Engineering Revolution. Marlene Spoerri
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