DIVIDED SOCIETIES XII: Building up the Polities; The Balkans

IUC Dubrovnik, April 24., 2009

Polity in a Divided Post-Transitional Society:

The Case of Croatia

Inga Tomić-Koludrović & Mirko Petrić

Department of SociologyUniversity of Zadar

Building up the Polities ↓

implication = “destroyed” or “weak”

/ i.e. need to be built/

the “Balkans”↓

means different things to different people

but consensus = that polities there fit the description of

“destroyed” or “weak”

/historically & at present/

competing terms/ geo-political conceptions /

the Balkans

South East Europe

Western Balkans

Adriatic Europe

former Yugoslavia/+ Albania/

---------------------- every term tells a story

the “post-socialist” countries?

the keyword = “diversity”------------------------------------------------

culture

religion /traditional matrices/

value systems

ethnic composition

political systems (now & in the past)

levels of economic development

----------------------------------------------

vary across countries, subregions, regions

the post-socialist “transition”------------------------------------------------

measured by the yardstick of fulfilling EU accession criteria

↓

expressed exclusively in political, economic & legal terms

/society & culture = left out /----------------------------------------------

the post-socialist “transition”------------------------------------------------

the “Copenhagen criteria” (1993)↓

(1) the stability of institutions guaranteeing democracy(2) the existence of the functional market economy

(3) the ability of the candidate country to take over the

responsibilities of membership

Eu Council meeting in Madrid (1995) ↓

(4) the adjusting of the administrative and judiciary structures to fit the EU norms

(so that the Copenhagen criteria can be successfully implemented)

Croatia = entering “mature transition”------------------------------------------------

next to a EU member / failed state index country

Croatia------------------------------------------------

= a post-transitional country ↓

/ in social terms /

new social arrangements = stabilized

after a succession of various sorts of crises

Croatia------------------------------------------------

1990s ↓

winners : losers

new elites war veterans (political. industrial workers

& women economic) youth youth youth

. retired people ………… . youth

Croatia ------------------------------------------------

2000 - 2009 ↓

exposure to a new kind of risks

increasing global integration

------------------------------------------------------------(started in the second half of the 1990s,but now with visible consequences at the

level of everyday life)

Croatia ------------------------------------------------

1990s ↓

the wars of Yugoslav succession

privatization (“chaotic” / “criminal”) of the former public (“socially owned”) property

“an odd symbiosis of market absolutism and the perception of the ethno-national state as an

unmistakable, almost divine entity” (Katunarić, 1997)------------------------------------------------------------

- president Tudjman’s vision of 200 Croatian capitalist families

Croatia ------------------------------------------------

second half of the 1990s ↓

successive privatizations

banksnational telecommunications system

entry of foreign media ownership------------------------------------------------------------

Croatia ------------------------------------------------

2000 - 2009 ↓

gradual EU integration

constant growth of foreign debt----------------------------------

1993: 3,5 billion $2000 : 10 billion $

2009 : 37 + billion $

Croatia ------------------------------------------------

accelleration of history ↓

1992 : nationhood2011 (projected) : EU membership

---------------------------------

from a “belated nation” to supra-national integration

Croatia ------------------------------------------------

consequences of accelleration ↓

culture lag

(& social as well)+

unexpected / non-standard outcomes---------------------------------

indicator : co-existense & confusion of various sets of values

(premodern – modern – postmodern)

Croatia ------------------------------------------------

parallel unfolding of two modernities ↓

in Ulrich Beck’s sense of the terms1st & 2nd modernity

simple & reflexive

--------------------------------

Tomić-Koludrović (1999 )

.

---------------------------------------------

Croatia ---------------------------------------------------

shares with other East European (& ex-YU) countries

↓

a post-socialist transitionin conditions of

globalization &

liquid modernity (Bauman)

Croatia : specificities ---------------------------------------------------

different from other East European

countries ↓

Yugoslav-style socialism

(openess, freedom to travel, elements of the market-place,consumer goods available, some liberal values)

/ positive & negative aspects /

Croatia : specificities ---------------------------------------------------

different from other ex-YU countries

↓

“Tradition”(cultural & social, institutional past)

+

elements of socialist modernization

/ outcomes of the encounter of such a tradition /

:-

Croatia : values---------------------------------------------------

Yugoslav-wide survey of youth

(late 1980s – Communist Party funded)

↓

interpretation of results (M. Ule, 1988 )

based on R.Inglehart’s survival & self-expression values

&U. Beck’s postmaterialist values (ecology),

individualist values

Yugoslav-wide youth values survey---------------------------------------------------postmaterialist & individualist values

↓

Slovenia, Croatia (consistently)+

selected cities in N. Serbia(Belgrade – Novi Sad)

Yugoslav-wide youth values survey---------------------------------------------------

the rest of Yugoslavia↓

traditional values + high on authoritarian index

low acceptance of entrepreneurial values

turn of the century Croatia---------------------------------------------------

some students in Zagreb as high on authoritarian index

as youth in Kragujevac (Serbia)in the late 1980s survey

(the highest in then-Yugoslavia)

--------------------------------------------

what happened?

“transitional” Croatia---------------------------------------------------

the beginning of 1990s – outbreak of war ↓

homogenization, retraditionalization

a sort of “counter-secularization”

--------------------------------------------

what happened?

Croatia : outcomes of retraditionalization etc---------------------------------------------------

↓

low generalized trust

trust in the institutions of Catholic church = highest

but

values of church-goers = contradict Catholic morality

--------------------------------------------values : confusion

/ N.B. not “postmodern sampling” but “divided” within a person /

polity : policy ---------------------------------------------------

polity (in senses ranging from“political community” to

the unit of an “organized society”)

=“destroyed” or “weak”/ i.e. needs to be built/

-----------------------------------------------------------“building up” policy

polity : community ---------------------------------------------------

community (of interest to sociologists)

↓

missing element of identification(Bauman)

-----------------------------------------------------------present in war-time and years of nationalist

homogenization

now missing

polity ---------------------------------------------------

community ↓

political institutions

civil society

-----------------------------------------------------------

polity ---------------------------------------------------

regression to pre-political

↓

socialist legacy+ legacy of 1990s nationalism

+ neo-liberal ideology

building up polities ---------------------------------------------------

what is to be done?

policy aspects

-----------------------------------------

what would you do?