The Process of Democratization in Yugoslavia

Transitions in Nationalism: The Process of Democratization in Yugoslavia

The Yugoslav transition to democracy is perhaps the most complex of all of the Eastern European cases. The level of parallel mobilization of ordinary people in Yugoslavia, namely of industrial workers and Kosovo Serbs, various groups during the antibureaucratic revolution and Kosovo Albanians, surpassed those in most other East European states, if judged by the numbers of participants, the variety of groups involved and the temporal and geographical extension of mobilization.[1] Ranging from small and orderly events to large and highly disruptive protest marches and demonstrations, popular protests led to considerable changes in the composition of policies of Yugoslavia’s political elites, and more importantly, in the structure of its authoritarian regime.[2] However, this narrative of mobilization that tends to dominate published accounts sharply contrast with those of the people associated with political struggles in other Eastern European states and the dark forces of nationalism in the region.

In Yugoslavia, nationalism, which did not correspond perfectly to the various republics, dominated all other issues, including democratization. Unlike some of the other federal states in Eastern Europe, such as Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union (USSR), Valerie Bruce has pointed out that Yugoslavia lacked a strong central bureaucracy, consisting in the final diagnosis of little more than the Yugoslavia National Army (JNA). While officially a federation, Bunce goes as far as to call Yugoslavia a “confederation” because unlike the Czechoslovak and Soviet “actual” federations, which were “characterized by the existence of shared power based on territorial-administrative divisions,” Yugoslavia was defined by the “domination of the republics over the center.”[3] Despite his best efforts, Josip Broz Tito, the first President of Yugoslavia, had only been able to unite the six republics by offering each state significant degrees of autonomy in a highly decentralized federal government. For example, each republic was, following the USSR’s invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, allowed its own territorial defense force, and the Yugoslav market, including its banking system, was segmented along republican lines.[4] Furthermore, it can be argued that Tito’s break with Joseph Stalin (1878-1953), head of the Soviet state, in 1948 absolved republican leaders of the intense presence of Moscow, and that regional politicians therefore felt less bound to the policies of the central government, especially after the death of President Tito in 1980.

Some of Yugoslavia’s constituent republics were historically opposed, most notably the Catholic Croats and the Orthodox Serbs. For example, during the Second World War, the Utasha, the Croatian fascists, fought alongside the Axis powers, and more importantly, against the Serbian Chetniks. Following the war, President Tito’s solution to the long-lasting animosities was to prohibit any discussion regarding the topic. While initially, Tito’s solution created a sense of unity under the guise of socialism, ingrained nationalist grievances exploded among the republics as communism in the East fell. As a result of the fall of the Soviet Union, and as a consequence communism, ideas of democratization became less and less of a priority. Thus, in order to properly lead an effort of democratization, Yugoslavia’s historical record had to be resolved, in which each republic utilized different ideas in order to do.[5]

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Periodization

The periodization of the Yugoslav democratization process is a complex matter for several reasons. First, and most obviously, the period of liberalization of the Soviet Union and its satellite communist states during the 1980s could not contain the Yugoslav state and its successor states. States that followed a path of democratization similar to Hungary included only Slovenia. Other states, like Croatia and Serbia, respectively, took longer to complete their journey to democratization as Western-funded opposition groups imposed their will on the process. However, in 2000, Croatia left authoritarianism through an organized election while Serbia experienced the first “color revolution,” where hundreds of thousands engaged in protests against Slobodan Milosevic’s effort to capture the presidency. Lastly, the remaining republics of Macedonia, Bosnia, and Herzegovina fell victim to deep ethnic divisions, in addition to lagging economic development, resulting in a much slower path to democracy. By 2007, all of the former Yugoslav state, with the exceptions of Bosnia and Herzegovina, had democratized.[6]

Second, as a country, Yugoslavia operated in vast difference to its Eastern European and communist neighbors. By the mid-1980s, the country closely resembled Hungary as communist elites in the various republics lost faith in communism, and, as a result, instituted policies creating considerable freedom for its citizen to voice their concerns with the direction of the state. Because of this lack of authoritarianism in Yugoslavia, it is difficult to pinpoint when exactly the shift to democratization began. Nonetheless, it is considerably safe to mark the establishment of the 1974 Constitution, which further decentralized Yugoslavia, beginning the process of fragmentation among its republics, or the death of President Tito in 1980 as the beginning of the path to democratization.

To further emphasize the complex nature of the Yugoslav transition to democracy, Susan L. Woodward points out that “on the eve of the 1989 revolutions in Eastern and Central Europe, Yugoslavia was better poised than any socialist country to make a successful transition to a market economy and the West.”[7] However, considering this point, Yugoslavia still took longer to complete the democratization process and was the only country in Eastern Europe to undergo a civil war.  As Gale Stokes points out,

Yugoslavia had neither a velvet revolution nor a velvet divorce. Midway through 1991 two of its six constituent republics, Slovenia and Croatia, declared their independence, provoking a vicious civil war that spread in 1992 to Bosnia and Herzegovina. Ethnic emotions run deep throughout Eastern Europe, but nowhere did they reach the level of bestiality as they did in Yugoslavia…What happened? How did Yugoslavia, the first Communist state to break with the Soviet Union and the most open Communist state in the world in the 1960s, come to this depressing impasse?[8]

To answer the question posed by Stokes is that unlike other Eastern European states, democratization became secondary to other concerns, most notably extremism defined in nationalistic terms. Although nationalism acted as a factor in other Eastern European transitions, such as those of Czechoslovakia and the German Democratic Republic, but nowhere else did it create the devastating implications that it did in Yugoslavia. Therefore, ironically then, Yugoslavia’s considerably advantageous starting point in the process of democratization became a great disadvantage, as the leaders of its republics sought to maintain their positions of power by exploiting nationalist concerns and rhetoric that had been living underneath surface of Yugoslav society.

Structural Conditions

The structural conditions that surrounded and enabled Yugoslavia’s transition are rather complex. In order to properly understand the context in which the country dissolved in the early 1990s and fell victim to severe ethnic conflicts, it is essential to acquire a familiar grounding in the history of Yugoslavia. Unlike most of the other Eastern European countries that emerged following the Second World War, the establishment of Yugoslav as a communist state came not as a result of Soviet intervention. Rather, its creation became the logical outcome of the massively armed struggle waged by the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY) during the Second World War against the regional fascist forces that supported the Axis powers. The communists, led by Josip Broz Tito, asserted control over the then-known Kingdom of Yugoslavia, and by 1945, succeeded in eliminating the existing multi-party system.[9] In January 1946, the country introduced a new constitution under its new name – the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY). Composed of six republics and two autonomous provinces, the new territorial entity instituted significant freedoms to its various republics, creating a decentralized governmental system that would only increase following the adoption of the 1974 Constitution.[10]

Although Yugoslavia initially aligned with Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union, the relationship between the two Communist states collapsed as early as 1948 after Moscow repeatedly accused Tito of not being strong enough in his support of the Soviet Union. This conflict resulted from Stalin’s paranoia of Tito establishing a Balkan version of the Soviet Union that, instead of acting in accordance with the USSR, would rival the communist center of Eastern Europe. However, as a result of an agreement between Winston Churchill and Stalin during the Yalta Conference, Yugoslavia did not face the level of punishment that other dissident states like Czechoslovakia incurred. For the Soviet Union, invading Yugoslavia in order to preserve its adherence to Moscow would come at a much higher price than other Soviet-led invasions of Eastern Europe.[11]

As a result of Yugoslavia’s considerably strained relationship with the Soviet Union, the United States and European governments began to provide Yugoslavia with economic aid in the late 1940s, resulting in a prosperous Yugoslavia in the 1950s and the 1960s. The aspiration of the Yugoslav government was to establish its own brand of a socialist economic system that incorporated various aspects and principles of the capitalist market system. For example, private business could be established; however, such businesses were limited to only four employees. Thus, the state operated all of the major businesses, however, in a much more decentralized manner than its neighboring countries. The establishment of this “self-management” system meant that Yugoslav workers maintained control of their factories and workplaces. Although this system benefitted the country greatly, with the Yugoslav economy growing quickly and maintaining low levels of unemployment, inefficient use of foreign aid caused its economic growth rate to halt significantly in the 1970s.The subsequent economic downturn was exacerbated by the global economic crisis of the time, and as the second oil crisis hit the world in 1979, the “Yugoslav miracle” was officially over. The reason the economic crisis hit the country only in the late 1970s was because like its neighboring nations and nations in Latin America, Yugoslavia increased its borrowing from the West in order to compensate for lost revenues. However, Yugoslavia’s debt increased dramatically, escalating to $20.5 billion in 1981. As a result, Western lenders now demanded that Yugoslavia leaders make difficult decisions, including the imposition of structural adjustment policies and various austerity programs. Although such decisions would eventually help Yugoslavia stabilize its economy, it came at a terrible political price as workers lost their jobs and prices of goods rose, in turn resulting in widespread discontent that fueled a substantial workers’ movement demanding change.[12]

According to scholar Steven Vasilevski, “by the mid-1980s, the political and economic foundations of the Yugoslav system – a system commonly called “Titoism” – began to crumble. Nationalism festered in all the constituent republics.”[13] As mentioned, all republics suffered economically; however, in conjunction with the federal composition of Yugoslavia, no republican leader had to assume responsibility for the economic crisis consuming the country. Thus, when the economic crisis began to affect politics substantially in the republics in the mid-1980s, each republic’s leadership placed all blame on the other republics for their nation’s economic misfortunes in an attempt to maintain power and legitimacy. Not only was this method successful in delegitimizing economic criticism, it resonated deeply with the burgeoning nationalist movements that were emerging throughout the country, especially among Kosovo Serbs and Slovenes. Overall, the economic crisis forced communist politicians to become nationalists, a move which could potentially save their selfish desire for maintenance of power but would help foster moments of disaster for the country at-large.[14] In short, by the end of the 1980s, Yugoslavia harbored two important preconditions for mass mobilization to democratization: a failing economy and a vibrant civil society.

Civil Society

In the case of the Yugoslav transition to democracy, it is vastly different from other Eastern European cases where civil society is concerned for two main reasons. First, unlike elsewhere in Eastern Europe, civil society was fairly strong in Yugoslavia as a consequence of the country’s good economic and political relationship with the West. As a result of this relationship, liberalism maintained popularity in the state. More importantly, Yugoslavia’s historical efforts in decentralizing its government resulted in less repressive republican states. Furthermore, Yugoslavia created a social context in which civic associations maintained a fair reputation through its participatory political arrangements and tradition of organized labor, respectively.[15]

Second, and in further contrast with surrounding countries, the civil society groups emerging in Yugoslavia at the time were not those typically expected. In countries like Czechoslovakia and East Germany, human rights and democratization groups became forces of reckoning. However, as a result of its liberal elements, such groups did not create as significant of an impact in Yugoslavia as they had elsewhere. Instead, nationalist and workers’ groups, respectively, mobilized the largest number of participants. The relatively advantageous position of civil society in Yugoslavia failed to generate a pro-democracy challenge against the state – both federal and republican levels – becoming quickly marginalized by workers and nationalists.

According to Steven Vasilevsk, Yugoslav civil society, while stronger than in most other Eastern European states, was comparatively less important than political and economic change from above. However, Vasilevsk’s argument is not fully accurate. While it is true that change was accompanied by actions of society’s elites, it was civil society movements that ultimately forced politicians to abandon the past of Tito. While civil society only entered national politics fully in the 1980s, scholars have dated the beginning of civil society mobilization to the early 1960s. As in other Eastern European countries, some of the earliest civil society mobilization efforts included calls for democratization and human rights.[16]

Labor Movements

The two most important social movements of the Yugoslavian transition process were the labor and nationalist movements. While other civil society groups had legitimate grievances to vent, the Yugoslav workers found themselves in a unique situation. By its own definition, Yugoslavia was a workers’ state. As a result, unlike other groups within civil society, workers were rarely ever scrutinized by socialist politicians. Regardless, despite “sharply deteriorating living standards, the working class was surprisingly quiescent in the early 1980s.”[17] While strikes occurred, they had taken place on a manageable level, normally lasting for only a few hours. However, by 1984, the state of workers’ affairs drastically began to shift, eventually spinning out of control by 1987. “In that year,” Nebojša Vladisavljević reports,

there were 1685 registered strikes and roughly 4.3 percent of all employees in the huge state-controlled sector of the economy took part in strikes as opposed to less than 1 percent in previous years. The workers’ protest now lasted longer than a day on average and, significantly, the number of strikes in large state enterprises, with more than 500 workers, was sharply on the increase. Roughly half of the strikers came from the heavy industries and mining, but strikes in other sectors of the economy, as well as in health services and education, became increasingly frequent. In 1988 the number of strikes and strikers further increased, especially in large enterprises, and strikes became longer on average.[18]

In short, workers throughout the country began to voice their discontent with the regime. However, their protests maintained an overwhelming focus on economic and workplace related issues, causing political change to be turned into a side matter.[19] The demand of the workers centered on higher pay and subsidies “for their deteriorating enterprises, the removal of unsuccessful or corrupt enterprise directors and a sharp reduction in bureaucracy and administration within and outside enterprises.”[20]

Nationalist / Ethnic Movements

While the workers’ privileged position within socialist ideology delivered them significant influence in their protests against the state, it was the nationalist movements that would tear Yugoslavia apart. The idea of nationalism was not a new phenomenon in Yugoslavia; the country had only been able to successfully establish itself due to Tito’s repression of nationalist debate. Although virtually all national groups were mobilized by the end of the 1980s,

The road to civil war began in March 1981 when Albanian students took their demands for better conditions at the University of Prishtine to the streets in the time-honored tradition of students everywhere. Their demonstration touched a nerve of Albanian patriotic feeling, and over the next month anti-Serbian demonstrations demanding that Kosova become a Yugoslav republic became so massive that the federal government sent in troops.[21]

The Kosova Serb movement began in 1985 with a protest outside the headquarters of Kosova Communist Party. Not receiving the remedy, they sought, the movement submitted a petition with 2,011 signatures to the presidency of the Serbian Communist Party in early 1986, “demanding radical measures to stop the continuing harassment of non-Albanians.”[22] From this point on, the movement quickly gathered momentum.

After the first protest rally of a hundred Kosovo Serbs staged in 1986 in Belgrade, similar rallies, with greater numbers of participants, were organized in Belgrade as well as Kosovo and Serbian cities. The organizers of these protests were Serb and Montenegrin farmers, skilled workers, teachers and low-ranking communist officials. This gave the movement the look of an anti-elite, grassroots movement of harassed Serb and Montenegrin minorities in Kosovo.[23]

Unfortunately, the tensions between Serbs and Albanians quickly spread across Yugoslavia as other republican leaders saw Slobodan Milosevic as a proponent of a “Greater Serbia,” a historical concept that had only been repressed by the creation of Yugoslavia. Consequently, nationalists throughout the federation came to seize on the notion of sovereignty. Pavkovic explains:

One of the primary aims of each of the dissident national ideologies was to reaffirm the sovereignty of ‘its’ nation over the territory that was claimed for it. The Croat and Slovene national idealogues saw the reaffirmation of sovereignty necessitating the creation of national armed forces within a new Yugoslav confederation or outside Yugoslavia. The reaffirmation of the sovereignty of the Muslims was to be carried out first through the reintroduction of Islamic values in public life and politics and eventually in the creation of an Islamic state. Albanian sovereignty was to be achieved first in a separate Yugoslav republic and then, possibly, in unification with Albania. Serb sovereignty was to be reaffirmed in the unification of all Serbs in a reorganized ‘democratic integrative’ Yugoslav federation; if this proved to be impossible, in a Serb state without other Yugoslav nations.[24]

Needless to say, the simultaneous realization of all of these aspirations was simply impossible. The central issue was that some republics wanted more decentralization, or even independence, while Serbia, considered the heart of Yugoslavia, was not remotely interested. In the context of such a severe economic crisis and the disrepute of socialism as an economic ideology, few possessed the power, or rather the desire, to fight the strong nationalist movements that mobilized across the country. As one scholar summarizes the situation, “nationalism became a dominant political force largely as an unintended outcome of high levels of mobilization and spiraling social, economic and political conflicts in a complex, authoritarian multi-national state which experienced a severe economic crisis.”[25] More importantly, the intentions of republic leaders to gain from the nationalist tendencies running rampant with Yugoslavia did little to prevent this development.

Democratization in the Successor States

Civil war in Yugoslavia began with multi-party elections. In the context of nationalist mobilization and the need for politicians to denounce and disassociate themselves from the country’s communist past, pluralism and multi-party elections became tactics of political survival. Consequently, by the end of 1990, “all of the six Yugoslav republics had elected, in more or less free elections, new legislatures and new presidents.”[26] While parties embracing liberalism made themselves widely known in many of the republics, all six presidents elected were former communists, and more importantly, two – Serbia’s Slobodan Milosevic and Montenegro’s Momir Bulatovic – “continued to rule in the manner of their predecessors.”[27] Thus, in many of the countries, it is fair to speak of the process of rapid democratization. In addition, independence came rapidly to most of the former Yugoslav republics. With the exception of Serbia and Montenegro, the entity that, at least for a reasonable portion of time, retained the name of Yugoslavia, all the federated republics had declared independency by 1993. Montenegro would finally achieve independence in 2006.[28]

However, only in Slovenia did the process of democratization develop somewhat fully in a rather short length of time. As the wealthiest and most European-integrated country of the republics, Slovenia quickly seceded from the federation, and with European support, it avoided the possibility of a violent clash with the rest of the former country. The Slovenian socialist elites sought to use the country’s conflict with Serbia’s Milosevic to propagate themselves as the leaders of the new liberal regime, multi-party election and Western integration made the possibility of authoritarianism unlikely. Thus, “just two years into independence, Slovenia had a new constitution, a politically pluralist landscape with ten parties in the Parliament, a free press, and an independent judiciary.”[29] Unlike elsewhere in Yugoslavia, “the process of drafting a constitution that would be the mainstay of Slovenia’s a new democracy unfolded …smoothly, along with most democratization measures.”[30]

As change finally came to Croatia, it did so through an election victory for the opposition. Unlike in the Serbian case where Milosevic refused to accept defeat, the Croatian dictator Franjo Tuđman had died the previous year, and mass protests were therefore unnecessary to institute a political change. Yet, civil society groups still acted in important roles. Civil society groups continued to benefit from the relatively liberal political climate of the 1980s. Organizations such as GONG (Citizens Organized to Monitor Voting) and Glas 99 (Civic Coalition for Free and Fair Elections) waged numerous effective get-out-the-vote campaigns in favor of the democratic opposition coalition and engaged in independent election monitoring, respectively. Similar to Serbia, foreign governments and NGOs, respectively, supplied large sums of money and resources to facilitate the Croatian efforts. In short, democratization in Croatia came from above in the sense that no mass mobilization on the streets proved necessary to force political change. Still, civil society organization played an important role in their support of the democratic opposition.[31]

The popular overthrow of Serbia’s Milosevic in 2000 set the stage for democratization in Serbia, but despite the encouraging beginnings of post-Milosevic Serbia, scholars did not consider the country democratized until “late 2003.”[32] Similar to foreign treatment of Tuđman, the West had tolerated Milosevic’s authoritarian leanings. However, scholars like Boduszyński have pointed out that “though some popular accounts have portrayed Milosevic as a dictator akin to Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, Milosevic did not rule by terror or total control of information” and even allowed criticism of his regime.[33] However, in reality, the Serbian political power balance presented itself in much more complex manner. As Levitsky and Way point out,

the Serbian regime was always competitive. No major parties were banned and, prior to the late 1990s, no major politicians were killed, imprisoned, exiled, or excluded from elections. Moreover, elections were not simply a façade. Outright fraud was relatively limited in scope, which meant that Milosevic had to attract significant popular support to win presidential elections. Legislative elections also were highly competitive. In fact, the SPS never won a majority of the legislative vote and, after 1992, it never held a parliamentary majority. Thus, Milosevic at time struggled to control parliament and even to prevent votes of no confidence.[34]

Still, Milosevic managed to cling to both power and considerable popularity by painting a picture of a Serbia under attack, and as president he was able to circumvent the political process by issuing laws by decree. It would take military humiliation combined with an economic crisis to severely delegitimize Milosevic’s regime. Efforts by Western powers pushed in delegitimizing the regime by providing opposition groups with money and training, which resulted in a viable presidential candidate, Vojislav Kostunica, backed by a nonviolent student movement, Otpor. Overall, while democratic gains emerged after the fall of Milosevic, the country itself would not fully democratize until 2003.

Macedonia’s economic weakness meant that federal Yugoslav paternalism was to be replaced by Western paternalism. Thus, monetary aid flowed into the country in an effort to stimulate enough economic development to stifle the ethnic tensions brewing between Macedonians and Albanians. As the country dealt with no active dissident movement and a weak post-communist civil society, foreign NGOs became Macedonia’s “de facto civil society.”[35] As a result, policy became the responsibility of the West to form and the Macedonian government simply had to follow the orders of its international donors. What resulted in Macedonian is what Boduszyński refers to as “simulated democracy” – a democratic façade designed to satisfy donors and keep aid flowing into the country.[36] Although Western micromanagement was far from ideal, it allowed Macedonia to avoid probable violence between opposed ethnic groups that seemed to torment much of the rest of the former Yugoslavia. Overall, the democratization of Macedonian became possible due to the economic interventionism of Western powers.

Of the six former Yugoslav republics, Bosnia and Herzegovina remain the saddest in terms of democratization. Having served as a battlefield during the brutal war of the early 1990s, the wounds of the country are still healing. In order to end the war, a compromise solution was established that divided the country into “two virtually separate entities, the Bosniak-Croat Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the Serbian-dominated Republika Srpska.”[37] The details of the agreement sought to protect all three ethnic groups within the region from further victimization. However, the consequences of such an arrangement are a paralyzed central state, one that cannot make any major policy decisions as both entities retain the right to veto any decision. As a result of mutual distrust between the two entities, the process of democratization and economic reform, respectively, have been “painstakingly sluggish” as the country remains in its initial political transition.[38]

Conclusion

Even within the admittedly complex universe of democratization processes, Yugoslavia’s transition to democracy stands out as particularly complicated. The range of actors and ethnic groups involved makes Yugoslavia incredibly multifaceted. Yugoslavia’s civil society actor seem to have had more in common with Western Europe than activists in other socialist countries. If this observation is correct, it points to a potentially important theoretical point: in a context of democratization efforts, civil society is, rather counter-intuitively, more potent when repressed and working below ground than when given the ability to maneuver freely. In the case of Yugoslavia, liberal civil society groups, such as democratization and human rights groups, lacked the repression to make their efforts effective. If authoritarianism is not a major issue in people’s everyday lives, neither can the struggle against such a system exist. This interesting dynamic is reinforced if other concerns emerge as more salient, such as nationalism and economic failure. Thus, in the Yugoslav case, the democratization movement did not fail because of authoritative repression mandated by the state, but rather because rival movements, in particular ethnic and nationalist ones, came to dominate civil society as mass mobilization.

References

• Boduszyński, Mieczysław P. Regime Change in the Yugoslav Successor States: Divergent Paths toward a New Europe. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010.
• Bunce, Valerie J. and Sharon L. Wolchik. Defeating Authoritarian Leaders in Postcommunist Countries. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
• Bunce, Valerie J. Subversive Institutions: The Design and the Destruction of Socialism and the State. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
• Gibianskii, Leonid. “The Soviet-Yugoslav Split” in Revolution and Resistance in Eastern Europe: Challenges to Communist Rule. Oxford, UK: Berg Press, 2006.
• Levitsky, Steven and Lucan A. Way. Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes After the Cold War. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
• Licht, Sonja. “Civil Society, Democracy, and the Yugoslav Wars” in The Lesson of Yugoslavia. New York, NY: Elsevier Press, 2000.
• Pavkovic, Aleksandar. The Fragmentation of Yugoslavia: Nationalism and War in the Balkans. Houndmills, UK: Macmillan, 2000.
• Schaeffer, Robert K. “Democratization, Division and War in Yugoslavia: A Comparative Perspective” in The Lesson of Yugoslavia. New York, NY: Elsevier Press, 2000.
• Stokes, Gale. The Walls Came Tumbling Down: The Collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1993.
• Vasilevski, Steven. “Diverging Paths, Diverging Outcomes: A Comparative Analysis of Post-Communist Transition in the Successor States of Yugoslavia” in YCISS Post-Communist Studies Programme Research Paper Series. Toronto, ON: York Centre for International and Security Studies, 2007.
• Vladisavljević, Nebojša. Serbia’s Antibureaucratic Revolution: Milosevic, the Fall of Communism and Nationalist Mobilization. Houndmills, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.
• Woodward, Susan L. Balkan Tragedy: Chaos and Dissolution After the Cold War. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 1995.

[1] Nebojša Vladisavljević, Serbia’s Antibureaucratic Revolution: Milosevic, the Fall of Communism and Nationalist Mobilization (Houndmills, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 2.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Valerie J. Bunce, Subversive Institutions: The Design and the Destruction of Socialism and the State (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 111.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid., 111-14.

[6] Mieczysław P. Boduszyński, Regime Change in the Yugoslav Successor States: Divergent Paths toward a New Europe (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010), 119; Steven Vasilevski, “Diverging Paths, Diverging Outcomes: A Comparative Analysis of Post-Communist Transition in the Successor States of Yugoslavia” in YCISS Post-Communist Studies Programme Research Paper Series (Toronto, ON: York Centre for International and Security Studies, 2007), 10; Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way, Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes After the Cold War (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 109-13, 117, 124.

[7] Susan L. Woodward, Balkan Tragedy: Chaos and Dissolution After the Cold War (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 1995), 1.

[8] Gale Stokes, The Walls Came Tumbling Down: The Collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1993), 218.

[9] Bunce, 111.

[10] Ibid.; Leonid Gibianskii, “The Soviet-Yugoslav Split” in Revolution and Resistance in Eastern Europe: Challenges to Communist Rule (Oxford, UK: Berg Press, 2006), 17-36.

[11] Sonja Licht, “Civil Society, Democracy, and the Yugoslav Wars” in The Lesson of Yugoslavia (New York, NY: Elsevier Press, 2000), 111-124.

[12] Stokes, 229-230, 238-241; Robert K. Schaeffer, “Democratization, Division and War in Yugoslavia: A Comparative Perspective” in The Lesson of Yugoslavia (New York, NY: Elsevier Press, 2000), 51.

[13] Vasilevski, 5.

[14] Stokes, 238-41.

[15] Vasilevski, 17-24.

[16] Vasilevski, 17; Licht, 119-20.

[17] Vladisavljević, 111.

[18] Ibid.

[19] Ibid., 113-15.

[20] Ibid., 111-12.

[21] Stokes, 220.

[22] Aleksandar Pavkovic, The Fragmentation of Yugoslavia: Nationalism and War in the Balkans (Houndmills, UK: Macmillan, 2000), 83.

[23] Ibid.

[24] Ibid., 97.

[25] Vladisavljević, 6.

[26] Stokes, 244.

[27] Ibid.

[28] Vasilevski, 7.

[29] Boduszyński, 119.

[30] Vasilevski, 7.

[31] Valerie J. Bunce and Sharon L. Wolchik, Defeating Authoritarian Leaders in Postcommunist Countries (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 78-84.

[32] Levitsky and Way, 109-13.

[33] Boduszyński, 173.

[34] Levitsky and Way, 197.

[35] Boduszyński, 161.

[36] Ibid., 162.

[37] Vasilevski, 10.

[38] Ibid.