Читать книгу Engineering Revolution - Marlene Spoerri - Страница 10

CHAPTER TWO

The Absence of Aid in Milošević’s

Serbia, 1990–1996

In the winter of 1990 Serbia staged its first postcommunist multiparty elections. Like its counterparts in Central and Eastern Europe, Serbia looked set to emerge from the ashes of one-party rule as a pluralist, if not an entirely liberal, democracy (Gagnon 1994; Pavlovic and Antonic 2007; Ramet 1991). Yet as they had in Croatia and Slovenia before it, Serbia’s electoral results hailed not democracy’s onset but a rather more ominous turn of events: the forthcoming dissolution of the multi-ethnic Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The outbreak of war and the atrocities that followed in the footsteps of Yugoslavia’s first multiparty elections are by now well known (see Cohen 1993; Little and Silber 1995; Woodward 1995). But while the world stood aghast as Slobodan Milošević quashed Kosovo’s autonomy, aided and abetted Bosnia’s breakaway Serbs, and fueled ethnic conflict in Croatia, far less attention was paid to the Serbian leader’s steady assault on his own republic’s nascent democratic institutions. As civil war raged at Serbia’s doorstep, a political war was being waged within Serbia proper, one that effectively drew Serbia into a political “gray zone” of regime hybridity, where it was caught between outright dictatorship and a basic electoral democracy.

It seems obvious, in retrospect, that Milošević wished to monopolize Serbia’s nascent pluralist institutions. Yet, in the spring of 1984, when Milošević assumed the position of president of the City Committee of the League of Communists of Belgrade, few inside or outside of Yugoslavia found reason to be alarmed. Professing support for Communism and free market economics, Yugoslav unity and Serbian claims to Kosovo, an admiration for American democracy but a preference for one-party rule, Slobodan Milošević was the proverbial Janus face, offering all things to all people but fully embodying none.

Within less than a decade, however, Milošević would fall into both domestic and international disrepute. His instrumental role in the wars of the former Yugoslavia and his steady encroachment on the political and civil liberties of his people would earn the Yugoslav leader infamy as “the Butcher of the Balkans” and “Europe’s Last Dictator.”¹ Milošević’s authoritarian leanings and his penchant for state-sponsored violence would have a tremendous impact not only on the political parties and party system that emerged throughout his tenure but also on the forms of foreign aid that would—and would not—be forthcoming. Understanding how Milošević built and maintained his rule despite what some authors have labeled a “substantive” and “talented” anti-Milošević opposition (Dodder and Branson 1999) is vital to understanding why aid emerged only in the late 1990s—long after Serbia’s democratic opposition first requested it.

As shall be seen, the unique dynamics of competitive authoritarianism presented prospective aid providers with both adversity and opportunity. Daunting though the challenges proved to be, there were several occasions lasting weeks and sometimes months during which a democratic breakthrough appeared to be within reach. Time and again, Serbia’s democratic opposition pleaded with Western governments and aid agencies for their support. Time and again their efforts were rebuffed. Thanks to cultural misconceptions and strategic miscalculations, Western governments made the conscious decision not to support domestic alternatives to Milošević throughout most of the 1990s—even when these alternatives were avowedly antiwar and pro-democratic. In doing so, they allowed a committed, albeit imperfect, anti-Milošević opposition to go unaided and mistakenly justified a policy of inaction.

Milošević’s Serbia

The story of Slobodan Milošević’s rise to power is not one of fabled lineage². Rather, it is one of a deeply ambitious, unscrupulous man who exploited friends, colleagues, and budding nationalist sentiments to work his way into the highest echelons of Yugoslav power. Just three years into Milošević’s political career, the young communist apparatchik successfully tapped into a burgeoning wave of nationalist sentiment. By the eve of Serbia’s first postcommunist elections, Milošević’s popularity went unrivaled. Winning 65 percent of the Serbian vote—more than four times the total won by his nearest competitor, Vuk Drašković—Milošević became Serbia’s first freely elected postcommunist president in December 1990. In that same month, his party—the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS)—won 77 percent of the seats in Serbia’s 250-seat parliament.

Yet for all of his success in Serbia’s landmark elections, Milošević’s widespread popular appeal proved ephemeral. Just months after securing his electoral victory, domestic opposition to his rule reached a boiling point. In March 1991, scores of demonstrators took to the streets of Belgrade protesting the regime’s refusal to abide by the principles of free and independent media. For ten days, tens of thousands of Serbian citizens protested in the Yugoslav capital, occupying Belgrade’s central square even as state tanks descended on them. Though ultimately unable to force Milošević’s resignation, the events of March 1991 marked the first of what would become a frequent and protracted series of antigovernment, pro-democratic protests that would become a hallmark of Milošević’s Serbia and form “the lifeblood of opposition political life” throughout Serbia (Kesic 2005: 101).

Milošević succeeded in maintaining his rule despite this domestic opposition. He accomplished this dubious feat not by banning political parties or blatantly stealing elections but by steadily monopolizing three key instruments of power: Serbia’s once independent media, its nascent political institutions, and its powerful security services and police. He began with Serbia’s media.

Upon taking office as the republic’s first postcommunist president, Milošević wasted little time securing his hold over a media industry once ranked among the richest, most diverse, and freest in the communist world (Thompson 1999). He did so through three key tactics: by appointing regime loyalists to key positions within the state-run media, censoring media content, and denying the independence of non-state owned media outlets. Among Milošević’s first targets were Serbia’s leading news outlets: Radio Television Serbia (RTS), the newspaper Politika, and the daily tabloid Politika ekspres. By the late 1990s, most Serbian media outlets were in Milošević’s pocket. Through the media, Milošević was assured not only that he would have the undivided attention of the electorate but also that his political adversaries would be denied the same. Serbia’s state-run media consistently provided a sunny portrait of a country undivided and wholly dedicated to Milošević’s cause. This media stranglehold would have a profound impact on the viability of the then still embryonic political opposition to Milošević.

With his hold on the media secure, Milošević tightened his grip on Serbia’s political institutions. This was initially accomplished through legal maneuvering, most notably the repeated alteration of Serbia’s electoral laws, which govern how parliamentarian seats are distributed in a multiparty system. Thanks to Milošević’s finagling, from December 1990 to September 1997, Serbia boasted three different electoral systems: a two-round majoritarian electoral system, a proportional electoral system with nine large electoral units, and a proportional electoral system comprising twenty-nine electoral units of varying sizes. In each instance, alterations were made with an eye on consolidating Milošević’s parliamentary majority. Thus, when crafting Serbia’s first postcommunist electoral system, Milošević’s supporters opted for a majoritarian system known to harshly penalize small parties by inflating the proportion of seats dedicated to the nation’s largest party—thereby allowing Milošević to transform his party’s 1990 electoral winnings, turning 46.1 percent of the popular vote into 77.6 percent of seats in parliament, thus creating a manufactured majority.

Milošević’s hold over parliament had several consequences. First and most importantly, it enabled him to command Serbia’s government through the appointment of Serbia’s prime minister. It also awarded Milošević control of the republic’s judiciary. Because Serbia’s parliament, not president, had the power to appoint and dismiss republican judges, power in parliament soon translated into the coercion of Serbia’s “independent” judiciary.

In addition to political institutions, Milošević closed in on the police, army, and secret services. By placing allies in positions of authority, Milošević was able to root out even the most nascent of rivals. From 1991 to 1992 Milošević launched a purge on the army, personally discharging 130 generals and other high-ranking officers. Milošević loyalists were rewarded with prestigious promotions. In 1995, Serbia’s parliament passed a law awarding Serbia’s president the exclusive right to promote police officers and commanders. In an act of special decree, Serbia’s president also assigned himself full control of Serbia’s secret services, including the State Security Service (SDB).

The politicization of Serbia’s police and secret services had a profound impact on Serbian politics in general and on Milošević’s political opponents in particular. The Serbian leader relied on the police to disperse mass demonstrations, to badger and beat members of the opposition, as well as to covertly monitor his rivals. Through a nationwide eavesdropping system, the SDB could tap into the phone lines of the regime’s political foes, tracking thousands of conversations per minute. Throughout the 1990s, police were regularly employed to stamp out demonstrations, intimidate the opposition, and even spawn rivalries among party leaders. Much later in his rule—as his popularity waned and that of his opponents soared—Milošević would use his stranglehold over the SDB to threaten, kidnap, and even assassinate his rivals.

The cumulative effect of Milošević’s three foundations of power was the birth of a political system that was neither fully authoritarian nor wholly democratic but, instead, one that straddled the line between the two. From 1990 through 1996, Milošević relied on his unparalleled access to the republic’s media, political institutions, and armed forces to consolidate the political capital he had amassed in the run-up to Communism’s collapse. But however eager he was to disadvantage his political foes, he never went so far as to ensure that his hold on power would go uncontested. In this respect, allusions to Milošević “the dictator” have been overstated.

Yet, if the Serbia that emerged after Milošević’s election in December 1990 was not a dictatorship, neither was it merely a flawed democracy. Rather, Milosevic’s Serbia embodied a specific breed of hybrid regime; Levitsky and Way (2002; 2010) have dubbed it “competitive authoritarianism.” As a competitive authoritarian regime, Milošević’s Serbia combined the procedures of democracy with the practice of authoritarianism. Unlike other hybrid regimes, it permitted more than the mere semblance of political competition. It not only allowed rival political parties to exist and staged regular multiparty elections, but its elections were genuinely competitive inasmuch as the outcome was not predetermined. As a result, Serbia’s parliament was politically diverse, with critics of the regime at times comprising as much as 50 percent of parliament. Still, such critics were forced to compete on an unlevel playing field that was heavily skewed in Milošević’s favor. The nature of such inequality would have a profound impact on both the dynamics of political competition and the types of political parties born within Serbia’s confines.

Political Party Development

In Serbia’s first postcommunist elections, held in December 1990, voters were asked to choose among more than fifty registered parties of various political stripes and shades. By any standard, Serbs had at their command a plethora of electoral options: communists and anti-communists; parties of the rural and urban tradition; nationalists and anti-nationalists; self-declared liberals, socialists, and monarchists. Yet the magnitude of political diversity masked the paucity of meaningful choice. Lacking membership, financial and material resources, and clearly defined political programs, the majority of Serbia’s newly minted parties failed to enter parliament. Of the few that did, none succeeded in capturing the imagination of the Serbian electorate quite like Milošević’s SPS. By election’s end, Milošević had won the Serbian presidency and his party had captured 77 percent of Serbia’s parliamentary seats. Its nearest opponent, Vuk Drašković’s Serbian Renewal Movement (SPO), garnered just 8 percent of the seats in parliament.

That the SPS should have won so large a plurality of the votes cast in Serbia’s first postcommunist elections was in some respects surprising. After all, throughout much of Eastern and Central Europe, communist-successor parties fared poorly in their nations’ first free elections. Yet with Milošević at its helm, Serbia’s Communist Party—the League of Communists of Serbia — successfully reinvented itself as the Socialist Party of Serbia in the summer of 1990. By capitalizing on its predecessor’s unrivaled membership and republic-wide infrastructure, the SPS amassed more than 450,000 registered members—more than that of all other parties combined—and dozens of party offices scattered throughout the republic even before coming to office. During its decade in power, not once would the SPS win the majority of votes cast in Serbia’s parliamentary elections. Still, its privileged position as the sole successor of Serbia’s Communist Party and its willingness to form coalitions with parties from across the aisle—including members of the opposition—would award the SPS a privileged status in Serbia’s political system, enabling Milošević to institutionalize, perpetuate, and consolidate his rule.

Yet if Serbia’s party system centered on the unquestionable supremacy of one party (the SPS), it was not a one-party system. In each of the three parliamentary elections held between 1990 and 1996, the SPS competed against an array of political parties of which the Serbian Renewal Movement, the Serbian Radical Party, and the Democratic Party (DS) were the most formidable. In addition, several smaller parties also proved to be a mainstay of Serbian political life throughout the early and mid-1990s, among them the Civic Alliance of Serbia (GSS) and the Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS). With few exceptions, these parties fell into one of two camps: allies and opponents of the Milošević regime.

Allies of the Regime

Nearly all of Serbia’s political parties considered allying with the regime at one time or another. For most, cooperation with the SPS proved fleeting—a temporary flirtation that ended in recrimination. For some, however, cooperation was a long-term enterprise that promised mutual benefits and only marginal conflict. Mira Markovic’s Yugoslav Left Party (JUL)³ and Željko “Arkan” Ražnatović’s Party of Serbian Unity (SSJ) were two such parties, but by far the largest and most significant was that of Vojislav Šešelj, the Serbian Radical Party (SRS).

Founded in February 1991, the SRS promoted an ultra-nationalist brand of politics that was extremist even by SPS standards. It was in fact Šešelj, the party’s president, who infamously set Serbian sights on the Karlobag-Karlovac-Virovitica line, a term synonymous with the Greater Serbia project. Shortly after its formation, the SRS became an icon of Serbian nationalist sentiment and the party of choice for Serbia’s far-right voters. In the elections of December 1992, it won an impressive 23 percent of the vote, thanks in part to having won Milošević’s favor.

The SRS embraced a symbiotic relationship with the regime, offering what Pavlovic (2001) calls “fake opposition” to the SPS. For much of the 1990s the two parties worked in tandem. The SRS provided support for the regime and its policies in return for positive media coverage, lucrative ministerial positions, and the regime’s vocal stamp of approval.

For the regime, this marriage of convenience proved advantageous both inside and outside of Serbia. On the regional front, the SRS’s paramilitary units executed the regime’s dirty work in a war-ridden Bosnia; looting, raping, and killing with what is widely believed to have been the tacit approval of the SPS.⁴ To the international community, Milošević could feign ignorance of atrocities committed in Serbia’s name while portraying himself as a voice of moderation. Domestically, the SRS served both as a coalition partner as well as a “striking fist” to be used against the opposition.⁵

Yet, like much of Serbian politics, the SRS’s support for the regime could not be taken for granted. When in 1993 the SPS placed its support behind the Vance-Owen Peace Plan—an act that Šešelj equated with the abandonment of Bosnia’s Serbian minority—the relationship soured. Though fences between the SRS and SPS would eventually be mended, the parties’ falling-out pointed to the complexity of the Serbian party system. Throughout the 1990s, parties’ relationships to the regime were in constant flux, with parties shifting unpredictably from foe to (potential) ally.

Opponents of the Regime

Consistent and uncompromised opposition proved exceedingly difficult in Milošević’s Serbia. Opposition parties were confronted with a barrage of regime-sponsored enticements aimed at luring its rivals into acquiescence. Though not always indifferent to the regime’s menu of manipulation, several parties offered staunch and explicit opposition to the regime and its policies.

By far the most prominent of Serbia’s opposition parties was the SPO. Formed in March 1990, the SPO was the brainchild of Vuk Drašković, Serbia’s “King of the Streets.” A novelist by profession, Drašković began his venture into public life as a staunch nationalist—writing such controversial works as The Knife, which personified the victimization of Serbs at the hands of Croat fascists and Muslims. As Drašković moved toward politics, he exploited his populist credentials and flamboyant persona to launch his party, the SPO. He was soon at the forefront of the anti-regime movement, winning 15.8 percent of the vote in Serbia’s first postcommunist elections.

Throughout most of the 1990s, the SPO was a fervent critic of the Milošević regime, frequently calling for the Serbian president’s resignation and the reconstitution of Serbian politics along democratic lines. The SPO launched Serbia’s first massive demonstrations in Belgrade aimed at unseating Milošević. In return, Drašković received the brunt of the regime’s aggression. In addition to being labeled “enemy of the state,” he was harassed, arrested, and beaten by state authorities.

During one particularly protracted period of Drašković’s detention, Serbia’s second-largest opposition party—the DS—came into its own. Founded in February 1990 by thirteen of Serbia’s most prolific intellectuals, the DS was in many respects the antithesis of Drašković’s SPO. Where the SPO was forged on one man’s magnetic personality, the DS attempted to bridge a disparate array of competing ideologies under a single roof. Where the SPO drove to the fringes of Serbian politics, the DS sought the middle ground. What the two parties shared was a deep-seated disdain of Milošević’s politics. Like the SPO, the DS embarked on a campaign aimed at unseating the Milošević regime. Though initially confined to a subsidiary role within Serbia’s opposition, the DS soon became a political force in its own right. By 1993, the DS had won almost 12 percent of the vote in Serbian parliamentary elections and was spearheading anti-Milošević rallies.

Although the DS and SPO lay at the forefront of the Serbian opposition, several smaller parties took on an equally active, if less prominent, role during the immediate postcommunist period. These included parties like Vojislav Koštunica’s DSS and Vesna Pešić’s GSS. Of these, only the DSS succeeded in entering parliament on its own, having received 5 percent of the vote in the parliamentary elections of December 1993. The rest, given their paltry membership base and meager public support, were forced to rely on electoral coalitions to win seats in parliament.

Polarized Party Politics

The polarization of Serbia’s political scene—divided as it was by those for and against Milošević—ensured that the country’s politics were deeply divisive for most of the 1990s. Far from embodying a unified Serbian electorate, Milošević oversaw a Serbia that was awash in protest and opposition. Mass rallies frequently brought tens of thousands of protesters to the streets of Serbia’s capital. Opposition political parties and their leaders frequently claimed a vocal role within such protests—whether it was by calling for people to take to the streets or by joining protesters’ calls for peace and democracy.

The first major protest emerged in the winter of 1991. In February, Milošević’s increasingly blatant encroachment on free and independent media led Drašković to call for a protest rally. On 9 March, tens of thousands took to the streets demanding the liberalization of Serbia’s media and the resignations of the head of Radio-Television Belgrade and the sitting minister of Interior. The peaceful protests were met by extreme force. An attack by the riot police left two dead; when this did not suffice in quelling the protest, the Yugoslav National Army finished the job by arresting Drašković and putting tanks on the streets.

In the days that followed, some 500,000 people, including high-ranking members of the DS, gathered in Belgrade’s central square to voice their discontent. Cities and towns across Serbia came out in support of the protestors’ efforts. But when only days later Milošević agreed to a series of moderate concessions, the first major opportunity to topple Milošević came and went.

The second large-scale protest took place in the spring of 1992, when tens of thousands of protestors took to the streets of Serbia’s capital. Protestors called not only for an end to the war in Bosnia but also for the immediate cessation of Milošević’s anti-democratic rule. At the helm of these protests was Drašković, who was joined by leading members of the DS and Serbian Liberal Party (SLS). All three parties complained of the speed with which the country’s new constitution had been adopted and the regime’s monopoly of the media. But it was Drašković who stole the show, calling on protesters to “liberate Serbia” from the stranglehold of Milošević’s rule. “Serbia’s enemies,” he said, “are not in London, New York, Paris, or Moscow” but “right here in Belgrade.”⁶ In the days following the protests, the New York Times reported that the city was “awash with rumors” of Milošević’s imminent resignation.⁷

The third large-scale protest took place in the aftermath of a violent assault on an opposition member of parliament. On 1 June 1993, Mihailo Markovic, a representative of the SPO, was beaten unconscious in the halls of the Yugoslav parliament by a member of the SRS. SPO supporters responded with a peaceful protest that took a violent turn with the arrival of the regime’s special police forces. Drašković and his wife were arrested and beaten. With Drašković in prison, opposition parties, including the GSS and SLS, organized protests calling for Draškovićs release, which Milošević finally conceded to on 9 July.

The fourth—and most impressive—display of anti-regime protests was that spawned by Zajedno,⁸ an alliance led by three of Serbia’s leading democratic parties: the SPO, DS, and GSS. After having their municipal-level electoral victories overturned by the Milošević regime in November 1996, Zajedno oversaw the largest wave of anti-regime protests in Serbian history. For three months, Zajedno’s three major opposition parties spearheaded mass demonstrations in cities across Serbia.

Zajedno’s protests were not the first to bring together a wide array of opposition parties intent on unseating the regime and securing democracy. From 1990 through 1996, opposition parties formed or attempted to form a total of seven pro-democratic coalitions and electoral alliances (Table 7). This included the Associated Opposition of Serbia (AOS), whose goal it was to secure multiparty elections, a new democratic constitution, and an extended campaign period in the run-up to Serbia’s first postcommunist elections. It also included the Democratic Movement of Serbia (DEPOS), a union of five opposition parties small and large that spoke out against the regime’s electoral abuses and anti-democratic policies. Most significant, it included Zajedno, an alliance that brought all of Serbia’s main opposition parties together for the first time.

An Imperfect Opposition

Despite their numerous efforts to upend Serbian politics, parties’ opposition to Milošević was often superseded by interparty strife and rivalries, as well as direct efforts on the part of the regime to co-opt and de-legitimize opposition forces. As a result, political analysts have long been wary of ascribing too much importance to Serbia’s troubled opposition. Pavlović (2001: 1), for example, calls Serbia’s opposition in the 1990s “the worst in Europe.” Similarly, Goati (2001: 52) laments that “Serbia’s opposition acted in a disunited manner, expending more energy in mutual conflicts than in the struggle against the SPS and the ruling order.”

Table 7. Coalitions Attempted in Serbia from 1990 Through 1996

Source: Adapted from Spoerri 2008: 75.

^a Associated Opposition of Serbia (AOS), Democratic Alternative (DA), Democratic Coalition (DEKO), Democratic Movement of Serbia (DEPOS), Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS), United Serbian Democratic Opposition (USO), Zajedno (Together).

^b Civic Alliance of Serbia (GSS), Democratic Forum (DF), Democratic Party (DS), Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS), Liberal Party (LP), National Radical Party (NRP), New Democracy (ND), New Democracy–Movement for Serbia (ND–MS), Serbian Congressional Party (SNS), Serbian Renewal Movement (SPO), Serbian St. Sava Party (SSP), Serbian Peasant’s Party (SSS).

The foremost reason parties were susceptible to such conflicts lay in the personalized nature of Serbian politics. When Serbia’s party system came to fruition in 1990, many parties distinguished themselves not by their programmatic profiles but by the personalities of their leaders. Charisma and personal ambition often took precedence over policy and substance. Serbia’s parties were also institutionally weak—low on active members as well as loyal voters. While the SPS boasted a republic-wide infrastructure, the opposition’s reach was overwhelmingly confined to Serbia’s capital and major city centers.⁹ Parties’ institutional and organizational underdevelopment further reinforced their dependence on their leaders, who determined everything from the formation of electoral alliances to positions on Serbia’s national question and attitudes toward the Milošević regime.

One of the most damaging repercussions of Serbia’s personalized politics was parties’ inability to develop and hone their own party cadre. Rather than capitalize on building talent within the party, “leaders used and discarded individuals based almost exclusively on loyalty to themselves” (Kesić 2005: 101). This offered ambitious party members one of two options: to oust a sitting leader by way of an intraparty coup or to start their own parties. Because the former was exceedingly difficult,¹⁰ almost all of Serbia’s opposition parties fractured during the period from 1990 to 1996 (Table 8).

Personalized politics affected more than parties’ internal makeup, however. It also influenced their ability to form and maintain a united front against the regime. All too often, vanity, rather than substance, lay at the heart of interparty strife. Personal jealousies, vendettas, and rivalry often made cooperation among the various opposition parties unattainable or tenuous, which invariably worked to Milošević’s advantage. Though Milošević’s Machiavellian maneuverings no doubt contributed to parties’ infighting,¹¹ party leaders’ own inability to overcome their personal differences left parties unable to mount a credible threat to the SPS and reflected poorly on the alternative they offered voters. The state-run media had merely to draw attention to party leaders’ own divisive and derogatory statements to expose the perils of an opposition-led government.

Infighting among Serbia’s fledgling opposition benefited the regime in more ways than one. Whereas in other postcommunist countries such ills were taken to legitimate—indeed, necessitate—foreign aid, in Serbia they gave license to aid’s absence. Indeed, the plight of Serbia’s opposition was exploited not as evidence of aid’s necessity but as a rallying cry for those in the United States and Europe who advocated doing nothing for Serbia’s democrats.

Table 8. Political Party Fragmentation 1990–1996

Source: Adapted from Orlović 2008: 452.

^a Although the DC was not officially founded until 1996, Mićunović and his supporters left the party in 1994.

The Absence of Aid

The story of foreign aid to Serbia begins in the run-up to what Carothers (1999: 40) calls the “mushrooming” of democracy assistance across the globe. It was during the months immediately preceding Communism’s collapse that NED and other donor organizations first familiarized themselves with Vuk Drašković.¹² Relying on contacts forged in Western Europe and North America, prospective donors met with the region’s future opinion makers: civic activists, academics, cultural icons, and up-and-coming politicians. Thus, when in 1990 Yugoslavia’s six constituent republics called for foundational elections, donors explored their options. With NED funding, the American party institutes, NDI and IRI, monitored the region’s first elections held in Croatia and Slovenia in the spring of 1990.¹³ During their stay, they also met with political party members, including those in Serbia. What they found did not bode well for the future of Yugoslavia’s union.

Internally divided and fluent in nationalist rhetoric, the future party leaders with whom donors met seemed more concerned with the ills of the Yugoslav Federation and the wrongs of Communism than in forming substantive political parties that spoke to Yugoslavs’ concerns. Wary of the impending dissolution of the multiethnic state, NDI focused its efforts on lowering the tensions between opinion makers throughout the federation. In October 1990, the institute organized a conference in Cavtat, Croatia, titled “Democratic Governance in Multi-Ethnic States.”¹⁴ In what organizers now label as a “naïve” effort, the conference assembled fifty political party members,¹⁵ academics, and civic activists from across Yugoslavia to engage in discussions with foreign experts boasting firsthand experience in multiethnic governance. It would be the last time Yugoslav officials would share the same table.

IRI representatives, by contrast, planned to develop a full-fledged democratic assistance program like those then being crafted in Romania and Bulgaria. The program officer charged with IRI’s Yugoslav programs at the time launched a series of trainings with party members throughout the country, including Serbia. She and other party trainers traveled to and from Yugoslavia offering technical assistance, advice, and party training manuals. On several occasions, IRI even brought Yugoslav party members abroad to receive additional training. According to the IRI program officer for Serbia, “If the program had developed, it could have moved to the form where we were printing posters to offering cars and office equipment.”¹⁶ IRI might even “have sent in a campaign staff force that would have advised on strategy and offered day-to-day tactical advice.”¹⁷ But it did not. By the spring of 1992, the escalation of violence in Bosnia and Serbia’s increasingly pernicious role in it prompted the United States and its European allies to break ties with Milošević’s Serbia. Serbia’s fledgling democrats would not be spared.

On 30 May 1992, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 757, imposing comprehensive sanctions—economic, financial, diplomatic, and cultural—on Serbia and its Yugoslav counterpart, Montenegro, for the escalating violence in Bosnia. Governments in North America and Western Europe chose to interpret the sanctions in their strictest sense. In the weeks leading to the UN’s pronouncement, American and European ambassadors and diplomatic staff were recalled, as was the European Commission’s mission to Belgrade. At the same time, countries’ import and export relations with the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia ended and financial sanctions were imposed. Even relations of a seemingly innocuous nature were restricted: Yugoslav athletes were banned from competing in the 1992 Olympics and the Yugoslav soccer team was denied its place in the European football championships.

Countries chose to make a similar decision regarding democracy assistance. As a political officer then working for the Dutch Embassy in Serbia explained, “It wasn’t clear at the time whether the sanctions permitted the provision of support to [opposition] groups within Serbia.”¹⁸ What was clear, however, was that countries in both Western Europe and North America would opt to interpret international sanctions in a very restrictive way. Initially, at least, this meant that Western democracy aid—including political party aid—drew to a halt (Figure 1).

In early 1992, governments closed whatever aid agencies were operating in Belgrade. The few NGOs providing support to democratic actors in Serbia responded similarly. Thus, despite aid providers’ belief that aid could be helpful for Serbian democrats, stringent regulations were imposed on where IRI and NDI could and could not spend money. In 1992, the U.S. party institutes froze their Serbia programs, opting to work only in Slovenia and Croatia. And so, just as Milošević was ratcheting up pressure inside and outside of Serbia, the United States and the European Union turned their backs on the domestic opposition to Milošević. In the process, they chose to eliminate aid precisely when party assistance could have made its greatest impact in Serbia by helping to level Serbia’s political playing field in the middle of Serbia’s transition to authoritarianism.

Figure 1. U.S. Assistance to the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

Note: SEED aid includes humanitarian, democracy, and economic assistance. These figures apply to aid provided to the FRY, which included both Serbia and Montenegro throughout this period.

Source: SEED reports, 1992–2000.

Perhaps the first to suffer as a consequence of the international “freeze” was Milan Panić, a Serbian-born American whose ventures into the pharmaceutical industry had earned him millions. In 1992, Panić was appointed to the position of Yugoslav prime minister. As prime minister, Panić became a vocal opponent of the wars then ongoing in Bosnia and Croatia. During his inaugural address, he called not only for peace in Bosnia but also for the departure of all military and paramilitary units from neighboring lands. During his brief stint as prime minister, he even became Serbia’s first postcommunist official to meet with Albanian leaders in Kosovo. But perhaps his most spectacular moment came at a London peace conference in 1992, when he famously “elbowed Milošević aside” to introduce his own twelve-point plan to end the Balkan wars—a plan that included explicit reference to Serbia’s recognition of Bosnian and Croatian independence (Hockenos 2003:159). In fact, an article in the New York Times lauded Panić for having “consistently attacked Mr. Milošević and other militant Serbian nationalists” with his calls “for peace and compromise solutions to the war in Bosnia and the greater Yugoslav crisis.”¹⁹

As an increasingly vocal regime critic, Panić was also a major proponent of democracy assistance. In late 1992, he approached international decision makers pleading for an exemption of UN sanctions to allow for democracy assistance—and, in particular, political party assistance. He was left “bitterly disappointed.”²⁰ Panic’s request that U.S. and European authorities “provide all of Yugoslavia’s political parties with a television capability equal to that of Serbia’s ruling regime” fell on deaf ears.²¹ At the time, British authorities in particular were averse to any notion of supporting Serbia’s nascent democratic opposition. According to Douglas Schoen, Panic’s pollster who would go on to work for President Bill Clinton, “The supine response of the West would emerge as a major obstacle to our effort to bring about regime change” (Schoen 2007:110). Indeed, the intense media blockade on Panic’s candidacy and his vilification by Milošević loyalists ensured that Panić won 32 percent of the vote in presidential elections held later that year—a decent showing but far from the 53 percent brought in by Milošević.

The decision to deny Panić such assistance was not without controversy. In the United States, a small band of senators, spearheaded by Republican Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, were alarmed by the administration’s refusal to assist Serbian democrats and they mounted a collective appeal for democracy aid. For Lugar in particular, Panic’s defeat was a rebuke of the Clinton administration’s approach to the Serbian opposition. In October 1993, Lugar underscored such doubts in a letter to then Secretary of State Warren Christopher²² in which he implored the United States to “interpret UN sanctions on Serbia in ways that will promote more equitable participation in the Serbian elections by pro-democratic candidates and parties,” and “exempt from international sanctions those U.S.-origin proposals intended to promote democracy in that beleaguered country.”²³ Lugar’s sentiments were shared by members of the U.S. Foreign Relations Committee. In 1993, the Committee voted unanimously to exempt democratic assistance to Serbia from UN sanctions.

Despite the support of the Foreign Relations Committee, however, aid was not forthcoming. For most working in the aid industry and Western governments, the thought of assisting opposition groups—even those opposed to Milošević—was simply unpalatable. According to Robert Benjamin, director of NDI’s Central and Eastern Europe programs, NDI assistance to Serbian parties simply wasn’t seen to be a possibility in the mid-1990s; in fact, there was no discussion about Serbia’s democracy whatsoever.²⁴

Still, some individuals did want to help. One such individual was Paul McCarthy, a senior program officer for NED. As one of the few supporters of democracy aid to Serbia, McCarthy says he was both a donor and an advocate. He “believed that unless you looked at the internal situation in Serbia, the whole region would be lost.”²⁵ But, as he himself admits, that was not a popular position to take in the early and mid-1990s. To the contrary, as the decade unfolded, the attention of the United States and Western Europe increasingly came to rest on neighboring Bosnia—where reports of rape camps and genocide were being called the worst atrocities since the Holocaust.

One unfortunate consequence of the international community’s (belated) concern for the Bosnian war was that it came at the expense of Serbia’s domestic democratic opposition. Thus when in early 1996 voices in USAID began suggesting that the American aid agency start focusing on Serbia, it quickly became apparent that not everyone wanted to touch Serbia at the time.²⁶ To the contrary, no one in the State Department was willing to give the green light for providing democracy aid to Serbia—the perceived aggressor in the Bosnian conflict. Yet for those advocating aid to Serbia, this refusal was “disturbing,” not simply because of what it meant for Serbian democracy, but “because the problems in Bosnia were being driven from Serbia.”²⁷ Senator Lugar shared such concerns.

In a 1996 opinion piece published in the Washington Times, Lugar chastened U.S. policy makers for refusing to “provide material support to moderate and pro-democratic forces in Serbia,” opting instead “for timidity and distance.”²⁸ In yet another letter sent to then Secretary of State Warren Christopher in March 1996, Lugar urged the administration “to take an immediate, vigorous and concerted initiative to support the independent sector in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, particularly in Serbia.”²⁹ He complained that his government had “deferred to the international sanctions regime by rejecting or delaying proposals for democratic programs of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and other pro-democracy organizations proposing to work with indigenous groups striving for an open society.”³⁰ This was all the more pressing because “the leaders of the independent sector in Serbia and Montenegro have made know[n] their strong desire for U.S. support and have been greatly discouraged and disappointed by repeated U.S. refusals to assist them. They cannot understand why we continue to deny them vital support.”³¹

Lugar’s efforts were to little avail. Foreign diplomats and special envoys ultimately opted not to engage Serbia’s opposition parties and politicians, preferring instead to deal exclusively with Milošević.

Engaging Milošević, at the Opposition’s Expense

Throughout the 1990s, high-level officials—including Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and President Bill Clinton—met directly with Milošević, whether to negotiate a peace in Bosnia or, later, to thwart the impending NATO bombing of Serbia. Unlike Milošević, however, leaders from major opposition parties like the SPO or DS were refused contact with senior government officials. In his memoirs, the late U.S. diplomat Richard Holbrooke (1999: 358) acknowledged that neither the United States sent no senior officials to Belgrade to bolster the opposition’s profile. In his words, “Washington missed a change to affect events; except for one ineffectual trip to Washington, Zajedno had no contact with senior American government officials” (Holbrooke 1999: 345). But Washington was not alone. Neither the United States nor the EU did anything to bolster the prospects of opposition victories in the aftermath of the 1996 local-level elections, and the EU in particular took steps that ultimately worked against the opposition’s interests.

In the winter of 1996–1997, Serbia’s opposition staged a stunning electoral upset in local elections across the country. Having banded together under the unified mantel of Zajedno, Serbia’s opposition shocked Milošević and the world, by staging municipal victories in cities and towns across Serbia—including Belgrade, Niš, and Novi Sad. When state authorities subsequently annulled the opposition’s victories and demanded that elections be reheld, students and disaffected citizens took the streets, demanding that the original electoral results be reinstated. For weeks, protestors endured freezing temperatures to insist that democratic electoral results be respected. Yet rather than support Serbia’s democrats in realizing their lawfully won electoral mandate, the international community left them in the cold.

Particularly disturbing, from the perspective of the opposition, was the EU’s decision on 22 November 1996 to release a statement echoing Milošević’s calls for a third round of local elections—despite Zajedno’s claims to have won major victories. While the European Council’s presidency urged Serbia’s authorities to investigate the opposition’s complaints of electoral irregularities, it seemed to side with the regime by requesting electoral re-runs, which the opposition opposed. The statement won a furious reply from the Zajedno leadership.³² Nor was Zajedno amused when on what was the twenty-third day of Zajedno’s mass protests, Italy’s foreign minister Lamberto Dini publicly dismissed the opposition’s demand for the reinstatement of Zajedno victories, arguing that such a result was simply “not in the cards.”³³ In fact, the Los Angeles Times reported that Serbian opposition leaders “were coming under increasing pressure from Western mediators to accept new elections, which would mean abandoning their principal goal—recognition of the victories they already obtained.”³⁴ Though European officials would ultimately back away from such positions, their seeming indifference caused considerable resentment among leading members of the Zajedno coalition.³⁵ Goran Svilanović, a minister of foreign affairs in post-Milošević Yugoslavia, dubs it “a cold shower.”³⁶

Such actions would feed into the prevailing narrative among members of Serbia’s democratic opposition that Western powers were not in fact interested in working for the best interests of Serbian democracy. Indeed in a 2001 article, Svetozar Stojanović (2001), a longtime dissident and staunch Milošević critic, opined that “The West long helped Milošević to remain in power.” The sentiment was shared by many in Serbia. For years, Serbian politicians and opinion makers lambasted the United States and the EU for supporting Milošević. Politicians, including Vesna Pešić and Goran Svilanović, argue that until the very late 1990s, the United States and the EU legitimized Milošević’s rule while undermining theirs.

Understanding Aid’s Absence

There were several reasons why the major powers for so long refused to lend their support to Serbia’s political opposition. The first has already been hinted at. When war broke out in Bosnia in the summer of 1992, it sparked a humanitarian disaster the likes of which Europe had not witnessed since World War II. As news of atrocities surfaced, the international aid community’s attention came to lie on Bosnia, often at the expense of Serbia. As USAID’s Europe and Eurasia Bureau Director explains, USAID “didn’t do too much in Serbia in the early 1990s because the big issue of course was Bosnia.”³⁷ Aid organizations, he says, “didn’t pay too much attention to Serbia” because the major issue for them “was what they [the Serbs] were doing in Bosnia rather than what they were doing at home.”³⁸ Yet, as another former USAID employee notes, “If you had followed the region, you couldn’t help but see that Serbia was there too. No one was paying attention to Serbia.”³⁹

This oversight was compounded when one took the rest of postcommunist Europe into consideration. According to the last U.S. ambassador to Yugoslavia, Warren Zimmermann (1996: 46), “U.S. policy in Eastern Europe was heavily focused on Poland and Hungary, countries that were moving on the reform path faster than Yugoslavia and without the baggage of divisive nationalism. Yugoslavia would be seen as a poor risk and therefore a low priority.” Indeed, the aid community had its hands full dealing not only with Bosnia but also with the newly democratic countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Explains a USAID employee working on the Balkans at the time, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, “We were so overwhelmed with work. A new country was popping up every few months … [USAID] needed to move into all these new places, it was hard enough to move contracts and money, let alone hiring, offices, and getting on the ground.” In the early 1990s, USAID had only a handful of employees working in its newly founded democracy office. Serbia, she says, just “wasn’t a priority. There was so much to do for all the other countries … no one had the energy.”

Nor did they have the will. As news spread of ethnic cleansing, concentration camps, mass rapes, and genocide, the United States and its European allies grew increasingly wary of Serbia. By the early 1990s, Serbia had become a pariah state. The thought of aiding forces within Serbia—however well intentioned those forces may have been—was viewed as distasteful. A former representative of NDI explained, “Serbia had this terrible reputation. The perception was that it was like going into Apartheid South Africa: as long as that regime existed, they wouldn’t go into it.”⁴⁰ Those promoting aid to Serbia faced an uphill battle. As one former democracy promoter recalls, “Most people in Washington wanted to build a wall around Serbia and let them rot, to tell you the truth. People who were outraged by perceived war crimes … hated the idea of cultivating Serbia.”⁴¹ Indeed, as early advocates of foreign aid soon came to learn, it was not a given that people wanted to support change in Serbia.

It was also not a given that they believed that change was possible. David Owen (1997: 1–3), coauthor of the failed Vance-Owen Peace Plan, begins his tellingly entitled memoir, Balkan Odyssey, with the following words: “Nothing is simple in the Balkans…. History points to a tradition in the Balkans of a readiness to solve disputes by the taking up of arms and acceptance of the forceful or even negotiated movement of people as the consequence of war.” With these words, Owen gave voice to a perspective then shared by many policy makers as they set their sights on the looming crisis in the former Yugoslavia. When in 1991 the multiethnic federation erupted in violence, policy makers justified a course of inaction on Serbia—and the Balkans more generally—through reference to irresolvable ancient hatreds.

The ancient-hatreds theory had important implications for democracy aid. Aid, after all, could bear little fruit in a region where good and bad knew no distinction and violence was a normal way of life. The people of the Western Balkans were thus best left to their own devices. This perception was particularly prominent in France and the United Kingdom, where policy makers opposed even the most modest forms of intervention. But it was also prevalent in the United States, where Robert D. Kaplan’s book Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History—which preceded Owen’s memoir and lay the foundations for the ancient-hatreds thesis—shaped popular opinion, including that of President Clinton.⁴²

The vision of the Balkans as a primordial and an exotic terrain applied not only to the outbreak of conflict but also to the peoples of the former Yugoslavia, many of whom, Owen (1997: 1) maintained, “were literally strangers to the truth.” Many believed that the Balkans was simply not ready for democracy. As Owen (1997: 2) lamented, leaders of the Balkans “had no experience in democracy.” Their opinions, he wrote, had been formed in a society “where truth was valued far, far less than in the Western democracies” (Owen 1997: 2). The patronizing attitudes of many foreign policy makers made democracy assistance to Serbia a moot topic.

Many donors also questioned whether parties wished to receive foreign aid. IRI’s efforts were repeatedly thwarted during its early ventures into Yugoslavia, in part because of the rising tide of authoritarianism but mostly because of parties’ fear of being unduly stigmatized by their associations with the United States. A former IRI program officer explains, “The fear coupled with the difficult circumstances of the Serbian opposition across the board made our work very difficult. It made it such that they didn’t feel themselves in a position to accept our assistance.”⁴³ Indeed, some donors believed parties themselves were unwilling to accept foreign support for fear of being branded traitors and lackeys. Gerald Hyman, the former director of USAID’s Democracy and Governance Office, for example, believes support from the United States and Europe “would have been the kiss of death” for Serbia’s opposition.⁴⁴

Yet perhaps the chief reason aid to Serbia’s democratic opposition was not forthcoming lay in the West’s reticence to fully discredit Milošević. Throughout much of the 1990s, foreign policy makers viewed Milošević as a stable—if unsavory—interlocutor. Most important, he was the only figure deemed capable of following through on his political commitments, particularly as concerned Serbia’s Bosnian Serb neighbors. As the CIA explained, there was “no good and politically viable alternative” to Milošević—whatever his faults, he was “the only Serb leader the West can deal with and the only one capable of delivering a comprehensive solution.”⁴⁵ Richard Holbrooke—the celebrated diplomat lauded for having ended the war in Bosnia—believed Milošević was “key” to achieving regional stability, and he brazenly upheld “a strategy of dealing solely with Milošević.”⁴⁶

For the leaders of Serbia’s democratic opposition, such sentiments meant not only that foreign officials had little confidence in the opposition’s ability to mount a meaningful challenge to Milošević, but also that they saw little advantage in supporting opposition parties’ efforts to achieve such a victory. To the contrary, regime change would likely have led to greater uncertainty—something the international community was keen to avoid.

Matters were considerably complicated by the troubled state of Serbia’s democratic opposition. Riddled with ego-driven leaders and extravagant personalities, Serbian parties were not only unnerving but also downright scary. In interviews with U.S. and European policy makers and aid providers, Vuk Drašković—the leader of Serbia’s democratic opposition—was invariably ridiculed as “spooky,” “nuts,” “erratic,” and a “prima donna.” Foreign critics of Serbia’s opposition parties tended to fall into one of two camps: According to one view, Milošević’s foes were more “rabidly nationalistic” than Milošević himself and thus posed a far greater threat to Yugoslav security.⁴⁷ The second view held that Serbian parties were incompetent and thus ultimately unreliable. A Dutch diplomat says, “The consensus at the time was that the opposition was weak and divided. They didn’t know what they wanted.”⁴⁸ Indeed, for much of the 1990s the world was convinced of the ineptitude and even danger of the Serbian opposition. The consequence of such sentiments was that aid to Serbian parties remained a moot topic. As a result, Serbia’s opposition went unaided, and Milošević’s power structure unhindered. Not only were the results of this policy disastrous but so was the logic behind it.

A Troubled Rationale for Inaction

Many reasons accounted for party aid’s absence in Milošević’s Serbia. Each was as tragic as it was misinformed. Ultimately, however, the decision not to use democracy aid to the benefit of Serbian democrats was dictated not by the best interests of Serbian democracy but by larger foreign policy goals. For most of the 1990s, those goals did not coincide with Milošević’s ouster.

Among the most ludicrous of the reasons legitimizing inaction was the ancient-hatreds thesis. As early as 1989, the CIA located the source of Yugoslavia’s rupture not in ancient animosities or cultural deficits but in the inability of Yugoslav leaders to stem growing nationalism, political divisions, and economic deterioration.⁴⁹ For aid providers, too, it was clear that Serbia (and for that matter, the region) was not uniquely ill equipped for democratic rule. Despite the tremendous ferment in the region, aid providers insist that Serbia “was not a totally barren environment. Some types of pluralism were developing.” Many practitioners with firsthand experience in Serbia believed democracy aid could have a real future in the country. After all, if ancient hatreds had not stood in the way of democracy’s development throughout the nation-states of Western Europe, there was little reason to assume they would in Eastern Europe.

Equally unsound was the notion that the aid community could not afford to support Serbian parties amid the burgeoning landscape of needy recipients in postcommunist Europe. Though attention may well have lain elsewhere, it is difficult to argue that a modest aid effort could not have been forthcoming, in which party aid may have played a small role. Certainly, it could not have been for lack of funds. Indeed, though it is true that the fall of Communism was met by an increase in demand for democracy assistance, it is also true that such demand was met by an increase in supply. In 1989, the United States established the Support for East European Democracy (SEED) program, which devoted approximately $300 million a year to U.S. efforts aimed at furthering democracy in postcommunist Europe. Carothers (1999: 41) estimates that the United States spent close to $1 billion on democracy-related projects in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union throughout this same period. That year also marked the emergence of a host of new European democracy foundations, with cumulative expenditures roughly mirroring those of their American counterparts. Given such sizeable funds, it is hard to imagine that even modest resources could not have been reserved for Serbia’s parties.

Nor is it likely that Serbia’s opposition would have spurned foreign efforts to provide democracy assistance. In a 1996 letter to U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher, Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana noted that anti-Milošević groups had repeatedly come forward, urging American policy makers to provide them with aid. Indeed, in their early forays to Serbia, aid providers found Serbian parties to be very willing to receive foreign support. According to one NDI senior program officer, though they lacked “a well thought through idea of what they needed,” parties offered “fairly positive reactions” when discussing the prospect of assistance.⁵⁰ NED program officers who traveled to the region reached a similar conclusion.⁵¹ Although Serbian politicians were more reticent to walk into a relationship than were individuals in the other Yugoslav republics, they were clearly willing to engage in substantive discussions regarding the forms of assistance that might be provided.

Certainly, this is the sentiment offered by most Serbian party leaders. Drašković, for example, says he “demanded support from Western states and from right-wing oriented parties.”⁵² He insists he was not afraid of the regime’s attempts to discredit him as a foreign-funded lackey and repeatedly sought out foreign assistance. Evidence lends credence to Drašković’s claims. In a public statement made on a trip to London in 1993, Drašković could not have been clearer, stating, “I want concrete support.” His party, he said, was “the biggest opposition group in Serbia, and the only property we have is one car. If we could under such circumstances get—as we got in the last election—1.2 million votes, only 100,000 less than Milošević’s party who have faxes and control the television, then we must be the eighth wonder of the world.”⁵³ The same was true for presidential candidate Milan Panić. When in late 1992 Panić requested that foreign policy makers support the opposition’s efforts to create an open media, he was left “bitterly disappointed.”⁵⁴ Kesić (2005: 99) writes that “the complete absence of support from the United States and the relative indifference shown by the international community crushed the spirit of Serbia’s opposition movement.” The notion that Serbia’s opposition would have rebuffed foreign efforts to provide aid is thus untenable.

Also untenable is the notion of Milošević’s presumed indispensability for Yugoslav peace. Foreign policy makers’ decision to sidestep Serbia’s opposition and to communicate solely with Milošević did little to raise the profile of the Serbian opposition in the eyes of the Serbian public. Ironically, it may have helped garner domestic support for Milošević within Serbia, given that it bolstered his international prestige. According to Mihailo Markovic of the SPO, foreign policy makers simply “never understood that the man who set Yugoslavia on fire will never put the fire out, that the lifeblood of the Serbian government is war” (as quoted in Thomas 1999: 159). Daniel Serwer of the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) agrees. He believes that the mastermind of U.S. policy toward Serbia at the time—Richard Holbrooke—“never understood the degree to which his meetings with Milošević helped to give Milošević legitimacy” within Serbia.⁵⁵ Such opinions are shared by many in Serbia. As Pešić laments, “The U.S. was more on the strong side.”⁵⁶

Also problematic were concerns regarding the nationalism and ineptitude of Serbia’s opposition. Though many parties may have espoused greater nationalism than their postcommunist colleagues in Central and Eastern Europe, several explicitly denounced nationalist rhetoric and made pro-peace policies the centerpieces of their platforms.⁵⁷ None of these parties, however, received assistance from the democracy aid community. And although it is true that anti-Milošević parties suffered numerous faults, their ills were largely reminiscent of those witnessed elsewhere in the postcommunist space. Parties with shallow membership, poor organizational development, weak partisan identities, and personality-based profiles were (and remain) the norm throughout Central and Eastern Europe. Unlike in Serbia, however, these qualms failed to deter aid providers. In fact, it was their very presence that justified aid’s onset throughout the region—after all, had such parties not suffered from flaws, they would not have required aid.