International Relations and Intercultural Interaction
«The Contemporary Problems of Intercultural Interaction in the East Europe and the
Balkan Region»
Ekaterina Chimiris
Russian State University of Humanities
e-mail: e-chimiris@mail.ru
First of all it is important to mention that the problem of intercultural interaction
becomes one of the most discussed nowadays. The problem is connected with the
processes of migration all over the world, as well as with the problems of national
minorities. Especially it is urgent for contemporary European countries. It is also
connected with the cultural, ethnic and language diversity of some countries, due to the
peculiarities of their historical development. The second type of problems will be in the
focus of this paper. In other words we will speak about divided or plural societies (well
described by A. Lijphart)1. These societies consist of several groups with different
cultural identities, based on certain factors: religion, ethnicity, ideology, language, etc.
One of the main problems in such societies is to build consensus among these different
groups. In another words there should be found a special formula of multiculturalism for
such countries.
The East Europe and the Balkan Region represent countries, which are in the
process of political, social and economical transition. Nowadays these countries can be
identified as divided societies. Serbia and the Ukraine are rather good examples. The
division can be noticed not only on the level of society, but also on the elites’ level. The
situation is more complicated, since both of these countries has gone through so called
“colored revolutions”, which only made the division more deep, in spite of unifying them.
The intercultural interaction becomes actual in the divided societies. More
precisely, in such divided societies we can observe several cultural structures,
represented by special communities. One of the main problems considering Serbia and
the Ukraine is the lack of integrative mechanisms, on the elites’ level as well as on the
level of the society.
The political practice of the mentioned countries shows, that the problem of
integration cannot be solved only by means of classical democratic mechanisms and
institutions. Even on the level of elites the dialog is complicated and not always possible
due to the lack of coherent political culture. So we cannot even speak about the model
1
Arend Lijphart Democracy in Plural Societies: A Comparative Exploration. 1977
1
of “elites’ democracy”. On the level of the society there are several different cleavages
between cultural groups, which influence on the attitudes to different actual and
historical questions. The paper deals with the problems of integration of divided
societies from the point of view of socio-cultural and network mechanisms.
First of all there should be mentioned, that the phenomenon of divided societies
is rather popular nowadays. For example: Lebanon, Canada, Belgium, Spain, etc. More
often these countries are studied from the point of view of political conflictology. In this
paper we are going to look at them from the point of view of power legitimacy and
multiculturalism. We are going to find the reasons of high political instability in such
countries and low trust towards the political institutes.
Before speaking about the problem of power legitimacy in divided societies, we
should look at the bases that support legitimacy in the countries of Western Europe, or
“old democracy”. In these countries legitimacy is based first of all on the well known
formula “one state – one nation”. That’s why one of the classical democratic models,
developed by Robert Dahl2, deals with the homogeneous society. Much due to the fact,
that the West European countries managed to build the more or less unique nations,
there are no very big problems with legitimacy and the stability of political institutions. It
was a long process of obliterating most of regional differences by means of introducing
one official language, unified educational system and army.3 The political elites come to
power by means of regular elections, and sometimes one political group replace the
other for a certain period of time and this fact is not the cause for a political crises.
Nowadays we can notice that West European countries are far from being unified
and homogeneous most of all because of the wide migration from former colonies and
other countries of the third world. The migrants and other ethnic and cultural groups
become a significant part of social and political life. For them there was developed a
special politics called multiculturalism. But with all its’ attractiveness this politics has
some constraints.
The situation in the divided societies is quite different. Such societies may
contain groups, which put under question the justice and propriety of state borders; they
may not recognize the configuration of political institutions of the state in which they live.
One of the most popular models, offered for the solving of the problems of divided
societies is consociational model4 of democracy. This model argues that the
proportional distribution of power, political offices and recourses among groups lead
2
Robert A. Dahl Democracy and its Critics. Yale University Press (1991)
Cynthia H. Enloe Ethnic Soldiers. State Security in Divided Societies. Harmondsworth, 1980.
4
Arend Lijphart Ibid.
3
2
them to moderate and co-operative behavior. But this model doesn’t tell us what can be
done if there is no any consensus among political elites in the divided society.
In general, in scientific literature the problem of divided societies is connected
with political conflicts and the problem of secession. In connection with this the experts’
points of view are different. From one hand, there are arguments for the territorial
division of a society, on the other hand – for the keeping it united and searching for
another ways. The followers of the first point of view consider that this strategy helps to
improve the democratic perspectives for the newly formed countries. 5 The other
argument for the braking of a state is the potentional lowing of political violence.6
This point of view was much criticized. First, the braking of a state doesn’t lead to
the creation of homogenous units.7 Second, the creation of new borders between new
national or ethnic units inevitably leads to the appearance of new ethnic minorities on
the territory of these newly formed units.8 Moreover the artificial division of a territory
can provoke ethnic cleansing. Additionally we should notice that there may appear a
new conflict between newly formed unites, as it was in Cyprus. 9 Thus we can conclude
that the braking of heterogeneous society will not solve the problem of a divided society,
even if there will be used the resettlement under constraint.
Donald Horowitz considers that the best way for neutralizing the centrifugal
tendencies of the regional autonomies is the strengthening of their specific interests,
which depend on the state unity. The electoral formula of proportional representation
and constitutional guaranties for all of the groups is good ways to consensus and
stability.10 One more electoral variant of solving the problem of legitimacy in the divided
society was offered by Bemjamin Reilly, who thinks that the centrifugal tendencies are
the result of institutional “game rules” during the electoral process.11 The author offers
the theory of centripetalism, as the permanent process of settling conflicts and round
movement of resolutions and decisions, reached in the frames of negotiations, instead
of the “winner takes all” principle. But this model doesn’t take into account the fact, that
there are some divided societies even without minimal base for negotiation.
5
Henderson G., Lebow R.N., Stroessinger J.G. Divided Nations in a Divided World. New York, 1974
Lijphart A. The Power-Sharing Approach// Montville, ed., Conflict and Peacemaking in Multiethnic Societies,
(New York: Lexington Books, 1991), Ch.27, pp. 491-509
7
Horowitz D.L. Ethnic Groups in Conflict. Berkley, 1985
8
Habermas J. The Inclusion of the Others. Cambridge, 1998.
9
Savvides Ph.K. Cyprus: The Dynamics of Partition// www.ksg.edu/kokkalis/GSW2/Savvides.PDF
10
Horowitz D.L. Ibid.
11
Reilly, Benjamin. Democracy in Divided Societies. Electoral Engineering for Conflict Management. Cambridge,
2001
6
3
We point out in this paper that traditional democratic institutes and their
configurations are useless in the solving problem of divided societies. Moreover very
often the introduction of democratic institutes in such societies only makes the problem
institutional, but don’t solve it. We can make a hypothesis that the West European type
of legitimacy is not suitable for the deeply divided states. Thus we propose to
distinguish two types of legitimacy.
Type 1 “National” legitimacy. This type is formed in the states with more or less
homogeneous population, with a national consensus on the level of procedures or on
the level of values. This type is common for the nation states, and also for authoritarian
and totalitarian regimes, were the consensus is much imposed from the top. The
multicultural politics, connected with this type of legitimacy, include the respect to the
minority rights. But these minorities are deprived of their own public zone. The
minorities have some opportunities in preserving their culture but only on the level of
special funds and nonprofit organizations. Their culture will never be considered as the
second main one in the state. The minorities always have to choose: they can
assimilate themselves or they can live only in their private zone, which is limited.
Minorities in the nation states are derived of a huge part of public life, as they cannot
participate in the taking public decisions as long as they are not fully incorporated into
the main culture. West Europe faced such problem, when there have come a large flow
of migrants. Active attempts to assimilate them were not very successful. New cultures
actively break into the European reality, demanding equal rights and opportunities. At
the same time they are not ready to refuse their own culture and traditions, which threat
the cultural homogeneity of the European countries.
Type 2 “Imperial” legitimacy. This kind of legitimacy can be found in the whole
countries, in divided societies for example, or in some regions or segments of certain
states. The most typical examples are the Great Empires of the past. Nowadays in the
century of nationalism it is rather difficult to find such kind of legitimacy, but there are
some examples. The main peculiarity of this type is the different position of groups on
the territory of one state. Each of these groups possesses not only their own private
sphere, but also their own public sphere. One of the brightest examples is the Italian
mafia in the USA. First, mafia possessed only private sphere, and then it occupied the
public sphere step by step (this means, that mafia employed the key posts and offices).
In the “Empire” (the word is put into the brackets because under this notion we can
understand not only historical concept, but the principle of state functioning) all the
groups have their own culture and traditions and also their own public institutes, which
4
reflect these traditions. For example, each religious community has its’ own church,
confessors, which guarantee the safeness of values. But this fact doesn’t prevent
several religious groups to leave on the territory of one “Empire”. The key feature of the
“Empire” is its’ weak institutional structure. Nevertheless it had never undermined the
power legitimacy on its’ territory. The higher power of the “Empire” as well as its’ local
representatives played very important role – they were mediators between different
groups. The process of negotiations and agreements was weakly institutionalized,
which didn’t prevent them from being effective.
Nowadays post-empire states are many-colored covers with various ethnic,
religious and linguistic scraps. Very often their citizens belong to several (2 or 3)
different identities simultaneously. At the same time it is very difficult pick out a group
with all identities coincide. The conflict arises when one identity becomes more actual,
that others. For example, conflict between Serbs and Croats, which have different
ethnic and religious identities, but one common language.
Historical heritage. To prove the mentioned above theoretical theses we should
pay our attention to the case studies. First of all it is necessary to speak about the
reasons of considering Serbia and the Ukraine to be divided societies. These states
were chosen for the investigation and for this paper because of their more or less
similar problems in the current political process. During recent years both of the states
passed though government crises and early (pre-term) parliament elections as far as
governments are formed by the parliament coalition in these countries. It is not a secret,
that building parliament coalition and making new government is a long and
hardworking procedure even in stable European countries. We should take into
account, that the same process in the investigated countries sometimes becomes
impossible due to some obstacles. This lead to blocking of everyday parliament
working, sabotage and protests manifestations from the side of discontent deputies, and
finally to new early parliament elections. To understand the reasons for such problems
we should look at the peculiarities of historical development, at the structure of main
ideas and values.
Speaking about Serbia we should remember, that this country is caring the
weight of Yugoslavia’s’ legacy. Sabrina Ramet a specialist in political history of
Yugoslavia points out that Yugoslavia had always suffered from the lack of power
legitimacy. The Yugoslavs couldn’t find a proper political formula that would be good for
5
most of the citizens.12 During the history of Yugoslavia its’ rulers tried to integrate the
society and to maintain their legitimacy in different ways. The United Kingdom of Serbs,
Croats and Slovenes was the first to face the problem of power legitimacy. The rulers
had to unite several nationalities, religions, languages and countries under one system
of institutions. Serbia was one of the most politically developed countries among it’s’
neighbors, it had had the experience of state ness before; it had political parties and
political leaders, that’s why other republics considered their rights to be heavily
damaged. At the same time South Slavs that was under Austro-Hungarian rule had the
experience of working in the Austrian and Hungarian Parliament. So most of their time
they devoted to criticize the United Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes; and Serbs
tried to strengthen the united state. That’s why the government passed through regular
cresses. Even the monarchy dictatorship (1929-1934) was not effective in the question
of making power more legitimate. Perhaps the main mistake was aspiration for building
the unified nation of South Slavs. The cultural peculiarities were very stable. These
peculiarities and conflicts between them were deepened by Gitlers’ occupation. It is due
to him Croatia became an independent state for the fist time in its’ history. The ethnic
cleansing of Serbs on its’ territory had left a deep wound in their historical memory.
During the reign of Tito the idea of South Slavs unity was more than popular. It
was an integral part of official ideology. Till his death Tito wanted to create a
multinational collective institute for ruling the country, based on the annual rotation. But
this project was not to come into live because of disagreements between national elites.
The investigators point out, that during its’ existence Yugoslavia failed to become a
unified nation of Yugoslavs. The idea of Yugoslav culture was not a dominant one.
There have been always separate national cultural schools. After the fall of communist
system the national cultures blossomed in all their brightness.13
Serbia has always had a special historical role of leader among the South Slavs.
It was Serbia which tried to create the united state. And most of Serbian intellectuals are
sure, that this is Serbian mission. The first well developed project of such union was
written by Iliya Garashanin (“Nachertanie” 1844-1847). One of the possible reasons of
this mission hides in the fact, that from the very beginning the Serbian power
legitimating based on the liberation wars and uprisings against foreign invaders and
rulers: among them Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman Empires, England, France, Germany.
12
Ramet, Sabrina P., Balkan Babel. The Disintegration of Yugoslavia from the Death of Tito to the Fall of
Miloshevic. Cambridge. 2002.
13
Watchel, B.Andrew Making a Nation, Breaking a Nation. Literature and Cultural Politics in Yugoslavia.
Stanford, California. 1998.
6
Serbs were watchful even towards Russian Empire. That’s why some investigators think
that war takes a special place in the Serbian collective memory.14
The Ukrainian historical role is a little bit different. Until the Second World War it
was not a united state. Large parts of the future Ukraine was under the rule of Russian
Empire, and the Western parts were under Austro-Hungarian rule. The Ukraine had
never pretended to be a leader among it’s’ neighbors. Instead of this the main historical
mission consisted in creating a nation and protecting it from the foreign invasions,
armed as well as cultural. Nowadays the most popular issue discussed in scientific and
mass media areas are negotiation between Russia and the Ukraine. It is connected with
the problem of nation building process in the Ukraine and the refusal of Russia to
recognize it, especially on the cultural level. So we can conclude that until now the
Ukraine doesn’t have a united nation. For a long time the Ukrainians was considered to
be only one of branches of East Slaves (with Russian and Belarusian). Their language
considered to be only a dialect of Russian. The Ukrainian culture was mostly spread
among peasants. The intelligence was Russian in the East and Polish in the West.15 If
we speak about the legitimacy of power, both of the Empires managed to carry up
legitimate power on their parts of the future Ukraine. The problems began when the
Soviet Union occupied the Western parts of the Ukraine. The local inhabitants didn’t
consider it’s’ power to be legitimate.
So if we compare the historical processes of Serbia and the Ukraine we can point
out several equal features. First, both of the countries had a certain experience of being
under the rule of one or several empires. Second, the historical processes brought them
to the situation of cultural and political division.
Thus we can conclude that each time when the territory of these states was
under imperial system of power there existed a certain level of legitimacy (the period of
Tito’s ruling and the USSR we can also call “imperial”). Evidently empire doesn’t
pretend to make the society absolutely homogeneous (the communist ideology is a
relevant exclusion from the rule). The main purpose of empire is to build a negotiation
process between groups, first of all to prevent conflicts and separate movements on its’
territory. After the brake up of the empire all the integrative mechanisms stop to exist.
There begins the process of sharing imperial heritage, sometimes by means of blowing
up conflicts.
14
Popov N. Traumatology of the Party State// The Road to War in Serbia. Trauma and Catharsis/ ed. by. Popov N.
Budapest. 2000.
15
Shevelev G.Y. The Ukrainian Language in the First Half of the Twentieth Century (1900-1941): Its State and
Status. Cambridge, 1989. P.8.
7
Society structure. As we have mentioned above both countries consist of several
antagonistic groups. Now we can look at the structure of these cleavages. First of all
Serbia has always been a multiethnic country. Except Serbs there live Albanians,
Hungarians, Muslims (Serbs with Muslim religion), Montenegrins, Croats. It has two
autonomous provinces: Kosovo and Metohia, and Sandgak. But now we can say that
the main cleavage is connected not only with ethnic structure. The ideological
contradictions are deeper. The investigators point out that since the brake of
relationship with the USSR and Stalin, there were two opposite elite groups in the high
power levels in Yugoslavia. One of them was oriented toward West, and the other –
toward the Soviet Union.16 So the configuration of political groups from the point of view
of external orientations was approximately the same as nowadays. But than the
relationship between groups were mediated by Tito and by common communist
ideology. After their disappearance Slobodan Milosevic tried to integrate the country on
the base of nationalist ideology, but that also lead to the blowing up of ethnic conflicts
on the territory of former Yugoslavia.
In fact the Milosevic regime was not absolutely authoritarian. Having a significant
political capital he managed to carry power for 13 years. The regime was formally
multiparty. There were two ruling parties: the Socialist Party of Slobodan Milosevic and
the United Left of Yugoslavia of Mirjana Marcovic (his wife). In fact the power was held
by a family clan. The borders between business, politics and crime were eroded.
Nevertheless there was an official opposition. The oppositional parties were included
into the political process: they participated in the elections. One of the specific feature of
Yugoslav socialism was its’ openness toward the West, it was a kind of “liberal” model
of socialism. Due to this the intellectuals of the 50s could communicate with the West.
There were formed a group of dissidents, who became the base for newly formed
democratic opposition.
During all the period of Milosevic ruling the legitimacy of his power had been
called into question, from the side of another countries (economic sanctions and
bombing), as well as from the inside political groups. The mass protests against
Milosevic were held in 1991, when they were suppressed by army forces. Then in 19961997 after the local elections Milosevic refused to recognize the results which showed
the victory of oppositional candidates in some towns. After a series of mass meetings
he had to recognize the results.17 Final confrontation occurred in 2000 year when the
16
17
Zimmerman, William. Open Borders, Nonalignment, and the Political Evolution of Yugoslavia. Princeton. 1987.
Lazic, M. ed., Protest in Belgrade. Winter of Discontent. Budapest. 1999.
8
candidate from the united opposition Voislav Kostunica became the winner of the
presidential elections. The day of 5 October 2000 was called “bulldozer” revolution.
In spite of the fact that the overthrow of Milosevic was accompanied with a mass
mobilization, opposition managed to integrate only part of society. After their aim was
reached, and Milosevic was overthrown, they have lost their single integrator – negative
attitude toward the former regime. At the same time the alternative mechanism of
integration was not constructed. The perspective of integration into EU was not enough
to unite the nation. Nowadays there are several political groups in Serbia each of that
tries to integrate the society on the basis of their ideas. But these groups have very little
intentions to find the common ground for negotiations between themselves.
This configuration of power was formed during the Milosevic ruling and was
connected with the peculiarities of creating of opposition. In the 90s of XX century after
the legalization of oppositional parties there appeared Democratic Party. Then it was
divided into four parties: Democratic Party (Zoran Dindic), Democratic Party of Serbia
(Voislav Kostunica), Liberal Party and Democratic Center. There were also organized
several radical and nationalistic parties, such as Radical Movement (Vuk Druskovic)
and Serbian Radical Party (Voislav Sesel).
There were already created two main ideological directions, we can call them
“liberal” and “nationalistic” (these titles are given for the convenience of discussion).
These directions have never had a common platform for negotiations. Until now they
are blaming each other for leading Serbia to a “catastrophe”. The creating of parties in
Serbia had only institutionalized the problem without solving it. Among the main factors
of division between the ideological directions in Serbia are:
1) Kosovo;
2) integration into European Union;
3) cooperation with the Hague Tribunal.
The two fist issues are very much connected with each other. Evidently no one of
the present Serbian politicians is going to recognize the Kosovo independence, unless
he doesn’t want to finish his political career immediately. The debates are in another
field – what should be the first: fighting for Kosovo or integrating into the EU. “Liberals”
consider integrating into the EU to be the first, because it will lead to solving the
problem of Kosovo (perhaps, because Kosovo is also preparing to the EU integration).
In this case the EU will transform the outside conflict into the inside conflict. How the EU
will deal with it is a question of future and another investigation. “Nationalists” refuse to
negotiate with the EU until the definition of Kosovo status (of course in the state borders
9
of Serbia). The other problem is cooperation with the Hague Tribunal, the main aim of
which is to find and punish the “war crimes”. If “liberals” officially express their intention
to help in searching for the “crimes”, “nationalists” consider these “crimes” to be
“national Serbian heroes”, who have been protecting Serbs and their interests after the
brake up of Yugoslavia.
The division of the Ukrainian society is also more or less connected with the
division among the elites. There have been created various political movements and
parties since the brake up of the Soviet Union and the declaration of independence of
the Ukraine. In this paper we can divide them into two groups (the division is also not
strict): “nationalists” (who are mostly connected with the West regions of the country)
and “former communists” or “East political elites”. But we should point out that a very
popular nowadays division of the Ukraine into two parts (East and West) is not very
correct. Each Ukrainian region has its’ own peculiarity. There are many different
variants of regional division, basing on different factors: economic, religious, ethnic,
linguistic, political, etc. Considering the division of the society it is more correct to speak
about some issues, which raise heated debates in the Ukraine. Among them are:
1) cooperation with NATO (USA) and the EU;
2) cooperation with Russian Federation;
3) national language.
Using these issues the politicians form their political capital mostly for winning the
elections. But they very seldom negotiate with each other about these issues. The
political elite of the East mostly represented by the “Party of Regions” try to orient their
external relationships toward Russia. They blame their opponents, among whom we
can find nationalists (“Nasha Ukraina”) and populists (“Block Timoshenko) for
negotiating with NATO. Moreover the East Ukraine is standing for the official status of
Russian language. Their opponents aspire to include the Ukraine into NATO and blame
Russia for post imperial claims.
In this paper we would like to look in detail at the problem of language in the
Ukraine. The elites that came to power in 2004 (after the so called “orange revolution”)
began a new turn of ukrainization of society. In other words they try to build a unified
nation on the basis of the Ukrainian language. This issue is very important not only
because of its’ practical political adaptation. It also has a theoretical value. During the
investigation of language issue in the contemporary Ukraine we came to conclusion,
that language identification is more important for the citizens, than the ethnic identity.
10
Nowadays the Ukraine is considered to be a state without a unified nation. At the
same time national unity is one of the most often declared aims. But each political group
has its’ own vision of means and ways of reaching this aim. “Nationalists” try to build
national unity on the basis of well known formula with on addition: one state – one
nation – on language (the Ukrainian language). We have already shown in this paper
that the Western countries managed to create a unified nation mostly due to unifying
linguistic policy. The Eastern politicians, who represent the interests of Russian
speaking population of the Ukraine, insist on giving an official status to the Russian
language.
It’s important that the political groups consider the program of their opponents to
be absolutely unacceptable. They are not ready compromise because this would mean
for them the betrayal of their ideas and identity. The East Ukraine is not ready to use
Ukrainian for every day nonofficial communication and they want the official
communication to be at least bilingual. For the “nationalists” the acceptance of the
official status of Russian language means the widening of Russian influence in the
Ukraine. At the same time East Ukrainians don’t consider themselves to be Russians
only because they speak the Russian language. Now we can conclude that there is a
process of forming of two different Ukrainian identities: the West and the East, not
counting Tatars and Russians in the South of the country and some other minorities on
the West.
Thus comparing Serbia and the Ukraine we can say that in spite of some
substation differences the configuration of divisions and cleavages are more or less
similar in both countries. The units and the causes of division of a society are not elites.
These units are problem topics or issues the solving of which is considered to be a
game with a “zero sum”. More precisely the participants of negotiations consider these
conflicts or problems to be a game with “zero sum”. This means that they are not going
to compromise in the conflicts on these problem issues, because consider each their
concession to be a defeat. These problem issues are connected with each other. So if
we know the position of one person regarding one topic, we can guess about his
position regarding the other topic connected with the first one. The most important
feature of these issues is that they make the process of negotiations practically
impossible. Of course, the problems in negotiations are also connected with the cultural
differences.
Speaking in terms of multiculturalism we can say that different groups have
different cultures, which form their attitudes to various problems. These cultures were
11
formed in different historical epochs, or under the influence of foreign invaders and
Empires. Often the cultures consist of historical “insults” towards the opponent culture.
For example, the Ukrainian “nationalists” consider the activity of Russian Empire to be
“genocide” of the Ukrainian population. At the same time the East Ukrainians call the
Western neighbors “fascists”. In Serbia “nationalists” blame the “liberals” for “selling”
Serbia to the West, and “Liberals” blame “nationalists” for ethnic wars in the 90s of XX
century.
Evidently in such situation the “classical” type of multiculturalism is not
acceptable, because it implies the suppression of one culture and the triumph of the
other. In the divided societies we can not make such a choice, all the cultures are equal
and are historically rooted on the territory of the divided states. That’s why the divided
society needs another variant of multiculturalism, in which would be formed a system of
co-existence of all the equal cultures with equal rights and importance. At the same time
there should be formed a field for negotiations between the elites.
*
*
*
In this paper we tried to show, that post-imperial divided societies have a rather
big problem with power legitimacy. They don’t simply have some minorities; the whole
society consists of different equal groups, which differences are based on ethnic,
religious, ideological, linguistic, etc. peculiarities. As we have shown, that the generally
recognized type of legitimacy (we called it “national” legitimacy) is not suitable for these
countries. They demand quite different type of legitimacy and multiculturalism. Looking
at the historical heritage of the “Empires” we came to the conclusion that they had
another type of legitimacy (we called it “imperial” legitimacy). The key point in this types
is that we have not only different types of negotiation practices, different levels or
deepness of institutionalization, and so on; these types means also two approaches to
the politics of multiculturalism. After analyzing of two cases (Serbia and the Ukraine),
we made a conclusion, that at the moment the problems of their political stability lays
not on the level of political institutions.
The “imperial” type of legitimacy implies a delicate equilibrium of respect to each
other. The guarantor of this equilibrium takes the middle position and makes it possible
for the state to exist in relative stableness. But this equilibrium could be easily
destroyed, for example, by actualizing of one identity and blowing up a conflict.
Obviously this conflict may be useful for some politicians, but it doesn’t add stability to
the state. After the break up of “Empire” different groups are left alone with their
12
identities. With the disappearance of a mediator, they loose a common field for
negotiations. Searching for a new negotiation platform becomes one of the most difficult
but urgent tasks.
It is important to mention that most of divided societies nowadays are in the
process of democratic transition. This means that there are created democratic
institutions, held elections. Various international and European organizations try to
participate actively in the process. European Union even has adopted a number of
special programs and agreements for stimulating democratic processes in developing
countries. Fist of all European Union is interested in managing and preventing conflicts
in so called “European periphery”.18 The investigation of EU strategy towards the
described regions (the Balkans and South-East Europe) let us suppose, that EU try to
create a number of homogenous state units on this post-imperial territory, using the
formula one state – one nation. At the same time, if there are some minorities they can
use a politics of multiculturalism. But as we can guess EU uses the type of
multiculturalism, which we called a “national” one.
Thus the states of Balkans and South-East Europe are passing more or less well
to the democracy, but they don’t solve one of their main problems – the deep division of
their society. In other words, the problem is institutionalized instead of being solved.
This institutionalization leads to the series of political crises in government, parliament,
to inability to create coalition and to coordinate interests.
At the moment one of the suitable variants for solving such kinds of problems in
the divided societies are putting it on the lower level. In another words we should try to
build at least minimal consensus on the informal level by means of network structures,
and then to think about institutionalization of the already existing negotiating process. It
is also important to find a person, or a group of person for the role of mediation
structure. The EU and the USA, as well as Russia are not suitable for the role. First of
all because they have already became the sides of the conflicts within both countries.
EU and USA are representing interests of “nationalists” in the Ukraine and of “liberals”
in Serbia. Russia is protecting interests of the East Ukraine and of “nationalists” in
Serbia. This is not always done officially; nevertheless the configuration of powers is
approximately right.
A role of mediator should be played by a person or a group of persons within the
countries. They should have such features which will make both sides of the conflict to
trust them. In the soviet Yugoslavia Tito was mediating very good due to his multiethnic
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Europeinization and Conflict Resolution: Case Studies from the European Periphery. 2004.
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origin. Until now Voislav Kostunica could pretend to be such a mediator in Serbia. In the
Ukraine there were Kravchuk, and then Kuchma. But the political process prevented
them from playing this role.
The purpose of this paper is not to give any practical advises, we only can say
that the finding of a mediator will make the process of negotiation easer. After reaching
at least procedural consensus or even consensus about values on the informal level,
there can be constructed institutions that will reflect the existing structure of ideas and
political capitals.
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