Economic and Democratic Consolidation of the Former Yugoslav Republics

Miro Hacek
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1339-067X

Abstract

Article analyses the processes of democratic consolidation in the former Yugoslav republics in the period since the volatile and violent breakup of socialist Yugoslavia three decades ago. Author is putting an emphasis on the notion of economic consolidation processes in all former Yugoslav republics and tests the thesis that economic consolidation is indeed the one prerequisite of democratic consolidation that suffered most direct effects of failed peaceful transformation in areas of former Yugoslavia that plunged into post-independence wars and conflicts. Author confirms that the secret to the democratic resilience is hidden in economic development – not only, as some theories claimed back in the 1960s (Lipset, 1959, p. 69–105), in various forms of undemocratic rule, but in a democracy built upon democratic institutions, respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms plus the rule of law.


Keywords

democracy; economy; consolidation; former Yugoslavia; republics; Slovenia

Dahl, A. R. (1990). Transition to Democracy. Address delivered to the symposium on “Voices of Democracy”. University of Dayton, Centre for International Studies. Available at http://www.freedomhouse.com (2 November 2021).

Freedom House, Nations in Transit. (n.d.). Accessed November 2, 2021. http://www.freedomhouse.org.

Freeman, R. J. (1989). Democracies and Market: The Politics of Mixed Economies. Cornell University Press.

Halliwell, F. J. (1993). Empirical Linkages Between Democracy and Economic Growth. British Journal of Political Science, 24(2), 225–248.

Hirschman, A. (1981). The Social and Political Matrix of Inflation: Elaboration’s on the Latin America. Cambridge University Press.

Huntington, S. P. (1993). The third wave: democratization in late twentieth century. University of Oklahoma Press.

Human development reports. (n.d.). Accessed November 2, 2021. http://hdr.undp.org.

Kukovič, S., & Haček, M. (2014). The processes of economic consolidation in countries of former Yugoslavia. Journal of Comparative Politics, 7(1), 36–51.

Linz, J., & Stepan, A. (1996). Toward Consolidated Democracy. Journal of Democracy, 7(2), 14–33.

Lipset, M. (1959). Some Social Requisites of Democracy: Economic Development and Political Legitimacy. American Political Science Review, 53(1), 69–105.

Lipset, M. (1981). Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics. John Hopkins University Press.

Murrell, P. (1991). Can Neoclassical Economics Underpin the Reform of Centrally Planned Economies? Journal of Economic Perspectives, 5(4), 59–76.

Nowotny, T. (1997). Economic Transition, Democratic Consolidation and the Integration of Central Eastern European Countries into European Structures. NATO Economic Colloquium 1997.

Olson, M. (1963). The economics of the wartime shortage. Duke University Press.

Przeworski, A, Alvarez, M., Cheibub, J. A., & Limongi. F. (1996). What makes democracies endure? Journal of Democracy, 7(1), 39–55.

Schmitter, P. C. (1994). Dangers and Dilemmas of Democracy. Journal of Democracy, 5(2), 57–74.

The World Bank. (n.d.). Accessed November 2, 2021. http://data.worldbank.org/indicator.

Tomšič, M. (2002). Politična stabilnost v novih demokracijah (Political stability in new democracies). Znanstveno in publicistično središče.

Zajc, D. (2000). Parlamentarno odločanje (Parliamentary decision-making). Faculty of social sciences, Ljubljana.

World Macroeconomic Research. (n.d.). Accessed October 31, 2021. http://kushnirs.org/macroeconomics/gdp/ gdp_bosnia_herzegovina.html#t1.

Download

Published : 2022-01-01


HacekM. (2022). Economic and Democratic Consolidation of the Former Yugoslav Republics. Political Preferences, (29), 5-23. https://doi.org/10.31261/polpre.2021.29.5-23

Miro Hacek  miro.hacek@fdv.uni-lj.si
University of Ljubljana  Slovenia
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1339-067X




Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

The Copyright Owners of the submitted texts grant the Reader the right to use the pdf documents under the provisions of the Creative Commons 4.0 International License: Attribution-Share-Alike (CC BY-SA). The user can copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose.

1. License

The University of Silesia Press provides immediate open access to journal’s content under the Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Authors who publish with this journal retain all copyrights and agree to the terms of the above-mentioned CC BY-SA 4.0 license.

2. Author’s Warranties

The author warrants that the article is original, written by stated author/s, has not been published before, contains no unlawful statements, does not infringe the rights of others, is subject to copyright that is vested exclusively in the author and free of any third party rights, and that any necessary written permissions to quote from other sources have been obtained by the author/s.

If the article contains illustrative material (drawings, photos, graphs, maps), the author declares that the said works are of his authorship, they do not infringe the rights of the third party (including personal rights, i.a. the authorization to reproduce physical likeness) and the author holds exclusive proprietary copyrights. The author publishes the above works as part of the article under the licence "Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International".

ATTENTION! When the legal situation of the illustrative material has not been determined and the necessary consent has not been granted by the proprietary copyrights holders, the submitted material will not be accepted for editorial process. At the same time the author takes full responsibility for providing false data (this also regards covering the costs incurred by the University of Silesia Press and financial claims of the third party).

3. User Rights

Under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license, the users are free to share (copy, distribute and transmit the contribution) and adapt (remix, transform, and build upon the material) the article for any purpose, provided they attribute the contribution in the manner specified by the author or licensor.

4. Co-Authorship

If the article was prepared jointly with other authors, the signatory of this form warrants that he/she has been authorized by all co-authors to sign this agreement on their behalf, and agrees to inform his/her co-authors of the terms of this agreement.

I hereby declare that in the event of withdrawal of the text from the publishing process or submitting it to another publisher without agreement from the editorial office, I agree to cover all costs incurred by the University of Silesia in connection with my application.