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Title: $Political dynamics of the post-communist Montenegro: one-party show
Abstract: AbstractMontenegro is the only European post-communist country governed by the same party – the Democratic Party of Socialists – since the introduction of political pluralism. Thought-provoking as such, this appears even more puzzling in light of the radical transformation that the party underwent during this period. Once the pillar of the Montenegrin hybrid regime, the DPS played the key role in the country's democratization, subsequent to the 1997 split within its leadership. Moreover, being the most vocal advocate of a state federation with Serbia for more than a decade, it became the main political force behind the renewal of Montenegrin independence. This article seeks to contribute to a better understanding of this unique and understudied post-communist political phenomenon. It argues that the DPS's longevity in power has been determined by two factors. In the earlier non-democratic governing phase, it was the considerably high level of the party's institutionalization that brought about its political supremacy. In the following period, the party managed to monopolize the idea of Montenegrin sovereignty, thus acquiring a significant amount of political legitimacy. The article uses the explaining outcome process tracing method that attempts to craft a minimally sufficient explanation of an outcome by combining theoretical and case-specific mechanisms.Keywords: party institutionalizationpolitical dominationhybrid regimeMontenegro Notes on contributorIvan Vuković is a doctoral candidate at the Department of Political Science of the Central European University in Budapest. In addition, he works as a teaching assistant at the Faculty of Political Science of the University of Montenegro. The working title of his doctoral dissertation is "The Post-Communist Political Transition of the Western Balkans: Croatia, Montenegro and Serbia between Yugoslav Past and European Future" (supervisor: Zsolt Enyedi). His main research interest relates to general problems of political transition and democratization of the post-communist European states and, in particular, the political dynamics of so-called hybrid regimes in this region and beyond. His latest article (titled: "Diverging Party Outcomes in Hybrid Regimes: The Cases of Croatia, Serbia, and Montenegro") was published in the 2011 winter issue of the Romanian Journal of Political Science.Notes1. The second-best was the result of the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) which won 46.1% of vote in the December 1990 parliamentary election.2. Winning 76.1% of votes, Bulatović was elected president in the second round. His result in the first round was 42.2%.3. Bieber, "Montenegrin Politics," 15.4. Pavićević, "The Electoral System of Montenegro," 85.5. Most of the other parties participating in the 1990 elections were established merely a few months earlier.6. Darmanović, "Montenegro: Dilemmas," 156.7. Beach and Pedersen, Process Tracing.8. Goati, Partije Srbije i Crne Gore, 132.9. After garnering 42.8% of votes in the first round, Bulatović won 63.3% in the second.10. In 1995, the country's gross domestic product (GDP) stood at 50.2% whereas its industrial output was only 41.1% of its 1990 level (Đurić, "The Economic Development of Montenegro," 140).11. In May 1992, merely a month after its establishment, the SRJ was placed under political and economic embargo by the United Nations (UN) Security Council as a consequence of its political leadership's failure to implement previously adopted UN Resolution (no. 752) demanding that all parties involved in the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina end the fighting immediately.12. Goati, Partije Srbije i Crne Gore, 137.13. At the meeting held on 11 July, 62 out of 99 members of the DPS main board stood by Đukanović. Milica Pejanović Đurišić, a high party representative, became a new party head, whereas Đukanović, who would replace her a year later, was voted its candidate for the upcoming presidential election.14. OSCE/ODIHR, "Republic of Montenegro," 3.15. The coalition won 33 out of 72 seats.16. In light of the recent negative experiences with the emergence of new state borders in the region, the EU was, in principle, very sceptical about political initiatives favouring their creation.17. At the same time, at the insistence of the Montenegrin officials, a "temporality clause" was built into the Constitutional Charter of the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro (SCG) guaranteeing the right of the constitutive members to opt out of it via referendum after three years (Vuković, "The Post-Communist Political Transition," 69).18. Vujanović won 64.2% of votes.19. The coalition won 48.6% of votes and 39 out of 76 parliament seats.20. The ruling coalition won 48 out of 76 parliament seats.21. For more on the topic of political transformation of the communist successor parties, see: Bozoki and Ishiyama, The Communist Successor Parties.22. Levitsky and Way, Competitive Authoritarianism.23. Schedler, "Elections without Democracy."24. Goati, Stabilizacija demokratije, 120.25. Darmanović, "Montenegro: Dilemmas," 147.26. The coalition won 19 out of 71 seats, that is, 27% of votes. By comparison, in the 1992 parliamentary election, the two parties obtained 27 (NS – 14 and LSCG – 13) out of 85 seats, or 32% of votes.27. Bieber, "Montenegrin Politics," 28.28. The new electoral law introduced 14 electoral districts at the national level. Previously, the entire country represented a single electoral district. As a result, the DPS got 51.2% of votes and as much as 63.4% of seats.29. Interview (Đukanović), June 2012.30. Ibid.31. See: Freedom House's Nations in Transit 2005 report on Montenegro (available at: http://www.freedomhouse.org/report/nations-transit/2005/montenegro).32. With the turnout of 66%, more than 95% of the electorate voted positively.33. Demokratska partija socijalista Crne Gore, "Istorijat" (available at: http://www.dps.me/o-nama/istorijat).34. Ibid.35. Vuković, "The Post-Communist Political Transition," 67.36. According to the last census, the population of Montenegro is 625,266, with a total area of 13,812 km2.37. The notion borrowed from Magaloni, Voting for Autocracy.38. Mackie, "Causes and Conditions," 245.39. Huntington, Political Order.40. See: Janda, Political Parties; Panebianco, Organization and Power; Mainwaring and Scully, "Introduction"; Levitsky, "Institutionalization and Peronism."41. Randall and Svasand, "Party Institutionalization," 13. In addition, the authors point to an erroneous tendency in the related literature to elide the issue of party institutionalization with that of party system institutionalization. The latter, they explain, is the outcome of a range of developments, only some of which have to do directly with the constituent parties themselves (Ibid., 6–8).42. See, for instance, Levitsky and Way, Competitive Authoritarianism.43. Ibid., 19.44. Ibid.45. Ibid., 23.46. Amundsen, "In Search of a Counter-Force," 293.47. Ihonvbere, Economic Crisis, 21.48. In April 1989, at the time they were elected the party president and the secretary-general, Momir Bulatović and Milo Đukanović were 32 and 27 years old respectively. Most of the other members of the new SKCG leadership were also in their late 20s and early 30s.49. As earlier mentioned, the Montenegrin leadership was then facing a dire economic and political situation in the country. This brought about gradual moderation of its political discourse, most apparent in its efforts to normalize political relations with its neighbors. At the same time, politically dominant Serbia sought to obstruct this process. Bieber thus reminds us that "in response to [Montenegro's] rapprochement with Albania […] the Serbian authorities stopped trucks crossing the Montenegrin-Serbian border," justifying the trade embargo by "a ban on the export of goods from Serbia, which were deemed strategic during the times of crisis" (Bieber, "Montenegrin Politics," 24).50. Schonfeld, "Oligarchy and Leadership Stability," 231.51. Goati, Partije Srbije i Crne Gore, 146.52. Schonfeld, "Oligarchy and Leadership Stability," 231.53. Goati, Partije Srbije i Crne Gore, 156.54. Interview (Bulatović), January 2012.55. Ibid.56. Interview (Đukanović), June 2012.57. One relatively recent political episode indicates that the decision-making within the DPS has remained very inclusive. Namely, subsequent to the 2006 parliamentary election, Željko Šturanović, a high DPS official, became a new Montenegrin prime minister. Interestingly, ahead of his promotion, the party leader Đukanović had openly suggested that Igor Lukšić, another high DPS representative, would be the best candidate for the new head of the government. Yet, a majority of the party main board members disagreed with his proposal and endorsed Šturanović instead.58. Interview (Đukanović), June 2012.59. The notion borrowed from Schedler, "Elections without Democracy."60. For a detailed comparative analysis of the political dynamics of the three countries during the 1990s, see: Vuković, "Diverging Party Outcomes."61. In this regard, Levitsky and Way remind us that the SPS inherited its predecessors' developed organizational structure, including a wide network of local branches and "workplace organizations" in all major factories, as well as the $160 million worth of material and financial assets (Levitsky and Way, Competitive Authoritarianism, 37).62. Čular, "Political Development in Croatia 1990–2000," 30.63. Kasapović, Hrvatska politika 1990–2000, 21–2.64. Already in the second parliamentary election, held in December 1992, the SPS failed to win a majority of seats. Moreover, until the end of its rule, the party would not manage to reestablish an absolute political dominance. In addition, after the 1996 local elections, the socialists lost political control of Belgrade as well as a number of other big Serbian cities. On the other hand, in the election for the Chamber of Counties of the Croatian Parliament held in 1993, that is, in the midst of the war for independence led by President Tuđman, his party won fewer votes than the coalition of opposition parties (45.5–48%). What is more, the HDZ lost the 1995 election for the local assembly of the capital city of Zagreb, held at the peak of national euphoria stirred by successful ending of the military operations against the Serb rebels.65. In Serbia, subsequent to Milošević's defeat in the September 2000 Yugoslav presidential election, the SPS suffered an embarrassing loss in the December parliamentary election. The party won merely 13.2% of votes, losing 48 out of 85 seats. In Croatia, after winning three consecutive parliamentary elections under Tuđman's rule, the HDZ was heavily defeated in January 2000, only a month after his death. The party won 26.8% of votes, almost 20% less than in the 1995 election.66. Interview (Đukanović), June 2012.67. In this regard, one should bear in mind that, notwithstanding the decades of generous allocations from the federal state level, Montenegro remained the poorest republic of the socialist Yugoslavia until its very end. In addition, it got the most important cultural and educational institutions (National Theater – 1969; National Academy of Sciences and Arts – 1973; University – 1974) decades and even centuries after the other Yugoslav republics.68. This was, perhaps, most convincingly demonstrated by the electoral results of those political parties and coalitions that campaigned for the renewal of Montenegrin independence throughout the early 1990s. Advocating the transformation of the Yugoslav federation into a confederation of the six sovereign states, The Union of Reform Forces won 14% of votes (17/125 seats) in the 1990 parliamentary election. Two years later, the pro-independence Liberal Alliance of Montenegro (12%) and the Social Democratic Party of Reformists (4.1%) got merely a few percent more.69. Interview (Đukanović), June 2012.70. Darmanović, "Montenegro: A Miracle," 153.71. This, however, is not to say that the change of DPS's attitude towards the statehood question was without considerable political risk. Quite the contrary, the opinion polls conducted during this period by the Center for Democracy and Human Rights (CEDEM), Montenegro's leading think tank, showed that the level of popular support for independence was not high enough to guarantee the success of the political project (available at: http://www.cedem.me/en/programmes/empirical-research/political-public-opinion.html). In addition, the EU was generally not supportive of the idea of creating another state in the turbulent Balkan region. Finally, as elaborated above, the respectable political "weight" among pro-independence voters of the Liberal Alliance and, in particular, its strong anti-DPS attitude stood as another major obstacle to the newly chosen political path of the Montenegrin ruling party.72. Darmanović, "Montenegro: A Miracle," 154.73. Thus, for instance, five years after the 2007 adoption of the new Montenegrin constitution, the two biggest opposition parties – the SPS and the New Serb Democracy (NOVA) – continue to ask for major revision of its articles that define the country's symbols and official language. In addition to the Montenegrin national flag, they demand the introduction of the so-called "people's" tricolour flag that would to a large extent resemble the national flag of Serbia. At the same time, the opposition parties require that, alongside Montenegrin, Serbian becomes the country's second official language.74. Randall and Svasand, "Party Institutionalization," 19.75. Following the 2000 electoral defeat, the SPS managed to politically consolidate, ostensibly owing to the well-developed organizational infrastructure. Moreover, in the last parliamentary election, held in May 2012, the party came third, which allowed it to play the pivotal role in the process of government formation. Yet, even in the coalition with two other parties, one of which was the broad-based Party of United Pensioners, the SPS could not win more than 14.5% of votes, less than a third of its best-ever electoral result.