International Studies Quarterly (2011) 55, 309–330
Europe is a State of Mind: Identity and
Europeanization in the Balkans1
Jelena Subotic
Georgia State University
Exasperated by his political dealings with Serbia and its reluctance to fulfill European Union requirements, Miroslav Lajcak, EU special representative to BosniaHerzegovina, said in September 2006,
In Serbia the European idea is not that present, and is not that positive…This
absence is best seen when you compare Serbia to other countries in the region.
In all other countries, the European idea took more ground, and is felt in all
segments of society, at every step. Those countries are trying hard to show how
much they care about the European Union, and to show what they are doing in
order to become members. This is not the case with Serbia.2
This is an extraordinary and quite impolitic statement by a high European official. It also presents an interesting empirical puzzle: why have some European
Union candidate states been enthusiastic Europeanizers, while others have been
reluctant to adopt European norms? Why would some states refuse to meet EU
requirements to join, when the benefits of EU membership far outweigh the
price of admission? And why would other states rush to join and Europeanize,
1
Author’s note: I thank Michael Barnett, William Downs, John Duffield, Kirk Elifson, Doug Rose, Claire Sterk,
Ayse Zarakol, three outstanding anonymous reviewers and editors at International Studies Quarterly for helpful
comments and suggestions, as well as Shannon Jones for research assistance. An earlier version of this paper was
presented at the 2009 International Studies Association Annual Convention.
2
Danas, September 11, 2006.
doi: 10.1111/j.1468-2478.2011.00649.x
2011 International Studies Association
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Why does Europeanization—the process of adopting European rules—
advance in some countries, while it stalls in others? What explains different European trajectories of otherwise similar candidate states? This
article explains foreign policy choices of EU candidate states with an
identity-based theoretical framework. In states where European identity
is a widely shared social value, the inevitable short-term costs of Europeanization—economic, social, and political—will still be worth the price
of admission because becoming ‘‘European’’ trumps other domestic
political concerns. In contrast, in countries where the European idea is
not broadly shared, pro-European groups will find it hard to forge crosscutting coalitions needed to successfully promote Europeanization with
all its associated costs. To illustrate these theoretical insights, I compare
Europeanization in Croatia and Serbia, the two Balkan states with similar regional status, shared legacies of communism, and ethnic war, yet
quite different European trajectories. I argue that the process of identity
convergence explains Croatia’s rapid compliance with controversial EU
requirements, while in neighboring Serbia, identity divergence has
derailed Serbia’s EU candidacy.
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Europe Is a State of Mind
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even when Europeanization entails short-term losses for important domestic constituencies? Lajcak’s assessment may be extreme, but it speaks both to the importance of state identity and domestic political understanding of ‘‘Europe’’ in
shaping the complex process of Europeanization.
This article seeks to explain how state identity influences the processes of
Europeanization, especially the poorly understood cases of stalled or interrupted
Europeanization. I specify the mechanisms of identity convergence and identity divergence to explain the different trajectories of Europeanization in otherwise similar
states. Identity convergence is a process by which political actors strategically emphasize shared norms and values and disregard contradictory ones in pursuit of particular political goals. Conversely, identity divergence is a mechanism by which
domestic coalitions resist norms and rules of Europeanization and instead define
the national community in contrast to Europe.
To explore the relationship between identity and Europeanization, I compare
the processes of European accession in Croatia and Serbia. The two countries
make for a strong and useful comparison. The two Balkan states share much in
common—history of the joint federal state, experience of communist rule,
legacy of recent war and delayed democratic transition—but their European trajectories have followed quite different paths. Despite these historical commonalities, political actors in the two states have shown almost opposite attitudes
toward Europeanization, creating a rare analytical opportunity to single out
factors responsible for their divergence. Croatia was accepted as a European
Union candidate state in 2004. It has since fulfilled most of the political, economic, and administrative requirements and accession negotiations, including
the stickiest political requirement—full cooperation with the International
Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). Technical negotiations on
Croatia’s EU accession are almost complete (European Commission 2009a),
which signals that possible accession could come as early as 2012. Serbia, on
the other hand, is still not a candidate state. It signed the EU Stabilization and
Association Agreement (SAA) in 2008, but its path toward candidacy has since
stalled. The main obstacle for Serbia’s accession has been its reluctance to
arrest war crimes suspects and fully cooperate with the ICTY. In addition, Serbia’s refusal to accept Kosovo’s declaration of independence in 2008 has further complicated its relationship with the EU (European Commission 2009b).
This presents an interesting empirical puzzle. Why has Croatia been more willing to accept intrusive European political requirements than has Serbia?
Through a comparison of the two cases, this piece seeks to answer those questions and add to the increasingly robust literature on Europeanization and
European enlargement.
The article proceeds as follows. I first briefly discuss the state of the broader
scholarly debate about Europeanization. I then introduce a theoretical argument
about the significance of identity politics in evaluating Europeanization processes. The subsequent section develops the mechanisms of identity convergence
and divergence to explain successful or stalled Europeanization. I then apply
these theoretical insights to the cases of Croatia and Serbia. To carefully measure
identity, I use discursive analysis, process tracing, elite interviewing, and archival
research to conduct a structured, focused comparison of the two countries. Since
the purpose of discourse analysis is to ‘‘recover meaning from the language that
actors use to describe and understand social phenomena’’ (Abdelal, Herrera,
Johnston, and McDermott 2009: 6), I pay particular attention to the selection of
sources within each case. I rely on personal interviews as well as my own
informed interpretations of a variety of texts, such as policy statements, political
party platforms, newspaper and magazine articles, texts of prominent public
intellectuals, and political speeches. I measure the social impact of these elite
discourses by comparing public opinion surveys over time.
Jelena Subotic
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Why Do States Europeanize?
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The most parsimonious definition of Europeanization is that of a process by
which ‘‘states adopt EU rules’’ (Schimmelfennig and Sedelmeier 2005: 7). My
understanding of Europeanization, however, is broader. Following Katzenstein, I
conceptualize Europeanization as the construction, diffusion, and institutionalization of formal and informal rules, creation of shared beliefs, and ways of political practice in Europe (Katzenstein 2006: 20).
A strong body of literature exists to explain why states adopt EU rules. A
rationalist bargaining model posits that the EU sets conditions for joining, and
candidate states comply because the benefits of EU membership are far greater
than the domestic price of compliance with EU conditions (Moravcsik and
Vachudova 2003; Kelley 2004; Schimmelfennig 2005). The prospect of EU benefits can also create the political will for candidates to comply with otherwise great
and burdensome requirements (Vachudova 2005). To force states to adopt EU
rules, the EU has often used the tools of conditionality, where the EU provides
rewards to candidate states and withholds the reward if states fail to comply. This
mechanism is known as ‘‘reinforcement by reward’’ (Schimmelfennig 2000).
External incentives, bargaining and conditionality, however, cannot explain
the difference in outcome in Croatia and Serbia. European incentives and pressures have been sustained on both countries for at least a decade. In fact, the
incentives for Serbia to join the EU were if anything more pronounced than in
Croatia, as the EU and other international actors were willing to impose material
sanctions for continuing lack of compliance with EU requirements. Increased
European pressure—external incentives—therefore, did not contribute to faster
Europeanization.
An alternative explanation to the incentives model is the literature on social
learning, which argues that states adopt European rules because they perceive
them as inherently appropriate and the process of Europeanization is domestically considered legitimate (Checkel 2001; Epstein 2008). Candidate states then
adopt EU rules over time through socialization, persuasion, or habit (Checkel
2007a). While this focus on socialization opens up the literature to consider
social variables beyond the simple cost and benefit calculations of domestic
actors, it has tended to overemphasize success stories and underplay failed or
stalled Europeanization attempts, assuming that, in time, recalcitrant states will
be coaxed into changing their undemocratic ways by sustained and consistent
EU pressure (Cowles, Caporaso, and Risse 2001).
The social learning mechanism holds most promise for explaining the empirical puzzle I identified. The focus on Europeanization as acceptance of legitimate
rules, however, is not enough. As the case study of Croatia will show, the Croatian elites in fact did not consider all European requirements as either appropriate or legitimate. They were angered by them and understood them as
intrusive. However, they wanted badly to Europeanize because they identified
profoundly with Europe as Croatia’s cultural and political home. They considered Croatia fundamentally a European state; they considered themselves European-like leaders (modern, Western), and they were willing to adopt rules they
disagreed with because the feeling of belonging to a shared European family
trumped other concerns they had with the Europeanization process.
In contrast, Serbia did not immediately identify with Europe. Joining the EU
was—and still is—the official national priority, but the European identity never
took the ‘‘taken-for-granted’’ attribute that makes it fully internalized. As the Serbian case will illustrate, Serbian post-Yugoslav identity has developed in profound
isolation from Europe because of Serbia’s reputation as the architect of the
Yugoslav breakup and the biggest perpetrator of wartime atrocities. Serbian elites
and the general public greatly resented this perceived European opprobrium
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Europe Is a State of Mind
and harshness with which they thought European institutions dealt with Serbia.
It is this uncertain and transitional identity, the contested meaning of Europe,
and the presence of alternative domestic identity claims that can best explain
cases of stalled Europeanization.
Identity and Europeanization
3
The identity discussion that follows is adapted from Abdelal et al. (2009).
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I recognize state identity to be a broadly shared understanding of a collective self
as having distinctiveness and purpose in relation to other states. State identities
can be measured along multiple dimensions.3 A state has a discernible identity if
it has shared rules about who is a member of a polity. For an individual state, for
example, these rules can be either ethnic or civic (France is the state of French
people; Canada is the state of Canadian citizens). The European Union has
defined its polity by clear political membership criteria: a market economy,
democracy, and respect for human rights (European Council 1993). These constitutive rules, then, define what it means to be a European state.
Another dimension of state identity is a commitment to shared political goals
and purpose. For example, a shared desire to become a ‘‘European state’’ has
guided much of the political decisions made by EU candidate states. A state can
also define its identity against another state which it is not (Croatia is different
from the rest of the Balkans; Croatia is Croatia because it is not like the rest of
the Balkans). Finally, a state has a shared identity if it has a collective understanding of what are appropriate political principles and practices—what kinds
of political acts are right, which ones are wrong.
State identity does not come out of thin air. It is shaped by international and
domestic environments in which states are embedded (Wendt 1994). The state is
a social actor, and it creates and recreates its identity from interactions with different domestic and international social structures. State identity is fluid and
ever changing; it is constantly in the process of renegotiation and is vulnerable
to challenges and alternative narratives (Barnett 1996). It is also contested and
questioned by outsiders, as well as by different members of the polity who build
their domestic legitimacy on the basis of identity claims. State identity, therefore,
is always profoundly shaped by politics.
Existing Europeanization scholarship has already integrated questions of identity into explanations for candidate states’ strategies of EU accession and Europeanization. Because membership in the European Union is expected to create a
supranational European political identity, which then influences EU policymaking (Sedelmeier 2005; Caporaso and Kim 2009), much of the work on identity
and Europeanization has focused on ways in which European elites and institutions socialize candidate states into changing first their identities, and then their
preferences and interests (Jupille and Caporaso 1999; Hooghe 2005; Checkel
2007a).
Even with this added focus, we still have no deep understanding of how
domestic identity influences states’ choice whether or not to Europeanize. Other
than a recent study of the impact of religion on European integration (Byrnes
and Katzenstein 2006), the Europeanization literature has so far not sufficiently
explored how domestic identity can in fact stall, as much as promote, European
integration for candidate states. As Jeffrey Checkel pointed out, the scholarship
on Europeanization badly lags behind a real world realization that cultural Europeanization, in fact, has all but failed (Checkel 2007b; also Checkel and Katzenstein 2009). In many ways, this state of the literature can be attributed to a
certain arrogance on behalf of European institutions, which assume that all
states in Europe, given the choice, will naturally want to become EU members,
Jelena Subotic
313
Identity Convergence and Divergence
Just demonstrating that identity matters, however, is not enough. To explain theoretically how exactly identity influences Europeanization decisions, I borrow
insights from the social movements literature to specify mechanisms of identity
convergence and divergence (Stoecker 1995).
Identity convergence is a dynamic process by which political actors strategically
emphasize shared norms and values and disregard or omit contradictory ones in
pursuit of particular political goal. This is a stronger mechanism than a cultural
match between international and domestic norms (Checkel 1999) or normative
resonance between international and domestic levels (Cortell and Davis 1996) in
that it requires direct political action and entrepreneurship of domestic political
actors. Identity convergence is not simply a reflection of the normative environment of matching cultural values. It is a process by which domestic political
actors nurture, reinforce, and promote a particular version of state identity that
best serves their competitive electoral goals.
For identity convergence to succeed, three factors are necessary: (i) the idea
promoted is framed to fit the already existing values and norms that have tipping-point domestic salience; (ii) alternative identity narratives are undeveloped;
and (iii) the previous relationship with the desirable group was positive, and so
expectations of policy success are high. In the context of Europeanization, this
mechanism adheres to the following dynamic: political elites want to promote
Europeanization because they believe that is the best course for the country
(they are socialized Europeanizers) or because they believe that successful Europeanization will bring them political gains (if Europeanization provides benefits,
the voters will reward them).4 Pro-European political actors frame Europeanization demands to fit the already broadly shared views in society (we are European;
we deserve to be in Europe). Alternative identity narratives are either absent or
fully marginalized; there is no widely credible claim that ‘‘we are [something
else ⁄ non-European].’’ To fully consolidate the Europeanization process, political
actors frame any domestic opposition to their policies as fundamentally antiEuropean and, as such, unpatriotic. The opposition is therefore left with limited
discursive space to offer credible counterclaims and becomes marginalized.
Finally, to get full domestic support for policies that would otherwise be quite
unpopular, political leaders link Europeanization to the previous relationship
the state had with Europe. The more positive this relationship is, the more support there will be for Europeanization.
Conversely, identity divergence is a mechanism by which domestic coalitions
resist norms and rules of Europeanization and instead define the national
4
The question of what motivates Europeanizers is a very important one and has been addressed elsewhere
(see Checkel 2001). For the purposes of my argument, how certain elites promote Europeanization is more important than what motivates them to do so.
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because of all the indisputable benefits—material and reputational—that Europeanization entails. This institutional arrogance has been translated into Europeanization scholarship, which has so far mostly focused on European institutional
impact and socialization on member and candidate states. My analysis curbs this
Euro enthusiasm by showing that for some states, a shared European identity
does indeed trump national concerns, while for others—becoming European is
not as sweet of a carrot as Brussels assumes it is. The question that this article
addresses, then, is the reverse of much of Europeanization scholarship. Instead
of asking how does Europeanization change state identities, I ask how do state
identities influence the Europeanization process itself? This approach, then,
allows for Europeanization failure and gives us more analytical purchase.
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Europe Is a State of Mind
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community in contrast to those European values or requirements domestically
deemed illegitimate. Instead of reaffirming a state’s European identity, Europeanization produces a resurgence of nationalist and particularistic claims. The
stronger the push for Europeanization, the stronger the backlash.
For identity divergence to succeed, three factors are necessary: (i) the idea
promoted is not universally shared and is underdeveloped; (ii) alternative identity narratives are strong and clearly elaborated; and (iii) the previous relationship with the desirable group was negative, and so expectations of policy success
are low. The identity divergence dynamic is as follows: political elites oppose
Europeanization either on principled grounds or because they believe this opposition will bring them votes. If there is strong and sustained identity contestation
in the polity, and there is a critical mass of the electorate that can be moved to
support an anti-European policy, political elites choose to pursue a divergent
strategy and emphasize the contradictory or incompatible elements of European
vs. state identity, while minimizing the presence and strength of shared norms.
The more active contestation exists over European identity, domestic opposition
to it, or local infighting, the more there will be divergence. In this scenario,
attempts at Europeanization reaffirm state identity but in the opposite direction.
They reawaken and strengthen state identity that is built around opposition and
difference from Europe.
In pursuing identity divergence, political elites build on alternative identity
narratives that are already strong and clearly articulated—there is discursive
space for an alternative vision of identity to be promoted by strong political
coalitions. Anti-Europeanizers have a place to go to and they are not marginalized or excluded from public debate. Lastly, anti-European elites link current
projects of Europeanization through framing, agenda setting, and discursive
practices to earlier, negative relationships the society had with Europe and
then tie the negative past together with an uncertain and therefore undesirable
future.
In both processes of convergence and divergence, identity constitutes but also
constrains actors’ behavior. Political actors are themselves products of existing
values, norms, and social contexts, but at the same time, they help construct and
further reinforce the normative framework in which they operate. The strength
and viability of certain political parties, for example, reflect the broad popularity
and social ‘‘stickiness’’ of the ideas they represent. While rationalist explanations
of political party behavior in EU candidate states argue that over time, most
party elites in these countries realized that their political fortunes would be better if they adopted a pro-EU agenda (Vachudova 2008), they do not explain why
this has been the case in some countries, while not in others. The mechanism of
identity convergence indicates that political actors, such as parties and coalitions
in pro-EU states, tapped into already existing pro-European public sentiment
and calculated that the only way to win elections is to further promote Europeanization and make electoral promises that revolve around a country’s EU
future. Identity divergence indicates an opposite process. Political parties whose
electoral success is built on anti-EU rhetoric and policies do not have any incentive to promote further Europeanization. In the absence of the already present
‘‘European idea’’ shared socially, political actors’ appeals to Europeanization fall
on deaf ears, and they are inclined to build their electoral chances around
another policy issue.
To sum up, I make two interrelated arguments. First, analysis of state identity
provides a fuller explanation of Europeanization success or failure than does the
concept of external incentives, or related concepts of bargaining and conditionality. Second, domestic political actors use identity claims strategically; they
promote already broadly shared policy ideas through identity convergence, or
gain support for alternative policy claims through identity divergence. In the
Jelena Subotic
315
next section of the article, I illustrate these arguments with a comparison of
Europeanization processes in Croatia and Serbia.
Croatia
Construction of Croatian Postwar Identity
Croatian historians, supported and guided by the state, embarked on massive
efforts throughout the 1990s to construct and develop the narrative of Croats as
unique people, unrelated in any way to their Balkan brethren, and especially to
the Serbs (Bellamy 2003). There were academic projects to determine the ethnic
origin of Croats as proto-Aryans, with ancestral land in Iran, and not the Balkans
(Hedl 2000). An especially important project was the official attempt to distinguish Croatian from the very similar Serbian language, an issue of great concern
to Croatian nationalists (Greenberg 2004). The government also revamped the
education curriculum to reflect the new, post-independence, Croatian national
values that revolved around the principles of ‘‘Croatization’’ and ‘‘Europeanization’’ (Croatian Ministry of Education and Sports 1999).
In order to become European, however, Croatia first had to be thoroughly
de-Balkanized. It was not enough to state the difference with Serbia—the paradigmatic Balkan state. Croatian historiography was put to work to show how Croatia
never belonged to the Balkans from the standpoint of history, culture, religion,
or civilization. Croatian newspapers stopped using the term ‘‘Balkans’’ altogether
to refer to Croatia’s neighborhood, and instead connected Croatia to the
‘‘Central European’’ region. Perhaps most famously, Tudjman ran his successful
1997 presidential campaign under the slogan ‘‘Tudjman, not the Balkans.’’
As Lindstrom notes, the dominant discourse in Croatia since 1991 portrayed
Croatians as ‘‘more progressive, prosperous, hard-working, tolerant, democratic
or, in a word, European, in contrast to their primitive, lazy, intolerant, or Balkan,
neighbors’’ (Lindstrom 2003: 317). This fear and loathing of the Balkans also
directly framed Croatian political debates about what is the proper role of Croatia
in the region. For example, when in 1999, the EU shifted the five Balkan states to
5
There is a vast literature on state mechanisms of identity construction. I draw the fundamental insight that
states construct identities of their polities from Weber 1976 and Anderson 1991.
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Contemporary Croatian state identity is built on three pillars: nationalism, sense
of Europeanness, and the memory of the 1990s war. Croatian national mythology
has constructed over centuries a sense of uniqueness and distinctness of Croats
from their South Slavic neighbors and a deeply rooted desire for sovereign statehood (Bartlett 2003). Such was a profound Croatian desire for independence
that the now deceased Croatian president Franjo Tudjman, under whose leadership Croatia became independent, famously proclaimed that Croatia had finally
fulfilled its 1,000-year-old dream (Tudjman 1998). The Croatian desire for independence is also rooted in a conflicted historical memory of the previous Croatian independent state, a Nazi puppet creation that existed during World War
II and that carried out numerous atrocities against non-Croat minorities and
other political enemies, including a full-scale Holocaust of Croatian Jews (Goldstein and Goldstein 2001).
But once Croatia finally became independent from Yugoslavia in 1991, what
was it going to be? What kind of state is it, what are its constitutive principles,
and what are its foundational narratives? Very quickly upon acquiring independence, the Croatian state focused on two principal tasks of identity construction:
the independent Croatia had to be both fundamentally Croatian and thoroughly
Europeanized. Nationalist mythmaking was the central part of this state effort.5
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Europe Is a State of Mind
Europeanization and Identity Convergence
After initially supporting Croatia’s independence in 1991 and championing its
cause as a bulwark against Milosevic’s Serbia, Europe’s relationship with Croatia
soured after the end of the war. As Tudjman’s autocratic domestic policies
became clearer and Croatian war crimes documented, Europe put a stop to
Croatia’s European dreams and relegated it once again to the dreaded group of
backward states of the ‘‘Western Balkans,’’ whose prospects for European accession were dim.
Tudjman’s death in 1999, however, opened a new avenue for Croatia’s Europeanization and Croatia’s international reputation greatly improved. Stjepan Mesic,
a former high-profile communist official and defector from Tudjman’s right
wing Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), was elected president, and the parliament was placed in control of the left-leaning six-party coalition led by the Social
Democratic Party of Prime Minister Ivica Racan.
The issue of Croatia’s Europeanization was critical from the very beginning of
the post-Tudjman transition. President-elect Mesic argued that Croatia’s desire to
Europeanize was the key to his electoral success: ‘‘The opening of Croatia
towards Europe is crucial. In fact, people have come to a conclusion that Croatia’s isolation damages Croatia only, and that there will be no steps forward if it
stays this way.’’6
6
ONASA, February 8, 2000.
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the Stabilization and Association Process in an effort to find a regional solution to
the area’s problems, most Croats saw the regionalization as unacceptable and Croatian political leaders argued forcefully that Croatia should be dealt with in the
context of a democratic Central Europe, and not the Balkans (Fisher 2006: 192).
Croatian state identity, therefore, rests on a specific Balkan ⁄ European dichotomy. The further away Croatia is from the Balkan dungeon, the closer it is to
Europe. The specific collective meaning of ‘‘Europe’’ was then juxtaposed to the
meaning of ‘‘the Balkans.’’ Europe was everything the Balkans were not: liberal,
democratic, capitalist, progressive, and Catholic. It is this Europe that Croatia
wanted to join.
The independent, European, Croatia, however, was born out of a brutal war,
and its memories are a constitutive part of what the Croatian state means to its
citizens. The Croatian declaration of independence in 1991, while supported by
major European powers, opened the way for a protracted war between Croatian
forces and Croatia’s Serb minority. Guided and armed by Belgrade, Serbian
troops committed many atrocities against Croatian civilians. However, as the Bosnian war erupted in 1992, Croatia became more deeply involved in this conflict
by arming and supporting Bosnian Croats, and carrying out atrocities against
Bosniacs. Finally, in 1995, the Croatian army regrouped and carried out two
complex military operations—Flash and Storm—which effectively retook control
of most of Serb-held territory but in the process also deported, or ‘‘ethnically
cleansed’’ the entire Serb population of Krajina—some 200,000 people (Croatian
Helsinki Committee for Human Rights 1999). The legacy of the war, therefore,
is a profoundly conflicted one and revolves around Croatia’s unique position as
both the victim and the perpetrator. The Croatian historical memory of the war,
however, understands Croatia as only the victim and not the perpetrator of Balkan wartime atrocities (Jovic 2009). This view has been seriously challenged during the process of European accession, notably by ICTY indictments of Croatian
nationals for war crimes and the EU requirement that Croatia arrests and transfers these suspects. As the next section illustrates, this was the most domestically
difficult decision Croatian elites had to make on their way to Brussels.
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317
7
An opinion poll in 2002 showed that as many as 71% of Croats were opposed to ICTY indictments of Croatian generals (Jutarnji list, September 24, 2002).
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Post-Tudjman Croatia was generously rewarded for its change of government
and increasing openness toward Europe. A few months after the elections, Croatia was admitted to NATO’s Partnership for Peace and the World Trade Organization. The new government also received generous European and American
financial assistance. Most significantly, Croatia received promising signals regarding its chances for joining the EU. In November 2000, the European Commission officially started negotiations on the SAA, and the agreement itself was
signed in October 2001. Croatia was on the fast track back to Europe.
Croatia’s Europeanization, however, was not without hiccups. While Croatia
slowly but systematically worked on fulfilling EU requirements in economic and
social policy areas, by far the biggest roadblock on Croatia’s path toward the EU
was its reluctance to arrest suspected war crimes suspects. Cooperation with the
ICTY was a huge domestic issue in Croatia. As noted above, the memory of the
Croatian war is the foundational block of Croatian identity and challenges to its
mythological sanctity and purity challenged the very basis of how Croatia thought
of itself. Large segments of the Croatian polity—mostly right-wing parties, war veterans, and the Church—opposed cooperation with the tribunal.7 What makes
the Croatian case so interesting is that political elites managed to overcome great
societal opposition to criminalizing Croatia’s recent past by framing cooperation
with the ICTY as an issue that further solidifies Croatia’s European identity and
does not threaten it.
Three factors were important in making this identity convergence succeed.
Croatian political elites framed the unpopular idea (cooperation with the ICTY)
as part and parcel of—not fundamentally different from—the broadly and deeply shared ‘‘European idea’’—a sense that Croatia is European and belongs in
the EU. They also framed ICTY cooperation as further reinforcing the positive
memories of the war, not challenging them. Second, Croatian pro-EU elites marginalized and publicly isolated the most vocal opponents of the government’s
agenda. Finally, they repeatedly reminded the public of how much Europe has
already helped Croatia gain independence and win the war—of how Europe is a
‘‘friend’’ that will always stand by Croatia. The following short episodes illustrate
how identity convergence worked and how the Croatian public reacted to the
government’s pro-European claims.
In July 2001, a major domestic political crisis erupted after the ICTY prosecutor issued indictments against two high-ranking Croatian generals, Rahmi Ademi
and Ante Gotovina. Ademi was charged with committing crimes in Bosnia in
1993, and Gotovina with supervising forced deportation and murder of Croatian
Serbs during Operation Storm in 1995. These indictments sent shock waves
through Croatia. The fact that the Gotovina indictment labeled Operation Storm
a joint criminal enterprise and not a legitimate counterterrorist operation
enraged Croatian officials and put the Racan government in a particularly precarious position. To criminalize Operation Storm was, in the minds of most Croats, to criminalize the Croatian state itself (Pavlakovic 2008). At the same time, if
the government ignored the ICTY indictments or refused to act on them, it
feared angering international friends, freezing international aid and putting a
stop to Croatia’s European dreams.
In response to the tightening international environment and the rising domestic backlash that followed ICTY indictments, Croatian political elites embarked
on a multifaceted strategy that demonstrates identity convergence at work. Prime
Minister Racan built support for the inevitable—arrest of the suspects—by linking it to Croatia’s European desire. He argued that Croatia had a legal obligation to work with the tribunal and that the country’s application to the EU
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Europe Is a State of Mind
would be sidelined if Croatia refused to cooperate with The Hague: ‘‘To turn
down the request from The Hague would be to plunge Croatia into the abysses
of the Balkan conflict.’’8
While Prime Minister Racan focused on international rewards, Croatian president Stjepan Mesic argued that individualization of crimes would actually serve
to preserve the legacy of the homeland war, not taint it:
The government strategy was successful and the 2001 crisis was resolved when
one of the accused generals, Rahmi Ademi, surrendered to the tribunal.10
Linking cooperation with the ICTY with Croatia’s European desire was, however, not enough to mobilize social forces for Europeanization. The second
important government strategy was to marginalize and isolate political opponents
who argued against ICTY cooperation. President Mesic on numerous occasions
called the nationalist mobilization against the ICTY antigovernment, anti-European, and antidemocratic. He stressed that Croatia needed to cooperate with the
ICTY in order to ‘‘build its future in the company of the democratic world and
united Europe’’ (Mesic 2002). The implication was that those who argued
against the ICTY were also, by extension, against the government, against Europe, and against democracy, and should be discredited. Mesic’s message and
approach was well accepted in Croatia, where he consistently enjoyed the highest
popularity of any politician in the country.11
Mesic acted on this strategy from the very first days of his presidency. In
September 2000, in response to the first arrests of Croatian war crimes suspects,
12 Croatian generals published an open letter blaming the authorities for
‘‘undermining the legitimacy of the homeland war’’ and calling for the government to resign. However, in a strong rebuttal to the nationalists, Mesic
responded by promptly retiring seven of the 12 generals still serving, for ‘‘politicizing the army.’’12 Mesic’s action was widely approved by the public, but more
significantly, it immediately demonstrated the government’s resolve to limit the
power of anti-ICTY forces by removing them from positions of authority and
denying them access to means of violence, simultaneously symbolically marginalizing them as antidemocratic and antipatriotic.
Subsequent Croatian governments repeated the strategy of identity convergence. In 2003, Prime Minister Racan was succeeded by Ivo Sanader, the leader
of Tudjman’s HDZ with a reputation as a nationalist firebrand. His approach to
Europeanization, however, was if anything more dedicated than that of Racan,
the Social Democrat. What explains Sanader’s startling U-turn from a fierce
nationalist into a moderate pro-European statesman is that he realized early on
that his best chance of political survival lay in being the prime minister who
would take Croatia into the EU. Tying his political fortunes so closely to EU
accession, Sanader focused intently on doing whatever it took to make Croatia’s
European dream a reality. Since the EU had made it clear that the road to Brussels led through The Hague, Sanader decided that cooperating with the ICTY
would be a fast ticket to the place where he wanted Croatia to be (Fisher 2006).
8
9
10
11
12
BBC News, July 8, 2001.
B92, July 8, 2001.
The other suspect, Ante Gotovina, went into hiding and was eventually apprehended in 2005.
Crobarometar, January 30, 2009.
Voice of America, September 29, 2000.
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The government did the only thing it could do and made the only decision possible…The fact that crimes were committed during the Homeland War on the
Croatian side casts a shadow on the entire war and all its participants, as long as
those responsible for the crimes are not indicted and convicted.9
Jelena Subotic
319
Croatia is a country whose history reaches far back into the past of Europe, a
country that has always been and has never stopped being a part of the European countryside…We have given our contribution to Europe innumerable times
in the past. We want and are capable of doing the same in the future as
well…We expect Europe to recognize us and accept us as its inseparable part.
(Mesic 2003)
These elite efforts worked in making Croatia’s Europeanization seem not only
politically desirable, but also in many ways inevitable. When the last remaining
Croatian war crimes suspect was arrested in 2005, the final formal obstacle
to Croatia’s EU accession was lifted. Accession talks began in earnest in 2006,
and Croatian leaders believe Croatia may be welcome into the EU as soon as
13
An opinion poll conducted in 2003 showed that 56% of the electorate was unhappy with Croatia’s cooperation with The Hague (Gfk Croatia, October 14, 2003).
14
Novi list, July 3, 2004.
15
For example, in 2002, 79% of Croats supported EU membership. Each consecutive year, however, EU enthusiasm slowly decreased, while Euro skepticism is on the rise (Gfk Croatia, July 31, 2003). This is consistent with
research that shows how the population becomes increasingly nervous about EU accession as they learn more about
the social cost of reforms and political elites shift the blame for unpopular policies to EU membership requirements (Szczerbiak 2001).
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When in February 2004, the ICTY indicted Croatian generals Ivan Cermak and
Mladen Markac for crimes against humanity committed during Operation Storm,
the Sanader government’s reaction was quicker and cleaner than Racan’s. The
generals immediately surrendered, and the government swiftly arrested six
remaining suspects, with no domestic political repercussions (Fisher 2006: 195).
The fact that this cycle of arrests did not threaten the government’s pro-EU
agenda is even more interesting in light of the continuing public unpopularity
of the ICTY in Croatia.13
The Sanader government also identified a four-prong domestic strategy of
cooperation with the ICTY, which involved ‘‘protecting the historical truth about
the homeland war, helping suspects, allowing suspects to defend themselves
while on bail, and transferring ICTY cases to Croatian courts.’’14 In other words,
the Sanader government managed to turn cooperation with the ICTY into a
win–win situation for Croatia—scoring international points for cooperation while
ensuring that the public interpretation of the Croatian past would remain ideologically intact.
The Croatian public supported these decisions because they were presented
and framed as issues of Europeanization, not of international punishment or
painful reevaluation of Croatia’s past. Croatians’ desire to join the EU was powerful and well documented.15 This government framing explains why the 2004
arrests were greeted by mostly silent approval of the Croatian public and very
limited and marginal protests on the far right (Peskin 2008: 138). Even the generals themselves were helpful to the government. They quietly surrendered and
publicly voiced their support for Croatia’s cooperation with the tribunal, while
insisting on their personal innocence: ‘‘We must understand that…[Croatia’s]
constitutional law places a duty on all of us to cooperate with the tribunal,’’ General Cermak said (quoted in Peskin 2008: 140).
Finally, Croatian elites constantly reminded the public of how much Europe
mattered and how Croatia, in fact, was already European: ‘‘My answer to the
question why I am so much in favor of the EU is: because Croatia has always
been part of Europe. Croatia practices European values, and that has only to be
formalized by accession,’’ Prime Minister Sanader said (Sanader 2005). President
Mesic made impassioned pleas for Croatia’s Europeanization on numerous occasions. In a 2003 speech, he said,
320
Europe Is a State of Mind
Serbia
Serbian political identity in the 1990s underwent a profound ‘‘ethnification’’
through massive nationalist mobilization around ‘‘defending Serbian interests’’
(Popov 2000). The nationalist discourse created by Serbian political and cultural
elites promoted the idea that Serbia is a victim of vast outside conspiracies that
want to subjugate or destroy it (Ramet 2007). The agents of destruction vary in
the story and across time, but those most commonly mentioned are Kosovar
Albanians, Slovenes, Croats, Muslims, the international community, the United
States, the European Union, and NATO (Bogosavljevic and Logar 2001). The
Serbian Orthodox Church has been an important purveyor of this exclusionary
Serbian identity. The Church has held profoundly anti-Western and anti-European positions and has often portrayed the European Union as a ‘‘revived Habsburg Catholic Empire backed by the reunited Germany and the Vatican’’ (Perica
2006: 181).
The narrative for the past 20 years in Serbia has been that of a victimized
nation, of people on the run or engaged in self-defense against one of their enemies (MacDonald 2002). It is difficult to overestimate the saturation in the public discourse of this idea. It has permeated all aspects of public life, requiring
politicians to address and solve it. This narrative also gives context to the public
approval of Slobodan Milosevic and his destructive policies, as Serbian wartime
exploits were framed domestically as a fundamentally defensive posture against
Serbian annihilation by non-Serbs of the former Yugoslavia and the anti-Serb
West (Colovic 2002).
The NATO intervention against Serbia in 1999 further solidified Serbian feeling of victimhood and a great sense of injustice at the hands of great powers.
The United States was blamed for intervening militarily against Serbian forces in
Bosnia in 1995 and then in Serbia proper in 1999, while the European Union
was blamed for recognizing Croatia and Bosnia prematurely, which in the
broadly shared Serbian view, precipitated the war (Nakarada 1995). At the same
time, the Serbian government hailed Russia as Serbia’s closest ally and attempted
to forge close ties with the resurgent former power. In perhaps the most bizarre
of these pro-Russian overtures, the Serbian Parliament voted in April 1999 (at
16
Gallup Balkan Monitor Report, 2008.
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2012. In fact, of all the potential Balkan candidate states, Croatians are the most
optimistic about their speedy accession to the EU.16
The Croatian case shows how political elites were able to strategically link the
requirements of Europeanization with some aspects of Croatian state identity
(Europeanness), while delinking it from others (memory of war). In fact, Europeanization reaffirmed Croatian state identity because it tapped into the constitutive part of Croatian nationalism—the sense of Europeanness. Even Croatian
exclusionary nationalism worked in favor of Europeanization. The more Croatia
emphasized its uniqueness from its neighbors—the more it de-Balkanized
itself—the closer it was to Europe. Finally, recent memories of Europe were positive, and social expectations of benefits of ‘‘becoming European’’ were broadly
shared.
This complex strategy—identity convergence—was successful because even
though different segments of the Croatian society and elite held very different
views on the appropriateness and legitimacy of some Europeanization requirements, they all shared a grand strategy of Europeanization. All major political
stakeholders saw Croatia’s future in Europe, and they were all willing to manipulate the domestic political environment in order to achieve this goal. As we shall
see, the political context of Serbia’s Europeanization was much different.
Jelena Subotic
321
the height of the NATO war) to unilaterally join the Federation of Russia and
Belarus, a move that was met with somewhat befuddled response from the two
Slavic nations.17
Serbian nationalism of the 1990s is well documented and understood. What is
more intriguing is the continuation and further refinement of victim-centered
Serbian state identity since Milosevic was ousted from power in 2000 when, after
the popular unrest following fraudulent elections, conservative Vojislav Kostunica
was elected president and moderate Zoran Djindjic became prime minister.18
The predominant political narrative in post-Milosevic Serbia rejected Milosevic’s
wartime strategies as wrong and destructive; not because they caused great suffering and mass casualties in Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo, but because they economically, politically, and diplomatically devastated Serbia and denied it
aspirations to regional domination. In other words, Milosevic was not wrong to
fight the wars; he was wrong to lose them (Judah 2002). Even in the newly democratic Serbia, studies consistently show that the public largely refused to believe
that Serbs had committed war crimes, and Serbs blamed other nations and ethnic groups for starting the war (Ramet 2007).19
Political elites in post-Milosevic Serbia, therefore, did not deconstruct the Serbian identity as the victim. Instead, they saw their purpose in vindicating Serbia
in the international society and correcting the negative image of a ‘‘rogue state’’
Serbia earned for its wartime exploits. This strategy was clear already in the first
speech President-elect Kostunica gave on the eve of Milosevic’s ousting: ‘‘There
are those who did us wrong, who bombed us. We cannot forget the damage or
the crimes [against us]; Serbs will lose their identity if they forget those crimes.’’20
Kostunica’s first speech was significant because it provided a window into many
aspects of the new president’s strategy for Serbia in transition. It indicated a
clear continuation of the vision of Serbia and Serbian people as victims of crimes
committed against them and never by them. It was the first strong indication, at
the level of public narrative, that much that had perpetuated Milosevic’s hold on
his people—the sense of victimization, suffering, and punishment—would continue in transitional Serbia as well. On the level of discourse, not much seemed
to have changed.
This discursive continuation of Milosevic era narratives also manifested itself
in Serbia’s very ambivalent attitudes toward Europe. While in Croatia Europe
was constructed as a polity that would give something to the state (economic
prosperity, club membership, international legitimacy), in Serbia, Europe was
imagined as taking something away—territory (Kosovo), national pride (the
humiliation of losing the Balkan wars), collective memory of the past (by writing
a new historical transcript at The Hague).
Public opinion polls consistently show the Serbian people’s desire to join the
EU, but at the same time their serious substantive reservations about the
Union.21 Again in contrast to Croatia, Serbian political elites are also divided
about the possibility of Europeanization. Political and intellectual elites persistently emphasize that Europe was responsible for the Yugoslav breakup and wars
that ensued. This makes joining Europe a bitter pill to swallow for Serbian
17
BBC News, April 12, 1999.
Kostunica was later elected to two terms as prime minister.
19
For example, in a 2006 opinion poll, only 50% of Serbian citizens believed that a massacre occurred in
Srebrenica in 1995, and of those only 43% believed what happened was a crime (Strategic Marketing, December 2006).
20
B92, October 6, 2000; my emphasis.
21
B92, January 21, 2009. In a 2009 survey, 49% of the respondents blamed the EU for Serbia’s slow accession,
especially EU’s ‘‘policies of constantly placing some conditions on our country’’ (B92, January 21, 2009).
18
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Identity in Transition
322
Europe Is a State of Mind
nationalist elites, who continue to argue that the Europeanization of Serbia, in
fact, is not inevitable. A well-known Serbian intellectual summed up this reluctance to Europeanize,
As much as it seems improbable, there is life beyond the EU. And as much as it
seems improbable, such life may not be that bad. (Antonic 2008)
It would be ideal if we could be with both Russia and the EU, but these two
unions are very different. EU only blackmails, humiliates, seizes our territory,
while Russia helps.23
Serbian reformers also advocated closer ties with Russia.24 In 2008, the Serbian
reformist government signed a controversial gas deal, selling 51% of Serbia’s
state-owned gas industry to a Russian gas conglomerate. The deal was hailed in
both Russia and Serbia as the beginning of a major regional economic partnership. Serbian president Boris Tadic framed this agreement as a major geostrategic accomplishment that would allow Serbia to be an economic conduit of sorts
for Russia in the EU.25
At the same time, Serbia has made many pro-European gestures. Serbia was
the president of the rotating Council of Europe presidency in 2007, and the government marked that occasion with a great celebration in Belgrade. For the first
time, the European flag was flying next to the Serbian flag on the Serbian Parliament’s building. Parliament speaker Oliver Dulic gave an impassioned speech in
which he said, ‘‘I hope we will do all we can to soon become a part of Europe,
accept European standards and work hard.’’26
These competing elite preferences about Europe are perhaps best illustrated
by a November 2007 event, when government officials organized dueling public
rallies in Belgrade: the pro-European, reformist wing of the government distributed leaflets educating the population about all the benefits of EU membership,
while a few feet away, the conservative Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS) officials
informed the gathered citizens of all the reasons why Serbia should choose the
‘‘third way’’ of neutrality and against NATO membership.27
Serbia’s attitude toward Europe, therefore, is a deeply conflicted one. Serbia
continues to imagine itself as a regional leader with grand political ambition. It
pursues this ambition through its strategic alliance with Russia, which often
comes at the expense of a full embrace of Europeanization.
Europeanization and Identity Divergence
After Milosevic was ousted from power in 2000, the international community
expected the new government to swiftly repudiate Milosevic’s policies and
22
The Serbian Progressive Party (SPP) was formed in October 2008, after an internal split within the Serbian
Radical Party (SRS), of which Mr. Nikolic was also president. In a September 2009 poll, the SPP comes in second,
with a 31% share of the vote, after the Democratic Party, favored by 34% of Serbian voters (B92, September 4,
2009).
23
B92, May 11, 2007.
24
Forging closer ties with Russia is also broadly popular with the Serbian public. In one recent poll, as many as
69% of Serbian citizens favored forging ‘‘the closest ties with Russia’’ (Publikum, November 16, 2008).
25
B92, January 25, 2008.
26
B92, September 21, 2007.
27
B92, November 10, 2007.
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In fact, Serbian elites have expressed strong interest in forging a closer partnership with Putin’s Russia. For example, Tomislav Nikolic, former Parliament
Speaker and president of the somewhat amusingly misnamed Serbian Progressive
Party,22 the extreme right wing and second-strongest Serbian political party, said:
Jelena Subotic
323
28
29
B92, December 2, 2003.
B92, February 1, 2002.
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quickly move toward democratic consolidation and international integration.
Only days after the new government took over, the European Union lifted its
long-lasting economic sanctions against Serbia and pledged billions in reconstruction aid. This new embrace, however, came with serious strings attached. In
order to keep the money flowing and talks about Brussels going, Serbia was obligated to cooperate with the ICTY by arresting and transferring war crimes suspects. As in Croatia, the road to Brussels led through The Hague.
The Serbian response to European conditionality, however, was different from
that in Croatia. As indicated above, Serbian political actors were themselves not
as fully socialized Europeanizers as were their Croatian counterparts. While nominally supporting Serbia’s EU bid, the leaders themselves felt profoundly conflicted about what being European meant and how to negotiate the European
identity with deeply felt national attachments and cultural affinities with Russia.
Even pro-European forces had to negotiate these alternative identity claims, and
on many occasions, they lost these discursive battles. To the extent that Europeanization was domestically interpreted to mean ‘‘cooperation with the ICTY’’ or
‘‘loss of Kosovo,’’ it was a policy dead on arrival.
The process of Europeanization in Serbia is therefore best viewed as one of
identity divergence, as influenced by the interplay of three factors: (i) the ‘‘European idea’’ in Serbia was not universally shared and was underdeveloped; (ii)
alternative identity narratives, especially those built around the myths of Kosovo
and cultural affinity with Russia, were strong and clearly elaborated; and (iii) Serbia’s previous relationship with Europe was perceived as negative, painful, and
costly, and so expectations for the policy success of Europeanization were weak.
As in Croatia, any aspiration Serbia might have to join the EU depended on
the government’s full cooperation with the ICTY. This was a very difficult pill for
Serbian politicians to swallow. The Serbian elites and public opposed and
rejected The Hague tribunal, which they perceived as a court of victor’s justice, a
Western legal imposition, a court that tries predominantly Serb nationals and,
most important, institutionalizes a version of the recent history that paints the
Serbs as the main perpetrators, and not the main victims of the war (Saxon
2005).
Although the Serbian government had arrested some high-level suspects,
including Slobodan Milosevic himself, each new indictment created a huge
domestic political drama and further radicalized the population. When in 2003,
the ICTY prosecutor indicted four Serbian generals accused of crimes against
humanity in Kosovo, the Serbian police minister promised to do everything in
his power to prevent the generals from going to The Hague ‘‘except as tourists.’’28 The generals remained under government protection for almost a year.
When it became clear that the continuing refusal to act on ICTY indictments was
creating serious diplomatic problems for Serbia, including threats of economic
sanctions and freezing of EU accession talks, the Kostunica government introduced a strategy of ‘‘voluntary surrenders.’’ The government guaranteed the suspects that, if they surrendered voluntarily, they would be allowed to return from
The Hague to Serbia while on bail, while their families would be granted financial assistance.
At the same time, Prime Minister Kostunica presented cooperation with the
ICTY as something that, while perhaps necessary, was profoundly unpleasant and
undesirable. He often publicly denigrated the tribunal, once famously referring to it as ‘‘the last hole on [his] flute.’’29 While comments like this prompted
ICTY prosecutor Carla Del Ponte to identify Kostunica as the main obstacle to
cooperation (International Crisis Group 2002), Kostunica’s anti-ICTY rhetoric
324
Europe Is a State of Mind
30
In a 2008 opinion poll, as many as 86% of Serbian citizens believed that the ICTY was biased against the
Serbs (B92, July 25, 2008).
31
This group was formed as a paramilitary unit in 1990 to stir up Serbian rebellion in Croatia. Its members are
accused of committing some of the most heinous atrocities in the Yugoslav wars. After the end of the war, the Red
Berets merged with regular security forces, making them much more difficult to disband and prosecute (Vreme,
October 19, 2000).
32
Testimony of Zvezdan Jovanovic, one of the alleged assassins, during the assassination trial proceedings (Glas
javnosti, December 26, 2003).
33
B92, July 22, 2008.
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found huge resonance among the population, who continue to hold extremely
negative views of the court.30
Kostunica’s resistance to the ICTY was not only ideological; it was also firmly
political. Kostunica’s conservative coalition used The Hague issue to present
itself to the voters as a truly patriotic force, a message clearly aimed at Milosevic
loyalists who were now looking at the changed political landscape in search of a
new home. In a sense, the conservatives had to oppose ICTY cooperation,
because this earned them domestic support and secured their unchallenged
place on the political right.
In contrast, the reformist Democratic Party (DS) positioned itself as the party
of European integration, reform, and internationalism, juxtaposing it to the reactionary and anti-European DSS. Much like their Croatian counterparts, the
reformists linked cooperation with the ICTY to European integration: ‘‘Europe
is our house and no price is too high to pay…I am for Europe,’’ Prime Minister
and DS president Zoran Djindjic famously said, implying that his opponents were
not (quoted in Biserko 2006: 229). For the reformers, the focus was on integrating Serbia into international institutions and ultimately taking it to the European
Union. While they also opposed the fundamental premise of many Hague indictments, the reformers argued that cooperation was simply a necessary step toward
EU accession. Reformers, however, failed to deliver on many of these promises.
They rhetorically supported ICTY cooperation as a pathway to Europe, but they
also hesitated to deal with this issue directly, by for example aggressively pursuing the principal ICTY war crimes suspect, Ratko Mladic, who remains at large.
They also had little room to maneuver as their core support never went higher
than 30%, which was never enough of a base from which to launch a
major unpopular policy shift without suffering immediate political consequences
(Subotic 2009).
The reformers’ attempts were further decimated by the March 2003 assassination of Prime Minister Djindjic by members of the notorious paramilitary unit
the Red Berets.31 The assassination conspirators called the operation ‘‘Stop The
Hague,’’ strongly indicating that Djindjic was murdered to end further ICTY
extraditions.32 Djindjic’s assassination marked a pivotal moment in Serbia’s transition and its attitude toward both the ICTY and Europeanization. His death left
a huge power vacuum, which was immediately filled by Kostunica’s anti-Europeanizers and by the extreme nationalist SRS. The assassination compromised further cooperation with the ICTY, as the only element in the Serbian government
inclined to cooperate was removed. The assassination also indicated that, unlike
in Croatia where president Mesic swiftly dealt with antiregime opponents by
removing them from power, the Serbian government co-opted Milosevic era
loyalists, a decision that preserved antiregime elements in control over the
monopoly of force.
After years of practically suspended EU negotiations, the Serbian government
got a break in July 2008, when Radovan Karadzic, the second most wanted ICTY
fugitive, was suddenly arrested in Belgrade. The government placed Karadzic’s
arrest in the context of Serbia’s European aspirations, as a sign that the Serbian
government has a ‘‘very ambitious European agenda.’’33 However, while the
Jelena Subotic
325
Kosovo is where my nation’s identity lies, where the roots of our culture are…
Kosovo is the foundation of Serbia’s history and this is why we cannot give it up.34
One of the three major political parties, the conservative DSS, directly linked
Kosovo’s independence with Europeanization. In its new party platform, DSS
says:
The European orientation of Serbia should be called into question for a very
simple reason: who in Serbia is ready to believe that someone who is part of the
hostile context, notably the process of establishment of Kosovo status, may in any
other matter have friendly intentions. Advice like ‘‘Let go of Kosovo, ahead of
you is European future’’ is unacceptable for Serbs, not because it is a bad offer,
but because, after all recent developments, no-one has faith in [Europe’s] sincerity and
good intentions any more.35
Serbian deputy prime minister Bozidar Djelic was even more explicit: ‘‘If anyone tries to make us choose [between ratifying the SAA and keeping Kosovo],
we shall choose Kosovo.’’36 These attitudes about attachment to Kosovo are evident in survey after survey. In a 2008 poll, only 7% of Serbian citizens approved
of Kosovo’s independence while the overwhelming majority supported either
Kosovo’s autonomy within Serbia (54%) or the partition of Kosovo (27%).
In another poll, 61% of Serbian citizens said they would never accept Kosovo’s
independence.37 The de facto European position—Kosovo’s independence—
was clearly profoundly unpopular. More importantly, in the minds of both the
Serbian elite and the public, it became easily conflated with the process of
Europeanization as a whole.
It is these two political problems—The Hague and Kosovo—and the European
requirements regarding them that profoundly shaped how Serbia saw Europe.
While both Croatian and Serbian governments cooperated with the ICTY
because they had to—because cooperation was tied to EU accession—the process
of Europeanization was built on quite different mechanisms. Croatian elites presented cooperation as necessary and in line with Croatian respect of European
institutions. Croatia cooperated with European requirements because it was a
European state that respects the rule of law. Serbian elites, especially since Djindjic’s assassination, cooperated because they felt coerced and bullied. They fundamentally rejected The Hague tribunal, but felt obligated to arrest suspects as
the only way to avoid costly international punishment—suspension of EU talks.
34
35
36
37
B92, May 25, 2007.
NIN, February 8, 2007; my emphasis.
Danas, September 3, 2008.
Balkan Gallup Monitor 2008.
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arrest brought Serbia closer to Europe, the issue of Kosovo independence,
declared unilaterally in February 2008, moved it further away. European support
of Kosovo’s independence was seen by Serbia even more as a betrayal than the
promotion of The Hague tribunal. As is well documented, Kosovo represents a
constitutive part of Serbian national mythology (Judah 2008). The prospect of
losing Kosovo was deeply felt and widely perceived as a profound blow to Serbian identity and the Serbian state. Europe’s support of Kosovo angered Serbia
and dramatically soured its desire to Europeanize. For most of Serbian elites
and the Serbian people, this was an unacceptable political event. This national
sense of loss, tragedy, and betrayal was shared across the entire Serbian political
landscape and enveloped conservative nationalists as well as moderates and
reformers.
For example, Serbian reformist president Boris Tadic said:
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Europe Is a State of Mind
Alternative Explanations
There are, however, a few alternative explanations for divergent Europeanization
outcomes in Croatia and Serbia that need to be addressed. The first set of arguments deals with the political economy of the two states. One available explanation is that the economies of the two countries were of different structure and
strength, which could indicate that EU integration was more attractive to the
more economically mature Croatia. I have two answers to this claim. First, the
short-term economic cost of Croatia’s full EU membership would be very significant (1% of gross domestic product the first year alone) and the benefits not
immediately obvious (Miosic-Lisjak 2006). Croatian policymakers worried deeply
about these costs, but they drew on other kinds of symbolic benefits to forcefully
argue for Croatia’s EU accession. Conversely, this focus on pre-integration
economic development can just as easily be argued the other way—would not
less-developed Serbia do all that it could to join the EU, in order to lift itself out
of European economic periphery?
Even if we accept the notion that the requirements the EU placed on Serbia
were onerous (‘‘giving up’’ Kosovo and renouncing territorial claims on Bosnia’s
Serb Republic while accepting responsibility for grave war crimes)—it is not
immediately obvious why would these costs outweigh the clear benefits of EU
membership. Further, Serbia’s emotional hold on Kosovo cannot be explained
in rationalist terms, as the territory does not provide any material benefit to Serbia—it is extremely resource poor, is inhabited by a 90% Albanian population
that has grown increasingly hostile to the Serbian state, and has always been a
drain on already limited Serbian resources. Something else, not material interests, are at work here.
Another political economy explanation looks at the politicization of the economy: Serbia is unique in that its economy is controlled by a small mafia that has
much to lose from European integration (Gould and Sickner 2008). While this
is certainly true for Serbia, it is also true to a great extent for Croatia, therefore
minimizing the structural differences between the two economies. For example,
the World Bank 2004 report on Croatia warned of ‘‘cross-links of ownership
among tycoon groups, public enterprises, and banks,’’ producing ‘‘an avalanche
of related-party lending and self-dealing’’ (World Bank 2004). This change in
ownership structure produced a new governing economic-political nexus (MiosicLisjak 2006), which would benefit little from Europeanization. While perhaps of
a different scope and scale from that in Serbia, Croatia’s economic oligarchy is
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This produced very different attributions of meaning to Europe in the two countries. Instead of attaching the meaning of democracy, liberty, and civilization to
Europe, as was the case in Croatia, in Serbia, Europe was understood to be a
punisher, a bully, an arrogant force that wanted to shape the region in its own
image. To the extent that Europe expressed outrage and disgust at Serbia’s wartime policies and its contemporary denials, and was insensitive to Serbia’s attachment to Kosovo, Europe came to be constructed in Serbia as an other, not quite
a foe (that would be the United States and NATO), but never a friend (that
would be Russia). In Serbia, European and national identity diverged during the
process of Europeanization. Each new European request served to further revitalize Serbian nationalism and its claims to victimhood and historical injustice.
Serbian political actors consciously and strategically responded to this conflicted
identity environment. Unlike their Croatian counterparts, Serbian elites did not
work on delinking requirements of Europeanization from more contested
national myths. Instead, they embraced the confusion and conflation that existed
in Serbia about what, exactly, Europeanization entails. In the short term, this
move helped them get votes, but it pushed Serbia further away from Brussels.
Jelena Subotic
327
Conclusion
The value of a constructivist approach that focuses on identity is to enrich our
explanations of Europeanization by looking at the power of arguments, debates,
narratives, and meaning political actors give to their actions. As this article has
shown, European Union incentives have been incredibly important in guiding
state action, but domestic arguments and debates about Europe were critical
because they put those incentives in a domestic social context and gave them
locally resonant meaning.
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pronounced enough to beg for a different explanation for the two countries’
divergent European trajectories.
The second set of alternative explanations deals with issues of security and
grand strategy, specifically the different conclusions of nationalist struggles of the
two nations. While Croatia emerged from the 1990s ethnically homogenous, Serbia emerged defeated on several fronts and facing the imminent loss of Kosovo. A
realist conclusion, therefore, is that what is at work here are commonalities of
interest as signaled by past behavior: the EU will continue to be seen as a potential
ally by Croatia, and thus Croatia will seek to grow closer to it, while Serbia does
not view the EU as an ally and is not interested in further security integration.
This is a significant point, but in fact, it does not negate my main hypothesis;
it further strengthens it. As indicated in discussions above about the importance
of war memory in the two states, the war’s end and the consequences of victory
and defeat feature centrally in postwar debates in the two countries. The credit
Croatia placed on Europe’s assistance in declaring independence and providing
support throughout the wartime period contrasted starkly with the blame Serbia
placed on Europe for ‘‘allowing’’ Croatia to secede and for punishing Serbia for,
in its view, trying to keep the old Yugoslavia together. It is by linking the ‘‘positive’’ recent experience with Europe in Croatia and stressing the ‘‘negative’’ history of interactions in Serbia that the political elites in the two countries shaped
their respective paths toward Europe. By offering a direct link between identity
and state strategy, this article offers an alternative understanding of state behavior and international cooperation.
A third set of alternative explanations stress the importance of political parties
and their electoral calculations. In most EU candidate states, party elites have
realized that their political fortunes would be better if they adopted a pro-EU
agenda (Vachudova 2008). This can explain strong HDZ support for the EU in
Croatia, while in Serbia, the country’s intense and unresolved nationalist struggles make a nationalist anti-EU agenda too easy and attractive for elites to pass
up (Batt 2005). While persuasive and ultimately plausible explanations, they are
wanting in two ways. First, nationalist parties do not necessarily need a ‘‘real’’
nationalist cause to rally around; what makes them truly nationalist is that they
can frame most political problems in a nationalist framework. Therefore, if the
HDZ still wanted to whip up nationalist sentiments, it could choose from a menu
of constructed grievances. Nationalism is a moving target, and constructing
threats and ‘‘enemy others’’ is a process that does not need objective measurements of victory and defeat.
Second, while nationalism in Serbia remains a recurrent theme in party politics, even the most extreme nationalists, the SRS, have over time adopted other
issues to broaden their appeal and encroach on their opponents’ electoral territory. In the last few election campaigns, the Radicals have co-opted a populist
economic, anti-corruption theme, which attracted many voters who would not
necessarily be comfortable with a campaign run exclusively on virulent nationalism. Serbia’s anti-EU elites, therefore, had multiple avenues to push against
Europeanization, the existence of nationalist threats being just one of them.
328
Europe Is a State of Mind
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