A very interesting item in this week's Vreme presents the results of a three-year project on «Transformational strategies of social groups in Serbia» by the Institute for Social Research of the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade. Professor Anđelka Milić (hello!) is leading the group of fourteen researchers who are finding:
✩Poverty and unemployment remain high, defeating the high hopes of October 2000, with average wages still just over half the level of 1990;
✩The elite which emerged and enriched itself under Milošević has not only maintained but strengthened its dominant position, with its members holding two thirds of the important positions in the economy;
✩Socialist and traditional values have both declined, but have not been replaced with widely accepted alternatives, leaving a broad base of authoritarianism lacking an object, and a vague and easily manipulable «nostalgia»;
✩The average age continues to rise, as younger people find themselves unable to marry and have children, and 42% of couples with small children live in the homes of one of the couple's parents;
✩A majority of people are unsatisfied with their current condition and prospects for the future, while a majority of young people are seriously considering leaving.
There are more details in the article by Slobodanka Ast.
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3 comments:
The elite which emerged and enriched itself under Milošević has not only maintained but strengthened its dominant position, with its members holding two thirds of the important positions in the economy;This is the money quote, unfortunately.
There's no getting rid of these people. Some of the more egregiously criminal and violent ones can be killed off or imprisoned (as happened in March 2003), but nobody's going to lock up Bogoljub Karic any time soon.
The Milosevic-era kleptocrats are broadly similar to the Yeltsin-era oligarchs of Russia. (With some differences. On one hand, in Serbia there were no Gaidars extolling the virtues of the untrammelled free market. On the other hand, the links to security services and -- especially -- organized crime were stronger in Serbia.) The difference is that in the last few years, Putin tamed, purged, imprisoned, silenced or drove out pretty much all of the Russian oligarchs. This is one of the few good things I can say about Putin. But there is no Putin-equivalent in Serbia, nor is one likely to emerge.
Another local analogy would be Romania, where high-end nomenklaturists immediately took over large chunks of the economy and quickly became wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice. This comparison is relatively hopeful (no, really) because the Romanian oligarchs are showing signs of settling down and becoming no worse than, say, very rich and heavily connected Italians. In an Eastern European context, this is a huge step forward.
To push this analogy just a little further, Serbia today looks a lot like Romania c. 1994 or so; the ancien regime has fallen, but a lot of the same people are sitting behind the same desks, and legitimacy is very slow to emerge.
The other thing that's really critical is the demographic issue. But that's not unique to Serbia. Romanians and Bulgarians are doing a lot better than Serbia right now, but they're not having kids either. Hell, prosperous Slovenia has one of the lowest TFRs and fastest aging populations in the world. Meanwhile Bulgarians and Ukrainians seem to have pretty much given up on having kids. So I really don't think it's because young folks can't get their own apartments in stricken Serbia. The Serbian demographic collapse, as alarming as it is, seems to be "normal" for this region.
Doug M.
The "old kleptocrat" issue is thorny, always. Yes, there is no getting rid of them, and no country ever really has (the only country I know of that tried to get rid of whole classes of people was Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge--perhaps Stalin's efforts in the Ukraine could be added). But in a functioning economy, their role is supplemented and possible replaced over time. In Serbia they have become a cartel.
I'd like to see the full report (as opposed to the magazine article) on the demographic question. Andjelka Milic and Smiljka Tomanovic wrote it, and they are good enough theorists to have probably done more than what is suggested in the article. There isn't only the issue Doug raises, but also this --generally, low fertility rates are associated with modernization and prosperity.
Yes, there is no getting rid of them, and no country ever really has (the only country I know of that tried to get rid of whole classes of people was Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge--perhaps Stalin's efforts in the Ukraine could be added).Well, you can "get rid of" a class in the sense of taking away most of their money and power. That's what happened to a variety of groups in Eastern Europe 1944-48, for instance. Hungarian aristocrats and Romanian bourgeouis industrialists weren't shot en masse, but as a class they lost almost all political and economic power.
To a lesser extent, Putin has done this with the oligarchs. There were, depending on how you count, between eight and maybe fifty of these guys, and for about a decade they were a class unto themselves. Today about half of them are still around and still rich. But their political power has been very drastically curtailed, and they seem to be disappearing as a /class/.
In Serbia they have become a cartel.This is bad, but it's not unique to Serbia. Similar things happened in Russia and in Romania, and to a lesser extent in Ukraine. And if you were looking at Romania in 1994, or Russia in 1999, it would be very hard to imagine how their power could be broken or even moderated.
In Russia, as noted, it took Putin. In Romania, it was a combination of things... economic growth, the gradual rooting of real political pluralism and the beginnings of civil society, a perceived need to clean house to prepare for EU accession. Romania's oligarchs are still very much present and very influential, but you could no longer call them a cartel.
On the other hand, you can look at Moldova, Belarus, Transnistria, most of the Caucasus and central Asia for less positive paradigms. And even Ukraine is still up in the air. So improvement is by no means inevitable.
As time goes by, it's becoming more clear what lasting damage Slobo and his cronies did to Serbia. Now even Macedonia -- Macedonia! -- is creeping past Serbia. The Makedonai have all sorts of problems, from deep ethnic divisions to endemic corruption, but they're less screwed than the Serbs. It breaks your heart.
generally, low fertility rates are associated with modernization and prosperity.Generally, yes. There are fascinating exceptions. Why are the Spanish and Italians and most Eastern Europeans so /very/ infertile (far below replacement TFRs) while the Irish, French, and Norwegians (!) are hanging in there at replacement level or even just above? Why are Americans so damn fertile? And within America, why are New Englanders having kids at a much lower rate than, say, Texans? (The TFR for all New England is about 1.7. For Texas it's about 2.4.)
Prosperity... Eastern Europe hit the demographic transition harder and faster than the west, even though absolute levels of prosperity were lower. Birthrates in places like Bulgaria were already falling fast in the '80s. France is a lot richer than Serbia, so why are French women having 2.1 kids while Serbs and Bulgarians only manage 1.2 or 1.3?
-- These are rhetorical questions. I don't know the answers and I don't think anyone else does. It's a fascinating topic, though.
Anyhow, a combination of aging population, declining population, and brain drain is going to hit the whole region hard. Again, bad, but not unique to Serbia.
Doug M.
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