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