Cleavages in Serbia and consolidation of democracy

Abstract

The article discusses the sociological obstacles for consolidation in Serbia after 2000. The author claim that the reason for slow consolidation lies squarely with the type of political cleavages that continue to dominate Serbian politics. Throughout Eastern Europe, symbolic conflicts relatively quickly gave way to distributional conflicts during the 1990s. Distributional conflicts typically result in compromise, which is why they are regarded as favorable to consolidation of democracy. Other type of dominant cleavages is ideological and symbolical. Ideological cleavages divide the body politics to those who were loyal to the previous regime and to those who support the current reformists, and symbolical cleavages are identity-based. The inability to remove the symbolical issues from the political agenda in seven years is what undermines the weak foundation for democracy in Serbia today. Due to the resistance of symbolical and ideological cleavages (patriots/- Europeans, old regime forces/reformers etc.) rather than socio-economic cleavages, author defines the party system of Serbia as deeply polarized with the existence of anti-system parties. Deep polarization and the existence of the anti system parties is what undermines consolidation of democracy. The author shows that the existence of anti-system parties is precisely the reason why Serbia cannot get out of the spirit of electoral authoritarianism and why electoral democracy keeps failing to consolidate.

Keywords

• party cleavages
• democracy
• transition
• elites
• political system