rfmcdonald | [BRIEF NOTE] Allcock on Post-Yugoslav Ethnicity and Democracy (Reply)

Persuant to a discussion over at

nhw's LJ, John B. Allcock's Explaining Yugoslavia (New York: Columbia UP, 2000), chapter 14, "Quo Vadis, Jugoslavijo?".

In setting out my own agenda for the analysis of "post-Communist" and "post-Yugoslav" developments in the region, I draw attention to six important problems which will remain generic to the former Yugoslav states for the foreseeable future. Predictions about the future of individual states would be foolhardy in view of the complexity of the processes of change in which the entire Balkan Peninsula is involved. For this reason, I concentrate upon the way in which these issues will continue to figure as problems, rather than upon any anticipated solution to them.

These are: (1) the impact of demographic factors; (2) the continuing importance of the paternalist state; (3) the rootedness of populist democracy in a fundamentally collectivist political culture; (4) the long-term significance of patterns of ethnic diversity; (5) the uneasy balance between tradition and modernity; and (6) the tension between the local and the global (431)

Collectivism in political culture. To a large extent this over-reliance upon the state is linked to long-standing forms of collectivism in the political culture of the region. Significantly, there has been a general failure to develop a sense in practice (and often also in law) of individual rights and an institutionalised tendency to think in terms of collective rights, which subsume the person.

As I have already observed in discussing democracy, there have been two major traditions of discourse in talking about democratisation. "Representative" democracy tends to focus attention upon the interplay of contending groups and the process by which a diversity of interests, all recognised as legitimate, come to insert themselves into the political process. "Participatory" democracy tends to presume the existence of mechanisms for the expression of the "will of the people", so that those who challenge that will are ipso facto beyond the pale of legitimacy. Across all of the states emerging from Yugoslavia, there is a tendency to treat democracy in this latter sense.

This presumption is enshrined in constitutions across the region, which almost uniformly contain in their preambles statements to the effect that the republic is identified with a people, rather than simple with the citizens who dwell therein. (12) The notion that democracy means the unchallenged rule of the majority has only shifted from the organised working class (the "working people of Yugoslavia", under the legitimacy of the LC) to the dominant ethnic group. The new states emerging in the post-Yugoslav space have, for this reason, often been referred to as "authoritarian ethnocracies" rather than "democracies" (Ivekovic, in Schierup, ed., 1999:62-91).

If Slovenia appears to be different from other states in the region in this respect, it is for the simple reason that, as an ethnically largely homogeneous state, virtually all parties which emerged post-1989 were in some sense "Slovene nationalists". Taking this background assumption for granted, it has been possible to form the beginnings of a structure in which parties articulate issues and compete for support on a more complex basis, as "representative" democracy. The casualties of Slovene independence, represented strongly at the time of the first elections by a multiplicity of parties and pressure groups, have been precisely those "alternative" groups which sought to advance and defend personal rights. This version of "civil society" (as it came to be defined in Slovenia), consisting of a fringe of dissident groups advancing these individualistic concerns, evaporated with independence. (13)

[. . .]

The future of ethnic politics. It might seem that the centrality of national identity to South Slav politics is so obvious that it hardly requires comment. In one sense, it is perhaps even true to say that all politics in the post-Yugoslav states can be said to be nationalistic. Appeals to national identity and solidarity differ profoundly across the former federation, however, and no particular form of politics can be read off automatically from nationalism itself. Consequently, although ethnicity will certainly continue to shape the politics of all states in the post-Yugoslav Balkans, the form and direction of that political process will vary considerably.

In particular, it is important to note the difference between those states which are, broadly speaking, ethnically homogeneous (Slovenia, and perhaps Croatia after the collapse of the krajina) and those in which ethnic diversity remains a primary factor. The affirmation of national sovereignty and national identity vis-à-vis an outside state results in a political discourse and political relationships which are fundamentally different from the conflict of nationalities within the state. The general pattern of the political relationship of an ethnic majority to its co-resident minorities will take on a special character where these internal issues have a direct bearing upon relations with neighbouring states.

This difference is exemplified most vividly by the position of the Albanian population. Scattered across three states bordering Albania itself (Mottnenegro, Serbia and Macedonia), their futures cannot be considered independently. Developments in one area will stimulate or inhibit developments in all the others, so that in each case attempts to understand the position of Albanians simply as a minority in any of them will be far from adequate to the task. A similar problem arises with the dispersion of Serbs (located in Croatia, Bosnia-Hercegovina and Montenegro as well as Serbia) and Muslims (strongly present not only in Bosnia-Hercegovina but also in Macedonia, Serbia and Montenegro).

In the original discussion, for whatever it's worth, I think that I may have overstated Allcock's emphasis on ethnic homogeneity and a relative freedom from ethnic tensions as an enabling factor for representative, non-majoritarian democracy.