A GENUINE BACKLASH OR POLITICS AS USUAL? SERBIAN FEMINISTS PERCEPTIONS OF CONTEMPORARY POLITICAL CHANGES

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1 A GENUINE BACKLASH OR POLITICS AS USUAL? SERBIAN FEMINISTS PERCEPTIONS OF CONTEMPORARY POLITICAL CHANGES ***Draft Only: Please do not cite or circulate without author s permission*** Backlash in the context of South-Eastern Europe (SEE) is usually associated with the argument about rising illiberal democracy (BIEPAG, 2017). It is argued that democracy in this region is backsliding due to the rise to power of strongmen, who are democratically elected but also both willing and able to repress the opposition, limit freedom of expression and reverse individual rights (WUNSCH, 2016). Now Vučić in Serbia is such a strongman. The overt control of the media and allegations of electoral fraud during the presidential election last April, are both indicative of his autocratic attitude and spurred the largest protests in the country since the ousting of Milošević in This paper in no way tries to downplay these problems regarding Vučić s government, it would be dangerous to do so. What I believe is necessary, is to challenge that notion of rising illiberal democracy. The concept of rising illiberal democracy, in my view has several problems. First, it creates an artificial dichotomy between the good Western liberal and bad SEE illiberal democracies. As such it allows brushing aside democratic deficits in Western regimes and more importantly further reifies the region s Balkanisation through which it appears as constantly backward (TODOROVA, 2009). Secondly, it is a swift move by which both authoritarian incumbents but also left parties and civil society, which challenge the liberal market economy, can be classified as illiberal and therefore delegitimised. Finally, and for this paper most importantly, it is problematic because in order to be able to talk about rising illiberalism one must assume that a functioning liberal democracy existed in the first place. But from the perspective of Serbian feminists, who saw how politics developed from the violent disintegration of Yugoslavia in the 1990s up to today, the argument of politics as usual rings truer than a sudden rise of illiberal democracy in the past decade. The concept of rising illiberal democracy therefore seems to serve an important function: that of blurring the EU s responsibility in these undemocratic developments. The EU was supposed to be the most effective transformative power through its tools of Europeanization (pressing for democratic reforms in exchange of financial assistance and EU membership). But instead of Europeanising, elites quickly learnt the textbook of how to appear liberal while maintaining an illiberal agenda (EDMUNDS, 2009). The approach of simply transposing what seemed to have worked in Central Eastern Europe to SEE and upgrading it with the Stabilization and Association Process has hence failed because Europeanization went hand in hand with illiberalism. Talking of rising illiberal democracy however, does not acknowledge this and therefore fails to point out that the EU quietly sanctioned undemocratic developments. As such it is not only a flawed concept from a theoretical point of view, but also from a societal perspective. The longer we use it and ignore the EU s role in the rise of authoritarianism in SEE, the more we risk alienating the citizens and civil society of the region. This is why I aim to challenge it from the perspective of Serbian feminists. From their point of view it would be not only more accurate but pressing to recognise that this is not about rising illiberalism but about fading hopes: fading hopes because the essence of politics never changed and the EU quietly endorsed this. I will demonstrate this argument by first outlining how Serbian feminists lost their hopes over time due to the regime s consistent indifference towards gender equality coupled with a 1

2 new way of repression through co-optation. I will then move on to showing that this loss of hope was exacerbated because they realised the EU was a superficial actor, which effectively endorsed the regime s attitude by allowing fake compliance and double discourse. The timeframe for my argument is the toppling of Milošević in 2000 to 2016, when I conducted my fieldwork. The preliminary analysis of interviews I conducted during fieldwork in Serbia between May and July last year are the basis for this paper. Overall I conducted over 35 interviews with feminists from different socio-economic backgrounds, involved in a wide range of activities and from four different generations (involved 1. since before the 1990s; 2. since 1990s; 3. since 2000s; 4. since 2010). For this paper however, I only used the 23 interviews that were conducted in Belgrade, because I have not yet analysed the data that was collected in other cities. Although in this paper I do not explicitly mention sensitive topics my participants talked about, their names are presented in an anonymous form in order to prevent future reconstruction of their identity. 1. Perception of change Let me now turn to the first point of the argument regarding Serbian feminists perception of change in politics. In order to understand how the perception has changed, I would like to briefly mention the initial hopes some of the older generation mention they had in the early 2000s. When after years of protesting, in which feminists played a leading role (BLAGOJEVIĆ, 1999), Milošević was finally removed from office, there was according to one of my respondents a genuine atmosphere of optimism. For instance the Women s Studies Centre in Belgrade, which had been established in 1994, always purposely avoided any cooperation with public institution. But in 2000 its director decided the courses offered at the centre should become institutionalised and to her surprise the centre got affiliated to the Faculty of Political Science at the University of Belgrade overnight. There were none of the expected obstacles. Moreover, similar programmes started cropping up all over the country in Niš and Novi Sad. And therefore she really thought that things would now open up. So there was a state of enthusiasm at the beginning. However, as illustrated in graph 1 these initial hopes have stopped since. When asked today how Serbian feminists perceive their state s attitude towards them and feminism generally, there are two characteristics they most frequently refer to: indifferent (12) and co-opting (10). This is why this paper exclusively discusses these two codes, but I will gladly further explain what the other codes capture in the follow-up discussion. Graph 1: State s attitude to feminism 2

3 1.1 State s indifference Regarding the Serbian government s indifferent stance towards the goal of feminism 1, my participants would mainly refer to three aspects. First, they argue that the government irresponsibly handles the available financial resources. When the wars ended and the country seemed to be on a track of democratisation in the early 2000s foreign donors started withdrawing from Serbia and the region more generally, thinking that it was now the government s task to finance its own watchdog, the civil society. However, instead of allocating the amount of money that was now coming from the EU to well established women NGOs, it would often go to so-called GONGOs, which strangely enough would always appear a few months before a new fund became available. Parallel to the lack of financial support, Serbian feminists also perceive that there is a total absence of using the available expertise they could provide. Official programmes that are supposed to improve gender equality are not lead by feminists who often possess more than twenty years of experience in the field but with bureaucrats. As one respondent describes the situation: They actually don't care about our opinion, they don't care about our experience, they don't care about anything we can actually help... (G3B*). And finally and perhaps most disturbingly there is the state s inaction concerning pressing issues such as the rise of femicide in the past five years. And yet there is up to date still not a single fully state funded SOS hotline. For instance the NGO Sandglass in Kruševac managed to get the local and national government to sign an agreement in 2012 in which they committed to cover half of its expenses but the organisation did not see any money transfer until 2014 and constantly had to remind the authorities of its obligation to finally secure what had been promised. So from the point of view of Serbian feminists there is plenty of evidence, which suggests that the state has no interest in changing the status quo of women s condition. 1.2 State s co-optation But in addition, the state has also developed a new form of repression. Parallel to official calls to crackdown on feminist protests, as a spokesman of the anti-terror unit in the Ministry of Internal Affairs did in March 2014, and non-intervention during violent verbal and physical attacks as I experienced it twice during my fieldwork, there is a new strategy: co-optation. Many of my participants ushered serious concerns with this new subtler strategy, which mainly consists in, as one terms it, kidnapping the feminist language and agenda. She further argues: you know, every three or four years we had to sit down and think what now, because they are eating our language. They are kidnapping our concepts (G1E). The last five years saw the emergence of official initiatives and institutions such as the Ministry for Gender Equality, the National Strategy for Gender Equality and the Law on Gender Equality. And while all this may at the surface seem like a positive development it becomes problematic when one realises that they were initiated by the same party and people who until recently were in favour of war and openly nationalist. An example of this is Zorana Mihajlovic, who is in charge of the National Strategy for Gender Equality. She is a member of the Serbian Progressive Party, a party, which was formed out of the Serbian Radical Party in 1 In order to encompass all the varied activities my interviewees are involved in, I adopt the most inclusive and common definition of goal of feminism, namely the effort to improve women s condition. 3

4 2008, which is a far right, nationalist party and whose leader Vojislav Šešelji has been accused (and recently acquitted) of war crimes in Bosnia by the International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). So if this kind of parties and people are responsible for equality programmes, this indeed opens the question of how genuine they are. Moreover, gender mainstreaming as a term has become so popular there are even bureaus for gender mainstreaming in small localities. And while Serbian feminists are not per se against the idea of mainstreaming, it is indeed to some degree a useful and necessary strategy, they are worried about the term s popularity because it is a clever move to neutralise feminist politics. It neutralises them because it reduced feminism to the simple equal nominal representation and consideration in all structures and actions of the government. As such it depoliticises feminism because it presents it as something that is only concerned with parity and not with profoundly challenging the existing gender regime and gendered norms. But precisely because it is more subtle than the over attacks and represents an unprecedented strategy, feminists in Serbia feel overwhelmed with the task of how to counter and resist it. 2. EU s role Given that all the above evolved under the eyes of the democracy promoter EU, it is justified and necessary to ask what role Serbian feminists attribute to the EU in these developments. It does not come as a surprise that the assessment is not a positive one. As graph 2 indicates although many would refer to the EU as a leverage, they would also consider it a superficial actor, which is intimately related to it allowing fake compliance. Graph 2: Role of the EU 2.1 EU as a leverage Let us first turn to Serbian feminists perception of the EU as a leverage. Most of them would argue that the EU accession process really is the key difference to the Milošević regime because it opens windows of opportunity to more successfully advocate for certain policies and it also provides them with better defence. Even if they are aware that the EU would not come and defend them they know that the government cannot too openly violate certain norms which gives them more sense of security and marge of manoeuvring than they had during the 90s. But even if they believe that the EU has given them more visibility and allows their voice to be heard, this is not to say that Serbian feminists have illusions about the EU. They take a fairly pragmatic approach to it, in which it is simply seen as the lesser and necessary evil 4

5 because there is no other alternative in sight. As one participant puts it: I can assure you after my... now will be probably 20 years of activism, I assure you that the only way you can influence Western Balkan governments is through EU (G2B). 2.2 EU as a superficial actor However, almost all who refer to the EU as a leverage, also associate it with a superficial actor because gender equality is not a priority. Feminists argue that the EU s top priority regarding Serbia is to avoid war. Therefore all EU officials care about is to have a government in place that takes a reconciliatory tone vis-à-vis Kosovo and in exchange are ready to turn many blind eyes to the internal problems, which persist and about which they are well informed. One respondents illustrates the situation as follows: But what happens within Serbia, to the citizens of Serbia... the EU does not really care very much (G1B*). While it always finds time to comment on statements about Kosovo, there is no reaction to on-going LGBTQ rights violation or violence against women. Therefore they appear to be secondary to the EU. This has the detrimental consequence that the EU effectively condones and endorses a government that practices fake compliance and a dangerous double discourse, where whenever it does comply it stages this as a necessary nationalist sacrifice at home while pretending genuine adherence in Brussels. For instance the protection of women rights defenders, which police has to provide during protests in Belgrade, is not presented as something that is correct in itself because these population demonstrate for a good cause and because civil society is necessary for a healthy democracy. Rather it is presented as an unpleasant façade that needs to be held up for the EU. In conclusion, we can therefore justifiably argue that from the perspective of a Serbian feminist it is not about rising illiberal democracy but very much about politics as usual. The manifestation and strategies have changed through a cosmetic make over as this participant so eloquently puts it: Although they are full of EU, human rights... But if you hear and if you look at them, and if you're very careful, you will see that they didn't change at all. It's only that cosmetic change and that kind of... well, I'm going to say in public what they want to hear; but, basically, it's very violent politics, very nationalist politics. (G3B*) But the essence of politics has not. All that changed are the hopes feminists had at the beginning of the 2000s and which have been shattered in the meantime. They have lost their hope because the government is at best indifferent to gender equality at worst it actively tries to co-opt and therefore effectively neutralise feminist organising. And while the EU, which is supposed to be the strongest democracy promoter in the region, is indeed perceived as a strategic ally it is equally seen as a superficial actor, for whom gender equality is not a priority and which hence allows fake compliance and a nationalist double discourse. 5

6 REFERENCES BIEPAG. (2017). The Crisis of Democracy in the Western Balkans. Authoritarianism and EU Stabilitocracy. BALKANS IN EUROPE POLICY ADVISORY GROUP. BLAGOJEVIĆ, Marina. (1999). "The Walks in a Gender Perspective". In M. LAZIĆ (Ed.), Protest in Belgrade: Winter of Discontent. Budapest: Central European University Press ; Plymouth : distributed by Plymbridge. EDMUNDS, Timothy. (2009). "Illiberal Resilience in Serbia". Journal of Democracy, 20 (1). TODOROVA, Maria Nikolaeva. (2009). Imagining the Balkans. (Updated ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. WUNSCH, Natasha. (2016, 23. November). Stability vs. Democracy? The Dilemma of Illiberal Tendencies in the Enlargement Region. European Western Balkans. Retrieved from