Serbia

In the post-Milošević era, the main political cleavage has centered on the question of EU accession and Serbia’s close relationship with Russia, as well as the legacy of the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s. For Serbia, fighting effectively ended in 1999, following the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) bombing campaign against Yugoslavia (including Serbia), aimed at forcing Milošević to stop the military campaign in Kosovo. The latter was placed under the UN administration and declared independence in 2008, which Serbia does not recognize. At the time, Kosovo was the country’s southernmost province and simultaneously the spiritual heartland of Serbian Orthodoxy, but largely populated by Kosovar Albanians. After 5th October, the pro-West, anti-Milošević coalition governed for roughly a decade, and made progress in arresting war criminals, apologizing for war crimes in Srebrenica and Vukovar and pursuing EU membership. But these efforts also faced nationalist backlash, most violently seen in the 2003 assassination of Zoran Đinđić – Serbia’s reformist Prime Minister – at the hands of mobsters with ties to a Milošević-era special forces unit. Ultimately, economic stagnation after the global financial crisis (by one measure, real incomes in 2013 were no greater than incomes in 1971) drove dissatisfaction and swept the nationalist opposition to power in 2012. In the decade since, Aleksandar Vučić – Milošević’s former Minister of Information – has consolidated power and established his party (the SNS – Srpska Napredna Stranka) as the only game in town. However, the pro-West parties and the nationalists who have governed since 2012 take similar positions on the issues which define these main cleavages. The pro-West parties steadfastly oppose recognizing Kosovar independence, along with the nationalists, and the nationalists are now pro-EU (a position previously held only by the pro-West reformers). Vučić is widely understood to run the country as President, even though the Constitution establishes the Prime Minister (currently Ana Brnabić) as chief executive. Pro-government media dominates the landscape, and independent outlets are often subject to outright intimidation. Elections are generally representative, but voting has been marred by irregularities, including physical intimidation, and in 2020 the opposition chose to boycott entirely. In the judicial arena, practices have been aligned with EU requirements, but the system continues to be subject to political pressure.

For the next decade, Serbian politics is liable to be shaped by its relations with Kosovo, EU accession, and the emergence (or not) of a credible challenge to Vučić and the SNS. In the first two areas, there has been little sign of movement. The Brussels Agreement – designed to normalize relations with Kosovo – remains to be fully implemented. Additionally, Serbia has continued to be Russia’s ally despite the war in Ukraine, and for the first time, a majority of Serbs now oppose joining the EU. In the domestic arena, concerns over environmental, quality of life, and corruption issues have increasingly driven political opposition and mass-mobilization. Whether these sentiments will translate to meaningful and consistent gains for opposition parties remains to be seen. In recent years, democratic decline has manifested in the GSoDI sub-attributes for Clean Elections, Free Political Parties, Civil Liberties and Effective Parliament. Looking ahead, these are likely to remain key indicators, along with those for Judicial Independence, Media Integrity and Absence of Corruption.