Decoding the authoritarian code: exercising ‘legitimate’ power politics through the ruling parties in Turkey, Macedonia and Serbia

Günay, Cengiz; Dzihic, Vedran

doi:10.1080/14683857.2016.1242872

Cited by 53 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…To understand why Russia has become more prominent, one needs to take into account the broader trends in the region. The Balkans have seen the rise of a new generation of demagogues and nationalist leaders who differ from those presiding over Yugoslavia's bloody demise in the 1990s (Günay and Džihić 2016;Kmezić and Bieber 2017). Today's strongmen (no women of note among their ranks) gladly wage symbolic violence to rally their constituencies behind the flag, but they lack the financial and military resources to launch and sustain full-scale wars.…”

Section: Russia's Influence On Societies and Domestic Politicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

European-Russian Power Relations in Turbulent Times

Cross¹,

Karolewski²

2021

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After many years of gradually closer ties between Russia and the European Union (EU), this relationship has taken a turn for the worst, signaling possibly the darkest era in security on the continent since the end of the Cold War. Indeed, at the beginning of the 21st century, it was almost taken for granted that Russia, under Vladimir Putin's leadership, was gradually moving closer to the West and valued its relationship to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Many observers pointed to Russia's strategic partnership with the West, 1 and there was even talk of Russia's future possible membership in NATO, or even the EU. However, this trajectory began a sharp slide backward as a result of the Russo-Georgian War in 2008, with major implications for Europe, the US, and even the liberal world order at large. 2 Indeed, the international system today is transforming. The liberal world order is coming under threat on various fronts with the rise and growth of nondemocratic states, violent and criminal nonstate actors, asymmetric conflict, and cyber war, among other things. 3 What is perhaps most surprising, as John Ikenberry points out, is that the biggest threat to the liberal world order actually stems from the most powerful "hostile revisionist power . . . it has begun to sabotage the order it created . . . it sits in the Oval Office, the beating heart of the free world. " 4 With this climate of uncertainty and insecurity, many states are reverting to less cooperative forms of interaction in the international system, oftentimes resulting in crisis. The Russia-EU relationship is one of the central dynamics behind the emergence of this less stable system. For the EU, increasing Russian aggression and disregard for international law through its encroachments

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Section: Russia's Influence On Societies and Domestic Politicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

European-Russian Power Relations in Turbulent Times

Cross¹,

Karolewski²

2021

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“…In this way, according to Cengiz Günay and Vedran Dzihic (2016), European Union integration reforms stemming from the latter's (EU) conditionality mechanism along with the promise of redistribution and redirection of public resources and narrative national -populist constitute the macro -strategy of the dominant parties in hybrid regimes such as Turkey, Serbia and Northern Macedonia. Thus 'EU reforms functioning as "legitimising devices" opening new spaces' (Günay -Dzihic 2016). So, 'The Rise of Strong Balkan Rulers, such as Nikola Gruevski (Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia), Milorad Dodik (Republika Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina), Milo Djukanovic (Montenegro) and Aleksandar Vucic (Serbia), and their machines of the party, came under EU scrutiny and often with tacit support and approval.…”

Section: The Role and Impact Of Eu Policy In The Process Of State Capmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This tacit approval by EU leaders of the autocratic powers of strong Western Balkan leaders has come primarily as a result of the destabilising power these leaders possess. These leaders have repeatedly transmitted insecurity, which has served as an instrument for strengthening supporters' dependence on parties (Günay -Dzihic 2016), but also for sending messages about and related to the power they have for destabilising the region. In this way, by tolerating their autocratic power, the EU has succeeded in neutralising this force and thus maintaining the status quo in a region where there are no hot spots, which have the potential to destabilise the entire region.…”

Section: The Role and Impact Of Eu Policy In The Process Of State Capmentioning

confidence: 99%

Justice Reform or Facade Reform: The case of the Western Balkans

Halili¹

2020

Politics in Central Europe

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EU transformative power is put into question and constantly challenged by the political actions of leaders in the Western Balkans. Although the political elites in this region have internalised a pro-European discourse, they are still guided and governed by authoritarian logic and practices colliding with the EU’s governing model. The paper analyses precisely this relationship between the EU and internal politics, namely, the transformative power/powerlessness of the EU towards the aspiring countries for membership in a single dimension; namely, justice. The paper reviews the reforms developed and the effects they have produced in the justice system in a calculation relation: costs and benefits. In this logic, this paper analyses costs and benefits of the internal elites of the Western Balkans, representing a classic oxymoron. On the one hand, pro-EU discourse is superficially used and, on the other, substantive actions are far from the EU’s governing model. The central argument emphasises that the reform process in the region has turned into a repetitive system of itself and destined to fail right from the beginning. So, we see a loss in reforms and plunging into a vicious circle, whereby each time elements increase and intensify but deteriorate one another, inevitably leading to the deterioration of the situation and producing multidimensional corruption.

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“…4 Scholarship on the Western Balkans after 2000 often rested on the assumption that the region was merely experiencing a delayed process that would emulate the larger post-Communist pattern of democratisation, namely the transformation of authoritarian to democratic regimes (Cohen and Lampe 2011). More critical and nuanced assessments of the difficulties of democratic consolidation in the Western Balkans, both comparing beyond the region and/or reflecting on the marginal position of the region in the democratisation literature, have emerged only recently (Džihić and Segert 2012;Dawson 2014;Günay and Džihić 2016;Mujanović 2018). The focus on the Western Balkans in this article is thus not an argument for the region's exceptionalism, but rather to understand new competitive authoritarianism in the context of a region that has high levels of Western linkages and where EU leverage is particularly large.…”

Section: Competitive Authoritarianism In the Western Balkansmentioning

confidence: 99%

Patterns of competitive authoritarianism in the Western Balkans

Bieber

2018

East European Politics

131

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The countries of the Western Balkans during the 1990s were dominated by competitive authoritarian regimes that combined multi-party elections with nationalist rhetoric and the privatisation of the state to affiliated business interests. After a move towards democratisation in the early 2000s across the region, authoritarian practices began reappearing in the late 2000s and have now firmly taken root in many of these countries. This article will argue that the current competitive authoritarian systems (Levitsky, Steven, and Lucan A. Way. 2010. Competitive Authoritarianism. Hybrid Regimes after the Cold War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) are structurally different from those of the 1990s. These new regimes draw on the failure of reformist governments during the early 2000s to decisively break with authoritarian practices and establish independent and democratic institutions, thus facilitating the return of competitive authoritarian regimes. The current pattern in the Western Balkans is part of a global trend, but is also one embedded in the particularities of democratic transformation of the region. This article argues that the return of competitive authoritarianism is the result of weak democratic structures, facilitated by the weakening and insufficient transformative power of external actors, first and foremost the EU, in incentivizing continued democratisation.

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Decoding the authoritarian code: exercising ‘legitimate’ power politics through the ruling parties in Turkey, Macedonia and Serbia

Cited by 53 publications

References 24 publications

European-Russian Power Relations in Turbulent Times

European-Russian Power Relations in Turbulent Times

Justice Reform or Facade Reform: The case of the Western Balkans

Patterns of competitive authoritarianism in the Western Balkans

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