interact with other actors. Creativity refers to the creative use of space and narrative, and lastly, triggering is the signals which are developed by events that accelerate change (Johnston 2015). Such a repertoire of contention is particular in states which have authoritarian tendencies where open methods of contention carry high costs for activism (such as the loss of employment or the loss of one’s freedom) or they are hindered due to repressive regimes, which make massive gatherings or critique difficult to form and to be maintained. While these performances showed that there was a critical group of individuals against the project, they failed to attract and mobilise a sizeable population. As Mattioli’s ethnographic research on the culture of protests regarding Skopje 2014 stresses:

Despite a very impressive and fascinating debate […] the number of people actually attending rallies has never been huge. Given that the vast majority of Macedonians I talked to do not like the project, the problem may be in that the protesters “lack critical mass” for an incisive political action. (2014, 82)

The cause for the lack of critical mass to challenge the project at its inception is the question that this paper seeks to answer. The central question is why, considering the overwhelming disapproval, the project Skopje 2014 has not seen a massive mobilisation at its outset? As stated before, the paper does not reduce social mobilisation to grassroots movements but also tries to understand the role the institutionalised political elite played in the project and mobilisation against it. To do so, a set of reasons will be discussed. We are looking at the state’s strategies of repression, violence, and coercion, the politically organised counter-protest, and the role of political agency. We also look at the role of the social organisations and their performances, mostly relying on interviews and secondary ethnographic sources. Then we look at the Colorful Revolution for which the city and the Skopje 2014 project became a significant element driving contentious methods, to showcase the political shift that was brought by protests and social movements after an opening in the political opportunity structures brought by the student movement in 2014 (Pollozhani 2016).

Mario Diani and Donatella della Porta note that research on authoritarian regimes has been limited, particularly when considering the assumption of the political opportunities required to enable social movements (2015, 19). In our case, the perceived lack of openness in political opportunities can serve to explain the absence of sustained mobilisation, whereas the opportunity represented by the emergence of the student movement can serve to explain why the subsequent protests increased in support. Further contentious acts followed with the #Protestiram movement in 2015 and the Colorful Revolution movement in 2016 in line with Tarrow’s claim that “[o]ne of the most remarkable characteristics of contentious politics is that it expands opportunities for others” (Tarrow 2011, 167). In addition, other developments occurred in the context of Macedonian politics at the time, namely the political crisis which engulfed the country between 2015 and 2016, which allowed for space for other actors to emerge, as well as offering space for more engagement of international actors, including the EU and the USA, in the domestic political situation. Tarrow defines political opportunities as “consistent- but not necessarily formal, permanent, or national sets of clues that encourage people to engage in contentious politics” (Tarrow 2011, 32). While the openness of political opportunity can certainly be said to have inspired more optimism than was granted, considering that the government did not change for another 2 years, Gamson and Meyer observed, if activists did not overestimate the openness in political opportunity, then “they would not be doing their job wisely” (Gamson and Meyer 1996). In addition, the period between 2009 and 2014, while not a period of mass mobilisation, still served to build networks and repertoire of contention within the framework of a repressive repertoire which facilitated mobilisation later. This shift between the more visible and latent phases has been noted by Melucci (1996) to mark the continuity of the movements. Della Porta and Diani add that the latent phase is where “action within the organisations and cultural productions dominate” (2006, 95–96), while the visible phase consists of marches and visible displays of contention. While between the period 2009–2014 it was hard to contend visibly, protests became more visible and vocal between 2014 and 2016, transitioning the repertoire, envisioning new political futures and reclaiming the city.

Project Skopje 2014 and subdued politics of contention: coercion, authoritarianism and counter-protests

As stated before, the project Skopje 2014 was carried out in the context of rising authoritarianism in the country. The former prime minister Gruevski, residing now in exile in Budapest, has been seen as a mastermind of the project Skopje 2014 and the authoritarian turn that shaped the Macedonian political landscape from 2010 to 2016 (Gjuzelov and Ivanovska Hadjievska 2020; Bieber 2020). During the rule of Gruevski, his party, VMRO-DPMNE, managed to gain control of the mainstream media and state television, state bureaucracy and judiciary, alongside with the control over the central power structures on the national as well as local scale in Skopje. This enabled the party control over the political processes in the country, including those related to the urban space. Different strategies of coercion, control, and organizing counter-protests were employed by the dominant political structure to suppress and discredit the potential for social action against Skopje 2014.

Civic Activism, -Coercion, and Counter Protests

In 2009, a group of students called First Arhi Brigade organised a protest against the building of a church in the main square in Skopje’s central area. The group demanded a halt of the construction, summoning the politicians to – “instead of investing in kitsch architecture – to focus public funding on the maintenance of the authenticity and originality of the old buildings that already exist but, due to neglect, decay” (Ignatova 2009). Soon after the students announced the protest, the media close to the former government called for a counter-protest to defend Skopje from “gays and atheists” (Ignatova 2009). A group of thousands of counter-protesters eventually showed up in a much larger number, mobilised by the VMRO-DPMNE and brought by buses to Skopje (Mattioli 2014b), thus marginalizing the rally with a few hundred students. The protest ended up in violence, which happened in front of the police that did not react. In one of the statements after the clashes, the former Minister of Internal Affairs Gordana Jankulovska stressed that the counter-protesters were provoked by the students who opposed the building of a church at the main square (Petkovski and Nikolovski 2016, 174), thus showing official state support for the counter protesters. The organisers of the protests were publicly discredited, depicted as anarchists who work against true Macedonian values. According to Véron (2016, 1453), some members of other organisations protesting against Skopje 2014 were also under strong political pressure, being followed in public and threatened with lawsuits and loss of jobs. The risk of livelihood through the loss of jobs was particularly significant considering that North Macedonia has high rates of unemployment (in 2010 around 30%) and partisan state employment was and continues to be one of the most important ways to secure a stable job for individuals. The high unemployment in North Macedonia has been used as a political tool to control the electorate and target and mobilise citizens working in the state institutions and state-run companies (Bieber and Ristić 2012).

These strategies of repression are not uncommon, given the importance of the capital city in opposing regimes and the awareness of the government of this likelihood (Goodfellow and Jackman 2020). As Uitermark, Nicholls, and Loopmans (2012, 2546) suggest, “the city is a generative space of mobilisations and, because of this, it is also the frontline where states constantly create new governmental methods to protect and produce social and political order, including repression, surveillance, clientelism, corporatism, and participatory and citizenship initiatives”. The capital cities figure as central sites in “production of authoritarian dominance” and manifest as sites of massive resistance against the state-generated repression and various strategies of political dominance (Goodfellow and Jackman 2020, 3). Even though the protests against Skopje 2014 were of a rather small-scale nature, the state made sure to intervene to prevent any augmentation of the resistance, not shying away to mobilise the media and supporters who resorted to violence to counter the grassroots protest.

One event in 2013 reveals a direct involvement of VMRO-DPMNE in the organisation of a violent protest, as is known thanks to a leaked recording. The protest revolved around an alleged plan of Skopje’s municipality mayor to demolish a church – which the mayor denied (Marusic 2016, 2020). Nevertheless, in the recording, one can hear how Gruevski instructs the Minister of Transport, Mile Janakieski, to arrange 2000 protesters and have them storm the offices and slap the mayor in the face (Marusic 2020). The protest eventually took place, as a large group of people surrounded the municipality building, breaking windows and interrupting the continuation of council sessions (Marusic 2013).

Alongside the mobilisation of the party sympathisers, the state relied on its monopoly of violence to disperse a small group protesting against the baroqueisation of an object in the capital’s central area. Over 100 policemen and 10 police vehicles were used to disperse the protests (Okno 2013). According to the activists, this intervention was a pure demonstration of power against a very small group of protesters,³ showcasing yet the willingness of the government to impose its authority and execute its vision of the new capital.

In contrast to the state-direct involvement in preventing the rise of social resistance against urban politics, the grassroots movements lacked resources, strategic unity (Véron 2016), as well as framing capacity beyond a single issue to create an environment to mobilise discontented citizens. As Petkovski and Nikolovski note, the movements contesting urban politics were too focused on “particular demands” (2016). Moreover, as the interview with D. – who was the founding member of the Arhi Brigada – reveals, their organisation was not interested in taking the streets after the protest in 2009 – they rather focused on public debates and workshops on architecture and urbanism in the city.⁴

I was telling them that I am not for a new protest, as we figured out that there is a need for education of the citizens and public debates. We held a few public discussions after the project Skopje 2014 had been announced. Along the road, we realised that we were permanently talking to the same audience - a critical mass of 200 people, they come, we agree with everyone, but in this way one cannot reach out to the rest of the citizens. At that point, we did not want people who supported the ruling party to come to our discussions. However, from today’s perspective, we should have done it otherwise, better to quarrel … ⁵

The fear of politicisation of the group was one of the key motives to move civic activism from the streets to the arena of public discussions. The group was advised to form a political party, but this was rejected, which, according to D., it would make sense from today’s perspective, considering the Macedonian political dynamic and difficulties to effectively create changes in such an environment. Similarly, M. from Ploshtad Sloboda – a group that had a wider repertoire of contesting the project, from small-scale protests to artistic performances – reveals that their organisation was not interested in creating a large social movement against the undertaking, adding that they too wanted to distance from the political parties, mostly due to the lack of trust in Macedonian politics.⁶

We did not form Ploshtad Sloboda with an intention to create a large social movement, aiming to trigger larger social changes. There were some attempts in this direction with the idea to organize a referendum for the church in 2009, but it did not work. In that context [2010, 2011], it was important for the people to distance from the political parties and politics in general and there was no way for a large social change to take place without the main political parties. ⁷

The reluctance to identify with political parties characterised the social mobilisation beyond Skopje 2014. Such was the protest against “police brutality” in 2011, accompanied by a banner at front of the march with the slogan “Nie ne sme partija” (we are not a political party). The need to stress this stance at the protest is indicative of the lack of larger social trust to identify and cooperate with the political parties in the country, as well as of the awareness that this kind of politicisation might delegitimise the activists and become a target of the state’s and media’s smear campaigns.

Other reasons for the lack of comprehensive resistance may lie in the decision of the groups that protested Skopje 2014 to act separately. This refers both to the organisational and discursive dimensions. While there was an informal cooperation, the groups acted ad hoc rather than through structural activism.⁸ In relation to the discursive strategies, the Arhi Brigada mainly focused on the urban and architectural aspects, while Ploshtad Sloboda mobilised against the nondemocratic aspect, the right to protest and social boundaries that the project reinforces. As Mattioli noted (2014, 82), the insistence of the groups to act independently and not cooperate with the political establishment might have exposed the vulnerability of small groups of activists.

Ethnographic research suggests that the “working strata” of the population looked favourably to the aesthetics of Skopje 2014 – a project that “brought back blemished memories of their importance during the socialist period” (Mattioli 2020, 44). Furthermore, social “awareness” of the authoritarian course of Gruevski’s government was not widespread in 2009/2010, as it was the case later, especially after the SDSM decided to daily and publicly reveal the corruptive and highly arbitrary rule of the VMRO-DPMNE and DUI government. Moreover, the social organisations protesting Skopje 2014 emerged in a society that “has never been characterised by a tradition of a strong civil society, but rather a low level of social mobilisation, except for ethnic issues” (Véron 2016, 1452). The lack of strong pre-existing networks consistent of different class and political categories, accompanied by weak social mobilisation, especially on issues related to the public space, did not play in favour of these activist groups and the potential for creating a more inclusive and massive movement.

However, the network theory may not fully provide answers for the lack of mobilisation, as the student protests that took place in 2014 seemed to have lacked this strong dimension too, although as M. noted, the protest against Skopje 2014 contributed to the emergence of a critical voice and more fluid, potent and massive activists network,⁹ alluding to the rise of the student movement, Protestiram and eventually the Colorful Revolution. Sanja, an activist with both Protestiram and the Colorful Revolution cited the students as one of her inspirations.¹⁰ Indeed, for many of the activists, the earlier mobilisations had made it possible for the Colorful Revolution to mobilise a larger number of people and to sustain that mobilisation. As Kire noted, “the channels that were created then, the Facebook site of Stop Police Brutality, helped in accelerating [the mobilisation] and at the end of the day, it came down to the fact that Protestiram, Stop to Police Brutality, and the Colorful Revolution became so massive and successful because it came down to a simple need for justice. I think the basis was the lack of justice”.¹¹ As Mullin’s research on Brisbane reveals (1987), even in the event of strong networks and civil society, there is no guarantee for cohesive social action.

Unlike the protest against Skopje 2014, the student protest and other social categories have efficiently taken the streets since 2014 and prompted the government to accept their demands. Yet, it makes sense to consider the potential of social action that students as a social group may pose for the political establishment. It is to assume that the government was aware of it and the large number of students protesting, as it was aware of the weakness of the groups that raised their voices against Skopje 2014, and had consequently adjusted its strategy to the circumstances it faced. However, taken from another perspective, the student and subsequent protests started exposing the favourable political opportunity in the country. They also shared a strong belief in the restoration of justice and the rule of law, the lack of which had been made evident with the leaked wiretapped conversations. The defense of justice and the dissent to an increasingly authoritarian regime which had affected the daily lives and liberties of all citizens, formed a strong consensus among different groups, therefore, enabling mass mobilisation after 2014.

The political (Im)mobilisation and the authoritarian dominance

Besides the failure to create mass resistance by the civil society groups before 2014, the political opposition in the country failed to recognise urban politics as a source for comprehensive mobilisation. This may have partially to do with the low social importance of issues related to public space, or what Benford and Snow refer to as the degree to which a certain issue is “culturally resonant” (1988, 622). This was acknowledged by D. who stressed that their organisation realised eventually that the architecture is not the major issue for the citizens.¹² In a country shaped by massive unemployment, corruption, low wages, and general social insecurity of the citizens, the urban space themes were not prioritised among the political parties. For example, in the electoral program of the Social Democratic Party (SDSM) designed for the national elections in 2008, the urban politics were on the fringe of the agenda, which was dominated by issues of economic progress, democratisation, improving ethnic coexistence and rule of the law.¹³ While this is not an argument for political inaction, the low significance of the urban politics signals a general lack of urgency for issues related to public space in the society driven by structural setbacks. While the then-opposition leader Branko Crvenkovski publicly condemned the project, there was no attempt to actively engage with the groups contesting Skopje 2014 and mobilise the supporters of the party, which at that time was affected by serious internal conflicts. Also, the attempts to collaborate with the groups protesting Skopje 2014 did not occur, partially because of the reluctance of the groups to “politicise” their engagement.

In addition to the failure of the main opposition party to openly confront the project, the Albanian political establishment and citizens too were reluctant to mobilise,¹⁴ though Skopje 2014 has been seen by the majority of Albanians as an anti-Albanian project (Vangeli 2011; Graan 2013). Hence, it is puzzling why this failed to materialise into a broader political front against the project, especially as some leading Albanian politicians were concerned about the misrepresentation of monuments to Albanian figures in the city. This is even more so puzzling, given that social mobilisation in North Macedonia has had a predominantly ethnic background (Véron 2016). At the time of construction of the project, the Albanian political party Democratic Union for Integration (DUI) was part of the government with VMRO-DPMNE. One of the answers may lie in the fact that, even though DUI played a strong role in the coalition, supporting it throughout the major political crisis in 2015 and 2016, it was Gruevski who established himself as the strongman in the country (Bieber 2020), capable to control the political processes in the government and micromanage Skopje 2014.¹⁵ Another explanation relates to the construction of the Skanderbeg square in Skopje, which was announced in 2010, funded by the state and celebrating Albanian nationalism. Though in comparison to Skopje 2014 it is a quite marginal project, it indicates a compromise and cooptation as a ruling strategy (Goodfellow and Jackman 2020) in the capital city between the two parties in power, VMRO-DPMNE and DUI. Véron (2016, 1451) suggests both projects Skopje 2014 and Skanderbeg Square were part of a political deal between the political elites at that time, VMRO-DPMNE and DUI, the junior partner in the government. Besides the dominant political party, DUI, other Albanian political parties did not mobilise its supporters against the mono-ethnic redevelopment of the city.

Having control over the state institutions and mainstream media, including the national service, enabled the former government control over the narrative, thus painting the project as of national significance that will rebrand the country and city (Graan 2013, 2016). In doing so, the government managed to reduce the critical discussion on Skopje 2014 to marginal media and social networks, thus being persistently in control of the narrative. The mainstream media avoided covering the resistance against the project, as well as the subsequent protests (Petkovski and Nikolovski 2016). As stated before, the project was carried out in a strictly centralised manner. Even though the government announced the revamp without any previous debates, the project had been carefully planned immediately after the conservative party gained power in 2006 (Jordanovska 2015; Blazhevski 2016). Moreover, despite the shady practices behind the implementation of many objects in the project, there was no institutional response to it. The judiciary and prosecution office was controlled by the government and as such they did not investigate the implementation of the project, whose cost reached over 700 million euros, largely surpassing the initially announced 80 million. Only after the government lost power in 2016, the investigation by the state prosecutors started to unfold, involving many political and party members, as well as business entrepreneurs. On top of that, the artists involved in the project – many of them previously unknown to the local community – were strangely reluctant to publicly debate it (Nedelkovska 2012), thus giving the impression of an imposed politics of silence among the artists who were directly involved in the project.

In such uneven circumstances, the odds were not that high for the emergence of an effective and mass social movement to contest Skopje 2014. In the environment where urban design politics has been on the fringe in the eyes of the power groups and citizens, whose main concerns are related to the weak and corrupted institutions and lack of economic stability, the potential for a collective action regarding issues such as public space narrows it even more. The massive student protests that took place in late 2014, followed by other rallies in 2015 and 2016, were provoked by high corruption revealed in the wiretapped materials that eventually caused Gruevski’s government to crumble (Georgievski 2015). Such persistent and extensive mobilisation failed to materialise in the case of Skopje 2014, despite the disapproval of the citizens, the arbitrary decision-making processes, and the costs that reached over 700 million euros in times of global financial crisis and domestic economic struggles. Besides the government effort to control the spatial politics development, the existing grass-roots movements were not interested in creating a united and heterogeneous movement bridging various narrative and ideas – a process called bridge framing involving “two or more ideologically congruent frames regarding a particular issue or problem” (Snow and Benford 2000, 624).

Such a frame bridging occurred with the Colorful Revolution, which by protesting the regime chose to contest the jewel in its crown, namely the Skopje 2014. The project became an integral to influencing and motivating activists in their choice of methods of contention and claims against the regime as the project itself symbolised not only the corruption of the regime but also its relation to citizens. In return, the citizens sought to reclaim the space through colours and visible marks of contention to signify ownership. Considering the nature of the regime which had hindered mobilisation for several years, the activists of the Colorful Revolution employed the networks built on what Johnston (2015) refers to as a repressive repertoire characteristic to activism in authoritarian regimes and built up an innovative and creative method of contention in close engagement with the city.

The Colorful Revolution and reclaiming of the city

The Colorful Revolution was not a “right to the city” movement in the sense of making demands or seeking to change the urban space, or at least it did not start as such. However, its methods of engagement with the city formed its most important pillar of their repertoire of action. Pruijt (2007) defines urban movements as “social movements through which citizens attempt to achieve some control over their urban environment. The urban environment comprises the built environment, the social fabric of the city, and the local political process” (2007, 5115). The Colorful Revolution engaged with the city and the political development at the time, including the SPO and the increase of support for rule of law and a change in government, moving towards an open and critical repertoire of contention which included marches, throwing balloons on governmental buildings, graffiti and a very active social media mobilisation. This multifaceted repertoire seemed necessary to overcome the challenges that the movement faced in the increasingly authoritarian regime of VMRO DPMNE, which had kept activists limited to a repressive repertoire that involved discussions and performances limited to a select audience or a bubble of activists. The Colorful Revolution succeeded in overcoming the duplicity inherent when using a repressive repertoire of contention by reclaiming the city, which in the case of Skopje, crushed the veil of the power of the state, as the re-building and re-visioning of the capital city by the governing party had gradually become its most visible show of power. Skopje 2014 was a project that was non-transparent, abused public finances and, as illegally wiretapped conversations show, was micromanaged by then Prime Minister Gruevski (Bieber 2020; Stefoska and Stojanov 2017) as if it were a personal project. As Bieber highlights in “the absence of public tenders, with non-transparent funding, the project epitomised the centralised and secretive nature of the regime” (Bieber 2020, 60). The Colorful Revolution, with the throwing of colours in the facades of public institutions re-built as part of Skopje 2014, sought to re-claim these spaces, as the colours in a way signified ownership and a change of power dynamics. As one old protestor said loudly to her friends in a march passing the Parliament in mid- May “did they ask us when they built them? No, they didn’t ask us, and now the kids don’t ask whether to throw [the colours]”.¹⁶

Tereza, one of the activists or “hooligans”, as they were termed by the media and which the activists appropriated, was also one of the people behind the decision to start throwing balloons on public institutions. Talking about what the balloons represented, she said that they were “all the pages, announcement, negotiations and protest letters” packed into a single balloon and added how empowering throwing them was to the activists by noting that “the feeling when they threw the first color balloon, what happened among the people? The people thought “this is possible””.¹⁷ She went on to describe how Skopje 2014 had seemed untouchable, and how it had made people feel small as opposed to the large statues. This was a sentiment also shared by Sanja who spoke of the experience of living and experiencing Skopje “to pass by the [Warrior on a Horse] fountain and to feel so small, and miserable opposed to this elaborate production that are made to make you feel small. You know what is more important between you and [the statues]. Right?”¹⁸ For both her and for Tereza, what had happened to Skopje, as this was the narrative employed, had encouraged them to participate in the protests, as Tereza said, because of “what they did to the city”.¹⁹ The throwing of the balloons became one of the highlights of the 2016 protests, with people cheering each time they were being thrown, protestors were interested about how they were being thrown, considering that with the police cordons the distance that they had to be thrown was relatively far. In one of the protest, the researcher observed how one participant asked someone holding a balloon if they could just hold it to see it how feels. To the admission of Tereza, the role of the city in their fight against the regime was not something consciously evident, however, became increasingly important as the colours thrown on public buildings became the signifiers of the movement. She admitted: “We did not talk about public spaces, we took the public spaces, we felt them”.²⁰ The city defined the movement in another way as well, in determining its marches. Considering that the main city square, which used to be an open square, was now host to the “Warrior on a horse”, meaning the statue of Alexander the Great, as well as many other statues, it was no longer a place of gathering for protests. As a result, the streets became places of meeting and gathering, and of the daily marches from institution to institution.

The throwing of balloons and the daily marches marked a clear repertoire transition from the forms of repressive repertoire. The Colorful Revolution benefited from the #Protestiram movement of 2015, but it was more visible and versatile in its methods, and started changing the city, even when it sometimes was a physically temporary change due to the attempts by the government to clean the colours and hence hide the effect or the presence of the movement. First, the use of colours as guerrilla action was not something new, as Sanja another activist noted, there had been guerrilla groups that have done graffiti with political messages for quite some time in Skopje. However, as Sanja explained, “we know who goes out at night to write graffiti, I mean we are few, we are the smallest of all groups [laughs]. Not everyone wants to be exposed to risk, not everyone knows how to write graffiti, it is not easy, because with the spray you need more exercise, it is not a simple job, or making messages, whoever is good at it and wants to do it, because going out at night, you go out on your responsibility, you need to be aware and to know the law well and if they catch you, to know how to react, and so it is not for everyone”. With the throwing of colours, the colouring of streets, the spraying of political messages on concrete all around the city, the guerrilla actions which Sanja was referring to became more open. Often the protestors who threw colours wore masks so as not to be easily identified, which signified that they were still careful considering that they were protesting a regime that was fond of reprisals, either by firing people from their workplace, or singling them out in media reports. Kuran (1995) in his analysis of private and public lives “reasoned that fear of reprisals imparts a veil of silence that keeps most citizens from voicing their true attitudes, and fosters the incorrect belief that they are alone in their dissatisfaction” (Johnston 2015, 628). However, Tereza highlighted how participating in the protests had shown people that they are not alone, despite what they might have felt.

The Colorful Revolution movement hence lifted the veil of the regime due to its reclaiming of the city in direct engagement with the Skopje 2014 project, and in shifting activities which had been until then more marginal and done with limited and selected group, and made them collective. Nagle notes the “importance of entering the city centre space, the de facto commercial and political heart of the city, concerns the social centrality of this space for all groups in the city. This implies that access to the city center for political and cultural groups is indivisible with the possession of civic identity” (Nagle 2008, 312). In this case, the movement did highlight and reverberate the concept of citizen and citizenship through speeches and their repertoire of action. Tereza in her interview spoke of the concept of a hopeful citizenry, in her words “hopeful citizenry is when you don’t wait for space to be given to you, hopeful citizenry is a citizenry which takes the space”, as they had done. In asking Tereza the motivation behind the throwing of the colours as a repertoire of action, she said she had thought of it as “a marking of an error”. However, the focusing on the city centre did have its shortcomings in that it could be perceived as a movement of elites and in excluding other centres of the city and of the country, so it was perhaps limited in its promotion of this hopeful citizenry. The city of Skopje is notably divided into ten municipalities, and the city centre constitutes part of the Centar [Center] municipality which according to the 2002 census is only the sixth most populated area of the city. However, it is also the part of the city where all key state institutions are located, including the local municipality of Centar, which was a key institution through which Skopje 2014 was financed and administered. As Darko, one activist noted when trying to explain why some people might not have joined the protests “we did not succesed to touch them, the protests remained in Skopje, the centre of Skopje. We spoke several times about going to other municipalities, to go to Sutka, to pass through Gjorche, but we never did it. We remained in the centre of Skopje, I apologise, but it is the elite, maybe not everyone who goes to the protests is an elitist but in Skopje people are the elite”.²¹

However, the protests were still effective in shifting the borders of the city, according to Hana. As an architecture student she noted that the colours and the way that they engaged with the city was something she liked. She highlighted how the city’s borders, which heretofore had been the Vardar river, alluding to the invisible/ visible border between the “Albanian and the Macedonian part of town”, had now shifted as “the barrier is no longer at the stone bridge but at the Porte²² [de Triomphe]. It is not a barrier between Albanians and Macedonians, but a different barrier, so the concept or the perception of differences has changed”.²³ Indeed, according to Hana, this barrier was now between “those who support the regime and those who do not”.²⁴ This statement was quite significant, especially considering how the Skopje 2014 project was built upon mono-ethnic conceptions of the state, while the colours presented not only a reclamation of the city but a different conception of who belonged to it and how. Agon, another ethnic Albanian activist, also spoke about the Porte de Triomphe and the Skopje 2014 project when referring to his views of the city and the regime. According to him:

Skopje 2014 is the most scandalous thing that has ever happened to Macedonia, a nationalist project, ultimately ugly, baroque in the twenty-first century, very ugly, very dirty. The Porte de Triomphe was the most nebulous of them, because Macedonia has never had a triumph, historically, so great that it should have a Porte de Triomphe, but now, as it is, the Porte de Triomphe with colors, we will safeguard it, and at the end it will remain as it is with the colors and it will be a Porte de Triomphe, because for the first time we will give a logic to it.²⁵

Indeed, the Porte was often times used to make speeches and the colors did stay on it for a long time although now they have been washed away, so the safeguarding of the colors which Agon referred to did not become a reality.

If we take the statements of the activists and the way that the protesters performed their contention, there is almost a conversation or an exchange between the characteristics of the regime noted above and the way the activists framed their activism and the way they experienced it. They spoke of the way the city was taken from them and taking it back, indeed Sanja estimated that there “is dynamics in the last 6 years, I think that we built-up with the protests, that the city is truly ours, when we say that the streets are ours that is true”.²⁶ She mentioned the amount of walking they had done around the city streets as an example, meaning that they reclaimed and occupied the city with their bodies, but they also did it by throwing balloons and hoses and plastic guns filled with colors at the institutions, and by colouring the streets themselves to convey a message. Such was the case when they painted the whole main square red in memory of the murder of Martin Neshkovski²⁷ (Jordanovska 2015) which was another great motivation behind their activism with #Protestiram as it constituted a “moral shock” and signalled to them that “the regime kills”.²⁸ They noted that the division of the city for them had changed, albeit temporarily or among the activists, as the city space in terms of inhabitants remains divided. Lastly, Aida spoke of the financial cost and strain of the project, calling it a “money laundering machine”²⁹ noting that she had followed the tenders published in high figures, while as she said “I work with companies and with citizens who were financially failing ever day”.³⁰ She noted how the way the government spent “our money” was what had motivated her to protest. She recounted when she gave birth and the conditions in the hospitals contrasted to the grandiosity that Skopje 2014 was supposed to portray:

So especially the spending our money. I could not forgive that, knowing how it was in the hospitals. In 2012, I was about to give birth in the maternity ward in [place redacted to ensure the anonymity of the interlocutor], where there were cockroaches, and here they were building a fountain, Alexander the Great and his mother Olympia, all stages of his birth. Then I remember, I took a picture of the fountain and I wrote “take care of mothers and children today after they are delivered”.³¹

The experience Aida conveyed ties into both the financial strain and forms a critique of the position of women forwarded during the time of VMRO-DPMNE’s government which attempted to construct the role of women as mothers to keep growing the nation (Stefoska and Stojanov 2017; Kocevska 2020), by also passing laws which aimed at encouraging more children among the ethnic Macedonian population. Thus, while mobilisation in 2009 failed to garner mass support, the narrative and practices which the VMRO-DPMNE built from the start of its power until its end was what ultimately motivated the protesters from 2014 to 2016 to take to the streets. The Colorful Revolution and the movements and protests that preceded it tried to not only protest against the regime but to provide a critique of how it was, in the words of Tereza, “an error”.³²

Conclusion

Juxtaposing the lack of mobilisation to Skopje 2014 and the statements by the activists of the Colorful Revolution, we can detect an almost a question and an answer dynamic, meaning the movement activists’ repertoire of action always formed a response to the policies and narratives of the government, and to the changing political opportunity structures. Analytically, this paper draws attention to the causes for the lack of a social action – in this case, a larger political mobilisation against Skopje 2014. Taking the research question from this angle allowed for filling analytical gaps in the literature on Skopje 2014, social movements and politics, directing the attention to different processes and social developments in North Macedonia.

In the first part of this paper, we looked at how the Skopje 2014 project, despite its lack of popularity among citizens and many controversies around it, failed to mobilise a significant mass of activists to oppose it, and attempts to do so ended violently or prompted activists to reinvent the form of civic engagement. We offered a set of explanations, looking at both the micro and macro processes, arguing that the lack of larger social front had to do with the rise of the authoritarian state that relied on its monopoly of power to subdue any resistance against the project. Moreover, the movements protesting Skopje 2014 were not interested in creating a larger front, but they rather focused on public debates and subversive activism. Fear of politicisation and lack of trust in the Macedonian political parties in the post-socialist period prevented also the creation of a larger mobilised group that would incorporate the political opposition. Coupled with the low interest in issues related to urban space, and the yet not so strong social awareness of the authoritarian transformation of the state in that period, there was little space for a substantial social and political movement against Skopje 2014 and Gruevski’s government to take place.

The testimonies of the activists of the Colorful Revolution, however, make it apparent that the Skopje 2014 project was an important motivator behind their personal as well as collective reasons towards contention. They spoke of an opening with the protests, they stopped being fearful of the regime, they saw that contention was possible. This difference between the lack of action and the contention which marked the years between 2014 and 2016 can be explained due to two important factors. Firstly, the opening political opportunity structure by the Student movement in 2014, which was the first spark that gave activists a glimpse into a crack of the regime. It thus revealed the weakness of the government and marked a transition from a repressive repertoire of contention, which defined the pre-2014 period, into an open and critical repertoire of contention against the regime through mass protests, humour and sarcasm, creativity and innovation which engaged with the city and the Skopje 2014 project in integral ways to show the mistake in the system. Secondly, the political crisis of 2015 and 2016 enabled a more open critique of the government considering that there was detailed information on the workings of the government evident to the citizens, political and international actors. It must be noted that although the project did not incite immediate mass mobilisation, the wave of contention which marked the period of 2014–2016 was built upon networks which were already existing and which got stronger with each wave of protests, unlike the initial movements that were established to contest Skopje 2014, which were, among other factors, lacking broader political support. The movements that emerged after 2014 were engaged with the context and had learned how to respond to state coercion effectively, as well as how to cooperate, reaching a broader consensus with the Colorful Revolution which enabled mass mobilisation and contention.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization – Democratic Party for Macedonian National Unity.

2 Social Democratic Union of Macedonia.

3 Interview with M. on 07.12.2021 via Zoom.

4 Interview with D. on 13.9.2021 via Zoom.

5 Interview with D. on 13.9.2021 via Zoom.

6 Interview with M. on 07.12.2021 via Zoom

7 Interview with M.

8 Interview with M. on 07.12.2021 via Zoom.

9 Interview with M. on 07.12.2021 via Zoom.

10 Interview with Sanja (code name) on 07.06.2016 in Skopje, North Macedonia.

11 Interview with Kire (code name) on 11.10.2017 in Skopje, North Macedonia.

12 Interview with D. on 13.9.2021 via Zoom.

13 For example, while the words economy/economic is mentioned 248 times, the word urbanism has only 5 entries in the party program of SDSM for 2008 elections, in SDSM party program 2008.

14 The clashed at the fortress Kale against building of a church/museum are the most prominent protests that mobilized the population in the city.

15 Interview with Professor Besa Arifi on 13.11.2017 in Tetovo, North Macedonia.

16 Participant observation from the researcher’s on 16.05.2016 in Skopje.

17 Interview with Tereza (code name) on 29.12.2016 in Skopje, North Macedonia.

18 Interview with Sanja (code name) on 07.06.2016 in Skopje, North Macedonia.

19 Interview with Tereza (code name) on 29.12.2016 in Skopje, North Macedonia.

20 Interview with Tereza (code name) on 29.12.2016 in Skopje, North Macedonia.

21 Interview with Darko (code name) on 13.06.2016 in Skopje, North Macedonia.

22 The Porte de Triomphe is a gate constructed as part of the Skopje 2014 project in the centre of the city, and it is positioned next to the Assembly of the Republic of North Macedonia. As Mattioli (2014a) notes, Skopje 2014 was created as a project which would construct Skopje as a European capital, and the Porte de Triomphe is thus a part of that idea meant to replicate the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, France.

23 Interview with Hana (code name) on 22.12.2016 in Skopje, North Macedonia.

24 Interview with Hana (code name) on 22.12.2016 in Skopje, North Macedonia.

25 Interview with Agon (code name) on 09.06.2016 in Skopje, North Macedonia.

26 Interview with Sanja (code name) on 07.06.2016 in Skopje, North Macedonia.

27 Martin Neshkovski was a young party activist of the VMRO DPMNE who had been celebrating the party’s victory in 2011 and on the same night was killed by a police officer. With the revelations of the wire-tapped conversations it emerged that the government had known and actively hidden the circumstances of the murder, including having lied about the police officer. This revelation sparked the protests of the #Protestiram movement on 05 May 2015.

28 Interview with Sanja (code name) on 07.06.2016 in Skopje, North Macedonia.

29 Interview with on Aida (code name) 05.02.2018 in Skopje, North Macedonia.

30 Ibid.

31 Ibid.

32 Interview with Tereza (code name) on 29.12.2016 in Skopje, North Macedonia.