Research Proposal

I am a graduate student in the Political Science Department at New York University. I am focusing my thesis on the impact of the international community on the process of Serbian democratization.

Democracy promotion, i.e. democratization, is largely linked to the policy of conditionality whereby economic aid is conditioned upon the enactment of various political reforms within the target state. This Instrumentalist approach assumes that actors within the target state wish choose compliance and reward over non-compliance and punishment. International conditionality upon Serbia includes full cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and a conciliatory attitude towards Kosovo. Serbian political actors consistently choose non-compliance and therefore punishment over meeting these conditions to the satisfaction of the international community.

Within the public realm, explanations for Serbia’s actions remain consistent with generally held stereotypes of the country as corrupt, nationalistic, and backwards. Yet, a comparison of the Balkan region through Western assessments, such as Freedom House and the World Bank, demonstrates that politically, economically, and socially, Serbia is an average Balkan country. I propose that it is not a unique stubbornness on the part of Serbs that results in Serbia’s current geopolitical position. Rather, the current geopolitical position of Serbia is a result of external and internal dynamics, linkages on various levels of society.

Linkage theory argues that there are constantly inputs and outputs (both direct and indirect) going back and forth between the “environment” (either the international system or other polities) and the polity in question. Extending this to the case of conditionality, linkage theorists would argue that a polity’s decision to comply with conditionality is effected by numerous inputs (the EU, individual EU countries, private individuals/groups at national and international levels) both intentionally and unintentionally. Linkage theorists would also examine the effect that the domestic situation is having upon the external environment (i.e. other polities or the international system). According to linkage theory, therefore, the successful usage of conditionality as a democratization mechanism is far more complex than the reward and punishment model. It may very well be the case that the pressures exerted by various linkages cause the cost of compliance to domestic political actors to outbalance the benefits of reward.

Scholarly analysis of conditionality as a tool of democratization tends to focus on political actors within the target state. Such works assume political actors are either pro-EU or anti-EU. They further assume that those who are pro-EU are in favor of democracy and those who exhibit anti-EU tendencies are against democracy. The case of Serbia reveals the problematic nature of this assumption. Within Serbia, political actors within the two main democratic parties, the moderate nationalist Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS) and the pro-EU Democratic Party (DS), have, at different times, favored non-compliance with regard to ICTY cooperation and attitudes towards Kosovo. Yet, as Freedom House and other indicators demonstrate, under DS and DSS leadership, Serbian democracy is on par with all of the other Balkan democracies. Clearly, research on conditionality must be expanded to analyze other factors influencing non-compliance other than simply an anti-democratic and anti-EU attitude. This paper utilizes linkage theory to explain these other factors. In the broader scope of political science theory, this paper calls attention to the need to devote greater attention to the dynamic between international and domestic politics as a causal mechanism for the decisions of political actors.

Within Serbia, the conditioning of much needed economic aid upon the divisive issues of ICTY compliance and Kosovo status allows political actors to premise their political actions upon nationalist rhetoric rather than addressing economic and social needs. When the government is unable to provide for economic and social needs, widespread public demand expands the scope and power of informal economy. Within Serbia, the informal economy contains many former paramilitaries. Therefore, the weakening of the Serbian government by making the ICTY and Kosovo foremost issues and distracting attention from social and economic needs, has allowed Milosevic-era radical nationalist elites to retain their positions of power within Serbian society.

Similarly, the centrality of ICTY compliance and Kosovo status within Serbian politics has generated large amounts of single-issue protest votes in favor of the Serbian Radical Party (SRS). Votes for the SRS, therefore, cannot be considered support for its general radical platform but rather votes against the ICTY and Kosovo issues. This suggests that were the ICTY and Kosovo issues to occupy a less central position, the SRS would loose much of its prestige. The international community, especially the EU, consistently warns that any government containing the SRS will stall accession talks. Consequently, conditionality excludes large swaths of society from democratic power such as moderate nationalists who, despite favoring democratic reforms, vote for the SRS to protest the ICTY and Kosovo issues. It also, therefore, precludes the formation of a genuine opposition party within Serbian politics, an essential element of successful democratization.

Any attempts to study Serbia’s non-compliance with European Conditionality, therefore, must examine the dynamics between international politics and domestic Serbian politics. It is for this reason that I will travel to Serbia this summer to interview Serbian politicians, Serbian Non-Governmental Organizations, International Non-Governmental Organizations, the European Union, and various other domestic and international actors.