Beyond Stabilitocracy. Unveiling the Rise of Autocracy in the Western Balkans

Written by: Damir Kapidžić, Marika Djolai ,Marko Kmezić

 Democracy is challenged throughout the world, including the Western Balkan countries (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia) with current violent conflicts reshaping the global political order. Many nondemocratic or authoritarian governments, including those in the Western Balkans,1 have used the Covid-19 pandemic as a catalyst or an opportunity to enact additional limitations on civil freedoms, and to securitise citizens and civic engagement, delegitimise election processes, and implement novel mass surveillance methods. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has furthermore increased the security stakes of the region vis-à-vis its closest neighbours and helped strengthen the authoritarian tendencies of some of its political leaders.

Leaning towards autocracy entails infringement of civil liberties, primarily citizens’ political participation and political opponents’ activities, as well as the rights of minority groups and freedom of speech. Autocratic leaders are embedded in powerful elite networks that routinely participate in informal, corrupt economic activities, alongside local politics. The Western Balkans political regimes’ fitting autocratic attitude is not just a passing malfunction or a crisis of democracy, but rather a grounded and stable type of regime that places the countries at the bottom of a political continuum from liberal democracy to outright authoritarianism.

It emerged partly due to a sluggish EU accession path with little progress, which made the Western Balkan countries (WB6) a “transitional region with no clear goal or endpoint in sight, a zone “in-between” – in between democracy and authoritarianism, market and state-controlled economy, capitalist wilderness and socialist legacy.”2 This condition was termed stabilitocracy3 to describe regimes that oscillate between autocracy and democracy, supported by foreign actors who fail to acknowledge this condition and continue collaboration with these autocratic leaders. Along with boosting clientelism that ties people to the ruling elites through coercion and control, it results in the erosion of protections like strong institutions and independent media in the WB6 countries.

For the most part EU integration is perceived as the primary mechanism for strengthening democracy and creating a legal framework for states to operate under the rule of law. The initial idea that a gradual alignment with EU laws and policies by means of membership negotiations would spur democratic consolidation among EU candidate countries has largely failed. Serbia, where accession negotiations started in 2014, is not considered a liberal democracy from the same year onward. It is also clear that accession will not happen without democratic change.

Today, we argue, the WB6 is no longer in an in-between zone, and we seek to explore how the stabilitocracy conundrum has evolved in recent years, to assess the shift towards full autocracy in the WB6. At the same time, we assert that the democracy/autocracy dichotomy is too simplistic,5 recognising the democratic bias that has gained prominence in this discussion. Empirically, we aim to highlight a more complex picture of countries that exist on a wide a spectrum between these two categories, and the ongoing autocratisation away from stabilitocracy.

Click “Beyond-Stabilitocracy.-Unveiling-the-Rise-of-Autocracy-in-the-Western-Balkans to download the Biepag publication

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