BETWEEN RESISTANCE AND ALLEGIANCE

AIM, BELGRADE, March 4, 1994

INTERVIEW: Dr. Milan Podunavac

Political life in Serbia has been brought to the point of caricatuare. The Parliament has been in the process of constitution for months; political coalitions are established and broken on a dialy basis. While, on the one hand, some believe normal democratic political processes are evolving in the country - processes of the fruition of pluralism, others, on the other hand, deny the existence of such processes: in their view Milosevic's repressive regime is attaining full control over social developments. How important is the role of political culture in these processes? We asked Dr. Milan Podunavac, Professor at the Faculty of Political Sciences in Belgrade, what his views were on this and many other issues characteristic of the present day political milieu in our country.

Last year the Encyclopedia of Political Culture was published in Belgrade owing to, among others, Dr. Podunavac who played a significant role in its appearance as a member of the editorial board. The idea was to introduce into the existing parochial and organic political pattern a number of political principles and maximes that would correspond to a model of liberal, constitutional and democratic political culture.

• The ideal of an organic political community is deeply rooted in the political culture of Serbian society. It consists of a combination of ideas pertaining to the spirit, the soil and leader and which are subsumed into an ideal, just organic order in which each individual has his own specific place, subjugated to the order as a whole. This tradition, ultimately does not know, as of separate concepts, either of the idea of the state or of civil society; in the idea of an organic community, egalitarian and just society, it abolishes the freedom and autonomy of the individual
• it abolishes differences which represent the vital assumptions for the establishment of liberal political institutions.

Due to those reasons,such an ideal never gave birth to the idea of civil society within the political culture of this society.It its not familiar with the idea of protective and civil rights - the rights that would be constituted in spite of, parallel with and even in opposition to the state. In the entire history of Serbian society there always existed a pronounced asymmetry between the freedom-loving component in political culture, defiance of foreign political rule and passive obedience and loyality to domestic authority - complete absence of what political theory calls resistance to tyrannical rule. Namely, in the organic concept of a community, the role of the leader has special significance.

He is the one who harmonizes various forces - political, moral and religious sentiments and without who the community would not be able to function. Therefrom the large number of charismatic leaders, small and great Caesars in the political history of Serbia and therefrom the pronouncedly personalized political authority that dominates in our political environment. In an organic community, man is but a small segment, while someone else, some kind of imaginary state should be responsible for satisfying his essential needs and possibilities. The state is the force that measures out what he is to have, how much freedom he is to enjoy, the force that has control over his life, his property... Complete loyalty, submission to political authority is somehow exchanged for minimum social and political benefits the state provides to its citizens. We are now in a state of the total absorption of society by such a paternalistic state which has covered with its net the whole of society and supressed the autonomy and freedom of people.

* You distinguish the concepts of pre-political and political communities. Can we speak of Serbia as a political community in the modern sense of that word?

• In order for a system to be well structured, it has to provide and cultivate specific political values. Through them the domination of political authority is restricted and room created which enables the individual to resist, in specific situations, that authority. For instance, the right to resistance, right to civil disobedience,etc. In our political environment such political values are almost completely absent. The liberal foundations of political culture are very weak in our society. On the other hand, enclaves of civil society have not been developed, while those that have autonomously come to existence have been destroyed by the regime's repressive and authoritarian political technology. We are faced with a situation in which political, civilian, civic states - precisely due to the fact that rights and freedoms have not been provided to individuals, and that general instability, social, political and legal anomie exist - are increasing shifting towards what Hobbes called the natural state. It can also be observed that this society has no respect for procedural rights either. Political authority, even when it attains procedural legitimacy,in the elections for instance, constantly strives to give that legitimacy popular and plebiscitary connotations.

And plebiscitary legitimacy and the popular mobilisation of political support are potentially always repressive.If we could speak a type of politics in our society at all - and that is well demonstrated by the ruling party - it could be said that it has completely been reduced to what makes up her crudest substance; and that is the technology of political rule, which has completely cast away from it range of vision the ideas around which the community as whole could organized itself. That is the idea of public welfare, the idea of what is senses communis, which could be the inner basis for the unification of the political community.

* Within that context, how do you interpret the political scene in Serbia and the results of the elections?

• Elections have a number of very important functions. One is the gaining of legitimacy, the second - the provision of additional stability to the political system, and third - the verification and giving of meaning to a consensus on basic political values of the community. The elections held in Serbia did not achieve any of their three vital functions.The main political formula created in these elections - the pan-Serbian formula - is a belligerent and not a civic or civilian formula. The basic reason for the failure of the opposition at all the elections held to date, in my opinion, lies in the fact that it never represented a real and serious alternative to the policy of the ruling party. The ruling party ran in the last and in the elections before those with a belligerent programme, with an essencially war mongering policy, which went under the guise of protecting the Serbian minority in Crotia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The opposition did not withstand the belligerent programme of the SPS, it did not formulate a clear-cut anti-war programme. Thereby, the opposition played on a playing field on the which the ruling party had already finished its game.The same thing happened at the last elections. The ruling party ran under the banner of hyperthrophied national interest and the idea of fully articulating what has been known from the very beginning - that the conflict on the soil of former Yugoslavia was entered into for the sake of creating Greater Serbia. This political formula, has now been, more or less, accepted by all political forces - with a greater or leser degree of radicalness.

Therefore, the opposition has not created a serious political alternative to the ruling party. Until it does so, it will remain the defeated side. In that sense, I believe that the drowning of the civic block within Depos, which has definitively occured now, is a great pity: for a number of insignificant offices offered to a few leading personalities from that block, a political alternative, which although small and weak had importance due to its symbolic value in this environment, has been destroyed. The entry of the Civic Union into Depos has completely destroyed the civil alternative. At present the civic block in its present form has completed one of its phases in the political life of Serbia.

I expect that now various civilian and civic initiatives, which have previously been unjustifiably monopolised and patronized by the Civil Alliance, will develop processes that will take shape as an anti-policy strategy in respect to the systemic concept of the current Serbian policy. It is more than evident now that the Serbian opposition is not a counterpart to the authority in Serbia. These last elections

• whether we are aready to admit it or not - have strengthened significantly the power of the current political regime. That very moment the ruling party and the opposition parties reached an agreement which legitimized the war policy of this regime, their chances to become the promotors of the internal democratization of this system have become almost null - both in and out of Parliament.

* Does that mean that you do not see in the near future the presumptions for the democratization of the system?

• The internal reconstruction of the regime is possible under the assumption that minimum political consensus among the main protagonists is reached in respect to the fundamental political values of society as a whole round which society could unite. At this moment I do nt see such political consensus in Serbia.True, within the Serbian political block minimum consensus can be depicted regarding the concept of the pan-Serbian unification, i.e. regarding Greater Serbia, which is from the internal reconstruction point of view, very unfavourable, and - on the long run unproductive. If identity is built on that, then the fact that Serbia is an multi-ethnic, multi-pluralistic community is completely disregarded.

The idea round which more or less all the political parties have flocked is potentially a great threat to this political space and the source of a major identity and legitimacy crisis of the political system. It can be a very powerful detonator for the establishment of an undemocratic and authoritarian political structure and a major obstacle in the democratization of this space. Finally, it represents an obsolete concept dating from the last century according to which neither human rights nor the quality of life are vital presumptions, but only and above all else, territories are what counts.I, therefore see room for internal democratization in what will be constituted in the shadow of this political regime, and not only vis-a-vis, the ruling political block but likewise vis-a-vis the opposition political block such as is represented today.

* After number of manifestations which had the characteristics of civil disobedience, and for which you claim could become the promoters of democratization, a state of apathy has become predominant. Is it hopelessness or else fear that is preventing resistance?

• There is a number of reasons. The first is because this form of regime represents in essence, personalized power and is a regime that rests on weak and insignificant institutions, in other words, an extremely repressive regime. The crucial identificational elements on which it is founded is the permanent production of fear. The mechanisms of repression - open and covert - have been developed to perfection. Second,even those autonomous enclaves of civil society which have taken shape in the period when an initital romanticism manifested as a desire for change existed - have been supressed through direct repression. Third, in an authoritarian regime there can be no civil disobedience in the real sense of the word.

Civil disobedience is a crucial element of civil society, it implies that people defy legal normes, political programmes, and at the same time foster the spirit of tolerant political culture and feeling for what represents the rule of the law within a society. It is for that very reason that I always emphasize that in regimes such as ours it is much better of speak of traditional resistance to tyrannical rule than of forms of civil disobedience.

Vesna Bjekic