Why Slovenia is not the Balkans

Date: 22/11/03

A rich country and its poor neighbours

THE modern history books will tell you that Slovenia was part of communist Yugoslavia until 1991, and thus part of the Balkans. You would never guess so from spending a few hours in Ljubljana, Slovenia's pocket-sized capital. Architecturally, the city looks as though it is waiting for the Austro-Hungarian empire to sweep back and bring the latest gossip from Vienna.* Slovenia is the richest and primmest country in central Europe. It managed to sidestep most of the problems associated with post-communism, and most of those associated with the collapse of Yugoslavia too. Its neighbours in the western Balkans are doing less well. They, and Slovenia, make a study in contrasts.

The Habsburg heritage helped Slovenia manage its transition well, though the empire had passed almost out of living memory by 1991, argues Rudolf Martin Rizman, a sociologist at Ljubljana University. The empire was a “Rechtsstatt”, a state obeying the rule of law. Since the rule of law is usually seen as crucial to the consolidation of democracy in formerly undemocratic countries, it should not be surprising if a country sharing that legacy managed the process better than a country formed in an Ottoman tradition, or in a tsarist Russian one, Mr Rizman says in a recent paper.

Relative wealth played a big part, too. When Slovenia declared independence in 1991 it was the richest part of Yugoslavia. Its income per person was about $6,300 a year, similar to the level of wealth at which the demand for democracy has grown irresistible in other societies around the world, from Spain to South Korea.

Other regional powers could scarcely have been more helpful. The EU, emboldened by the success of its single market project, offered a new destiny to all central Europeans that wanted it. Germany was strong enough to push the EU into recognising Slovenia's independence, and Croatia's, in January 1992. Geography also helped, perhaps most of all. Slovenia presented no target for the ethnic land-grabs of Slobodan Milosevic's Serbia. It had no territorial ambitions to satisfy, and no ethnic schisms to resolve. It could preserve a functioning state throughout its transition, allowing state-building and democracybuilding to reinforce one another. In Croatia, by contrast, democracy-building had to wait until the nation-state had been defined and secured through war.

A final factor in Slovenia's favour was the gradual nature of its transition. Yugoslavia's pre-Milosevic communists allowed the republics a fair measure of autonomy. In 1987, when Slovenia's liberals called openly for democracy and independence, the local communist leadership let them do so, and the federal government's attempts to clamp down merely speeded the process. An American political scientist, Samuel Huntington, has used the term “transplacement” to describe this course: when a strong opposition compels a regime to accept fundamental changes in the political system. It is more radical than a “transformation”, when the old regime controls the speed and character of the change, as happened in post-communist Central Asia. But it is less radical than “replacement”, where an opposition is strong enough to sweep the old regime from power, as happened in the Baltic states. It is that rare thing in revolutions, a workable compromise.

All this has enabled Slovenia to escape the “Balkans” altogether, if we define the Balkans by its ethnic conflicts and failed states. But even in the Balkans, some of the news is good these days. “The military are in the barracks, Milosevic is in The Hague, elections are regular,” points out Ivan Krastev, director of a think-tank in Sofia.

The bad news is that the succession of wars has kept most of the region dirt-poor. War has meant weak states, and chaotic and violent conditions in which organised crime has taken deep root. Democracy prevails in form, but poverty is its enemy, just as wealth was its friend in Slovenia. Poverty breeds corruption, corruption breeds bad government, and if democracy has put bad governments in place, then democracy itself is vulnerable.

Another worry for the western Balkans is that they are losing the world's attention. If anything more does go wrong there, fewer people will care. America is cutting its troops in the region and may pull them out entirely next year. The European Union is cutting aid, from €805m ($720m) in 2001 to €537m this year. The reduced American presence leaves the EU to assume prime responsibility with little to offer except a diminishing line of aid and a remote prospect of EU membership.

Bold diplomacy costs nothing, and might do some good. The EU could cut Kosovo and Montenegro loose from Serbia, creating three states with nobody else to blame for their respective problems. But without much to its name in the way of boldness or diplomacy, the EU clings to the status quo.

To hope that something will turn up, as the EU is doing, amounts to a strategy of sorts and not necessarily the worst. A demonstration effect may work its way southward across the region as Slovenia joins the EU and NATO. Croatia has followed suit already, making an application for EU membership this year. Its example might possibly inspire Serbia, and so on. The trouble here is that Croatia, with the best will in the world on both sides, is at least five years away from joining the EU, and Serbia is as far away from being taken seriously as a candidate.

A more plausible and useful aim for the western Balkan countries in the medium term would be NATO membership. NATO is a simpler and more narrowly focused organisation than the EU, with a more transparent accession process. It demands basic democracy from its members, without interfering much in their domestic politics. It guarantees a strong tie with the United States, which the EU cannot do. More signals of encouragement to countries in the region would be a welcome by-product of NATO's summit next year.

Another useful strategy, odd as it sounds, might be public relations campaigns for foreign and for domestic audiences. Foreign, because the Balkans has been known to the world for the past decade through the prism of its most strife-torn country - Bosnia in the early 1990s, Kosovo and Serbia in the late 1990s, Macedonia in 2001. The sense of permanent chaos is slow to fade. The news needs to get through to investors, bankers, even tourists, that the wars are over there, that you can walk the streets of Tirana safely in the evening, that the economies of Bosnia and Macedonia are growing again.

Residents need to be stirred, too, into valuing and improving what they have. Public pessimism is a big problem for the region, says Mr Krastev. People believe their efforts are doomed and their governments hopeless, even when they are better off than they used to be and their governments are doing at least some of the right things. For every five people who have done better economically over the past few years, only one admits or believes as much. Such pessimism can be self-fulfilling if it deters investment and makes reforms easier to reverse. One key to making the Balkans work better, says Mr Krastev, is “getting the winners out of the closet”.

* Present-day Slovenia fell within the Holy Roman Empire and Croatia within 15th-century Hungary. The Austro-Hungarian empire encompassed them both. It added Bosnia in 1878. When Europe's borders were redrawn after the 1914-18 war, Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia became part of the “Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes”, the precursor of Yugoslavia, together with present-day Serbia and Macedonia.

A rich country and its poor neighbours. Article is part of a survey 'When east meets west: a survey of EU enlargement'.