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The Balkans: Democracy Without Choices

The Balkans today still appear to be an explosive mixture of weak states, nonstates, and present or future protectorates. In reports to policy makers, the region is described as a place where borders (when defined) are soft, identities are hard, reform policies have failed, and the future is cloudy. While we do not know just how many of Southeastern Europe’s de facto states are functioning, and to what extent, we do know that today they are all democracies: The parliamentary elections that took place on 17 November 2001 in the former Serbian region of Kosovo mean that each country or entity in the region now has a representative assembly. A decade ago, the region’s biggest problem was the prevalence of nondemocratic states. Today the problem is that there are more democracies than sovereign states in the region, and yet there has been less political change than supporters of democracy had expected. These contradictory trends make toting up democracy’s balance sheet in the Balkans a daunting task. On the positive side, the major political actors in the region do not question democracy’s status as the only legitimate and desirable form of government. Citizens are sorely disappointed with the status quo, but are not—or at least not yet—drawn to undemocratic alternatives. The military is in its barracks; Slobodan Miloseviae is in the dock at The Hague; elections are regularly held. In comparison with, say, the post-Soviet republics of Central Asia, Southeastern Europe shows constant progress in democratization. On the negative side, there is a justified fear that the Balkan democracies as a group are more fragile than we had suspected. Trust in Ivan Krastev is director of the Centre for Liberal Strategies in Sofia, Bulgaria. This essay is drawn from “The Inflexibility Trap: Frustrated Societies, Weak States, and Democracy,” a report on the state of democracy in the Balkans that he initially drafted in February 2002. The final version of this report will appear on the National Endowment for Democracy’s website (www.ned.org).