Yugoslav legacies and European Union accession: Challenges of liberalism in the Western Balkans

Kostis Karpozilos (AG Leventis Fellow, St Antony's College, Oxford)

Adis Merdzanovic, Junior Research Fellow at SEESOX and author of Democracy by Decree: Prospects and Limits of Imposed Consociational Democracy in Bosnia and Herzegovina (Ibidem Press, 2015), spoke on March 1, 2016 on the challenges of liberalism in the western Balkans. Adis has carried out detailed research on Bosnia and is currently expanding his outlook to the question of European Union accession across the western Balkans. The structure of his informed and intriguing talk reflected this expansion. Bosnia operated as a springboard for the main research question: what is the present state and future of political liberalism in Bosnia, Serbia, and Croatia? 

An interesting case study introduced the audience to the perplexities and challenges surrounding political liberalism in the region. Adis recounted the Sejdić-Finci case as an illustrative example of the tensions between the Bosnian state and individual political rights. The basic premise of post-war Bosnia was the representation of the three main ethno-religious groups that had participated in the war of 1992-1995. The result is a complicated structure of national and local assemblies in which every ethno-religious group has a predefined number of seats. This carefully designed structure though has proven not only weak, but also prevents individuals not belonging to these groups (as in the case of Jakub Finci and Dervo Sejdić) to run for office. The speaker argued that this case illustrates the challenges of liberalism: how can a State at the same time position the individual as the source of political legitimacy and protect the rights of its respective ethno-religious groups?

According to Adis such contradictions require a re-examination and reassessment of the particulars of the liberal project across the post-Yugoslav states. In this context he provided a panorama of existing realities in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, and Croatia. These states share a common language and historical legacies, as they all belonged to the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Their similarities though are not confined to the past; all three of them are interested in joining the common European project, while at the same time lacking basic elements of political liberalism. At that point the speaker presented the difficulties surrounding the pinpointing of the notion of liberalism in order to demonstrate an important argument: that European Union policies in the region prioritized economic liberalism over social liberalism. This prioritization reflected the dominant policies within the European Union and the desire for an economic program that would operate as a counterweight to the inefficiencies of the state-owned economy of socialist Yugoslavia. 
Analysing the particulars of Yugoslav socialism the speaker advanced to a very intriguing thought. Instead of juxtaposing the socialist economy from the post-war dominant economic model, he discussed how the policies of workers’ self-management fuelled the economic liberalism of post-war transition. Given the preliminary nature of Adis’ research one cannot but wish that he will pursue further this line of analysis: to what extent and in which ways did the “liberal” and idiosyncratic financial policies of socialist Yugoslavia inform the implementation of neo-liberal conditions in the successor states? 

The final part of the talk was devoted to the European Union Accession procedures. Offering an overview dating back to 1993 Adis illustrated the criteria brought forth by the European Union and their consistent focus on political liberalism and market economy. These policies can be summarized in the following 2003 statement during the Thessaloniki Summit on the perspective of membership for the western Balkan countries: 

“We all share the values of democracy, the rule of law, respect for human and minority rights, solidarity and a market economy, fully aware that they constitute the very foundations of the European Union.” Listing the 35 accession chapters the speaker demonstrated that in the vast majority they were focused on financial and political reforms. In this context, it can be no surprise that social liberalism is still in demand across the region- fuelling thus social protest and upheaval.