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Montenegro is a country in which one of the main features of representative democracy has never developed: government replaceability. after regaining independence and initiating an eU accession process, externally driven changes have stimulated lively institutional transformations which, however, have failed to produce meaningful democratic competition.This article tries to shed some light on the following phenomenon: how is it possible that in a formally democratic legal framework the ruling (ex-communist) party keeps winning each national election? apart from providing a contextual analysis, it seeks to describe a rather interesting concept-the image of invincibility which is, together with deep national/ethnic divisions and non-participant political attitudes, believed to be one of the key ingredients of the enigma of the last uninterrupted ex-communist incumbency in the post-communist world.

In divided societies and new democracies, clientelism (in the form of pork barrel) and ethno-politics appear to go hand in hand. It is apparent that politicians are incentivized to compete for support within their own ethnic groups, but does an ethnic link between voters and decision-makers influence how voters perceive and evaluate pork barrel practices? To address this question, we conducted a survey experiment (n = 1200) in ethnically heterogeneous Slovakia. The aim was to examine whether pork barrel politics implemented by a Slovak decision-maker and a Hungarian decision-maker are evaluated differently by Slovaks and Hungarians. The findings suggest that when individuals and decision-makers share the same ethnicity, individuals tend to maintain an equally positive level of trust and willingness to vote for the responsible decision-maker, even when the decision-maker implements a policy decision that does not benefit them. Nonetheless, shared ethnicity does not prevent individuals from being critical of the implemented policy decision itself.

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