Tolerating Semi-authoritarianism? Contextualising the EU’s Relationship with Serbia and Kosovo

Radeljić, Branislav

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-91412-1_8

Cited by 9 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…Since the coming into power of the Serbian Progressive Party (Srpska napredna stran-ka, progressive only in name) in 2012 and the consequent meteoric rise of Aleksandar Vučič, Serbia has seen deterioration in almost all fields of governance and socio-political life, from the economic, via public health, to a significant increase in corruption (Jovanović 2018b). Though tackled seldom within the contemporary academia, the works that have been produced on the topic of Vučić's Serbia have classified it as semi-authoritarian (Radeljić 2019), based on Marina Ottaway's theoretical assumptions (Ottaway 2013). V-Dem (v-dem.net) has but recently published their analyses on states that have seen the largest increase in their degrees of authoritarianism; together with Hungary, Turkey, Brasil, Poland, and India, Serbia has found its place at the top six fledgling autocratic regimes (Avakumović 2020).…”

Section: Serbia In Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

Discursive Governmental and Media Response to Covid-19: The Case of Serbia

Jovanović

2020

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Serbia’s government, led by Aleksandar Vučić, has in scholarship been classified as semi-authoritarian, using Marina Ottaway’s classification. Its media have also been described as being in heavy, biased support of the government. Scholarship has further revealed that the Vučić-led, post-2012 government, has thrown the country backwards in time, with corruption and affairs being the primary instance by which the regime can be described. Expectedly, the response of the government and the government-supporting media to the COVID-19 pandemic has been less than professional. The initial response included official government press conferences in which the novel coronavirus was deemed to be ’funny’ and that, in the middle of the pandemic explosion and increased deathrate in Italy, Serbia’s population was advised to go to Italy for ’shopping’. The media furthermore tried to pin the pandemic to Serbia’s opposition alleged attempts to topple the government via ’coronavirus propaganda’. This article proposes to tackle the government’s and their supporting media’s responses to COVID-19 in February/March 2019 from a Discourse Analytical perspective.

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Section: Serbia In Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

Discursive Governmental and Media Response to Covid-19: The Case of Serbia

Jovanović

2020

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“…71 A dramatic decline in the prosecution of grand corruption was recorded in Bosnia in the 2011-2019 period, 72 and an all-out attack on independent institutions has been one of the main features of the government of Aleksandar Vucic in Serbia. 73 Instances of dramatic whistleblowing exposures of corrupt dealings in Kosovo have failed to mobilise any adequate reaction from institutions.…”

Section: Institutional Strengthening With a Specifi C Focusmentioning

confidence: 99%

The European Union’s Rule of Law Promotion in the Western Balkans: Building a Rule of Law Constituency

Hogic

2020

CYELP

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This paper deals with the failures in the promotion of the rule of law in the six countries of the Western Balkans that are in different stages of their EU accession process. Drawing on concrete examples from more than two decades of rule of law promotion through the enlargement circles, the paper identifi es the different evolutionary stages of this undertaking. It fi nds that the current dominant paradigm of rule of law conditionality concerning the benchmarking of progress in the areas of Chapters 23 and 24 of the acquis fails to tackle state capture as the main structural obstacle to the rule of law in the Western Balkans. The paper proposes that this situation is to be improved by re-imagining rule of law promotion as an effort focused not merely on standards but on building a rule of law constituency. Four different approaches to rule of law promotion that have been less frequently used so far are offered: legal mobilisation, institutional strengthening, the politicisation of anti-corruption, and economic development. The paper concludes with refl ections on the realistic reach of the proposed interventions into efforts to promote the rule of law, arguing that while imperfect they remain necessary in order for the project to succeed.

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“…Kosovo gets a bullet point of its own (20), where it being a part of Serbia is stressed several times. It is seen as the "cradle of Serbian culture and spirituality", a trope that has been seen in iteration since its independence (Jovanović, 2019b;Radeljić, 2019), and seen often in primary sources from a nationalist provenance (Antonić, 2017;Nacionalist, 2018;Ristić, 2018;S.J., 2018;Ujedinjenjе, 2017). According to the SD's program, "without Kosovo and Metohija, Serbia ceases to exist".…”

Section: The Official Political Program Of the Serbian Rightmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…With Serbia's President Vučić -former member of the right-wing Serbian Radical Party and long-time warmonger -the country has taken significant strides backwards as a fledgling democracy. Vučić himself is increasingly referred to as a dictator in the media (Eror, 2019) and semi-authoritarian in scholarship (Radeljić, 2019), and the country's freedoms have started to erode manifestly, arguably most notably in the domain of the increasingly restricted freedom of the press (FreedomHouse, 2016(FreedomHouse, , 2017Jovanović, 2018c;Kmezic, 2018). The protests against his regime have seen some scant interest within the academic community (Fridman & Hercigonja, 2017;Jovanović, 2019a), including rare pieces on the development of Serbia's Right Wing through the decades (Jovanović, 2018b).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A New Political Scarecrow? The Political Program and Activity of the ”Serbian Right“

Jovanović

2020

Suvrem. teme

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The organization known as Srpska desnica (SD; the Serbian Right Wing) during 2019 become increasingly seen in the Serbian media, as well as receiving augmented visibility on posters throughout the country. With their recent electoral success in the town of Medveđa, as well as their announcement that they are turning into an official party that would enter the 2020 parliamentary elections, coupled with the troublesome past of their leader, Miša Vacić, the situation calls for investigation. In this article, we are putting Miša Vacić’s public and political engagement under a magnifying glass, positioning him within the broader nationalist political spectrum of the country, engaging his official political program. We shall furthermore define the concept of the political scarecrow, a political party or figure that serves primarily to frighten, as shall be clear from the case study that this is the role of his organization.

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Tolerating Semi-authoritarianism? Contextualising the EU’s Relationship with Serbia and Kosovo

Cited by 9 publications

References 18 publications

Discursive Governmental and Media Response to Covid-19: The Case of Serbia

Discursive Governmental and Media Response to Covid-19: The Case of Serbia

The European Union’s Rule of Law Promotion in the Western Balkans: Building a Rule of Law Constituency

A New Political Scarecrow? The Political Program and Activity of the ”Serbian Right“

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