PECULIARITIES OF TRANSITION IN SERBIA AND MONTENEGRO
PECULIARITIES OF TRANSITION IN SERBIA AND MONTENEGRO

Author(s): Srđan Darmanović
Subject(s): Politics / Political Sciences, Politics, History, Governance, Recent History (1900 till today), Special Historiographies:, Government/Political systems, Electoral systems, Transformation Period (1990 - 2010), Post-Communist Transformation
Published by: CEDET Centar za demokratsku tranziciju
Keywords: Authoritarian regime; transition; models of transition; transaction; collapse; electoral democracy; Serbia and Montenegro; consolidation
Summary/Abstract: Serbia and Montenegro are among the most difficult and complicated cases of transition in the post-communist world. The reason lies primarily in the prominence of the problem of statehood and the crisis of the former SFRY, eventually resolved through war. The war was a significant factor in that the way out of the communist system led into another undemocratic regime. Thus in Serbia and Montenegro there was not one but two transitions. The first, negative transition (“non-transition”) happened at the exit from the communist system, when in Serbia an undemocratic order was established with strong marks of personal rule (“Caesarism”, “pseudo-democracy”), and in Montenegro a regime that also monopolized power but was headed by a large authoritarian party run in an oligarchic manner. The negative transition in Serbia was carried out on the basis of a sort of inverted model of transaction. As distinct from the transaction model in other post-communist countries, where reformists within the ruling party prevailed over the conservatives and began to liberalize the regime, in the intra-party struggle in Serbia party hawks prevailed and precluded liberalization, that is, a positive transition. In Montenegro the first, negative transition began with the collapse of the old party elite, though again not to the benefit of party reformists but to the populist new leadership instead. The second transition in Montenegro began in 1997 with the split within the ruling party in which the party reformists prevailed and subsequently made a (anti-Milošević) pact with the opposition. In Serbia the second transition began with the collapse of the authoritarian regime on October 5, 2000. Both countries then entered the period of electoral democracy, though with elements of instability preventing full democratic consolidation.

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