Customer Reviews

The Politics of Serbia in the 1990s

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Given the immense amount of research and effort the author put into this book, I'd like to give it a more positive evaluation. This is a very detailed, almost exhaustive account of Serbian political events and conflicts during the 1990s (up to mid-1998). In many ways it serves as a useful reference guide - but only for those already familiar with the complexities of politics in the former Yugoslavia. This is perhaps the book's central flaw: it seems to assume that readers will already have a handle on events and politics in Yugoslavia as a whole during the late 1980s, as well as the wartime events during the early 1990s in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, so that the author just rambles on about the political tug-of-war going on among various Serbian politicians and political parties. At times Thomas spends too much time discussing the squabbles between the leaders of Serbia's largely ineffective opposition parties, while ignoring the overall political, social and economic situation in Serbia. Thus there is little discussion of the growth of organized crime as the Serbian economy flagged under the burden of international sanctions nor, crucially, of the ensuing close ties and collaboration between mob leaders and the political elite. Also, and quite strangely, there is relatively little discussion or in-depth analysis of perhaps the most important figure in Serbian politics for the last fifteen years: Slobodan Milosevic. Other than some very general analysis in his introduction and conclusion, Milosevic is otherwise treated by Thomas as some sort of gray eminence of Serbian politics, always pulling the levers, but rarely seen. Therefore, this book is disappointing in many ways. One can only hope that if the author decides to do a revised edition to cover the events of 1999 (the Kosovo crisis and the NATO air strikes) he will also thoroughly rework the entire text.

Thomas does an excellent job of treating the blow-by-blow behavior of Serbia's political leaders in the 1990s. As a political scientist researching the Balkans, I rely on this book heavily to recall who did what to whom when.

I second some of the comments made by an earlier reviewer (Bosnar?). The book does presume some deeper knowledge of the players in Serbian politics (and, happily, pays attention as well to plenty of 'lieutenants'.) While it summarizes some of the context involving economic difficulties, the paramilitarization of some semi-political groupings, and relationships between Serbs in Serbia proper and Bosnian Serbs, it does tend to treat parties somewhat in isolation from their environmental context. It is also emphatically not a biography of Slobodan Milosevic, although it mentions some of the events surrounding his rise in the early days. (Nearly everything you've read on Milosevic's biography in any English source most likely originated in the stunningly detailed works of Slavoljub Djukic, which are all in Serbian. I dearly hope somebody will put him in touch with a publisher who will translate him into English and give him the marketing boost he's missing in the West.)

Granted, some of the juiciest information is simply hard to obtain, particularly with regard to the "mafia-tization" of the state-dominated economy and the economic "reform" process in general. But that's where the real battle for power is all across the Balkans, and any treatment of parties in these countries must address the rewards they seek and sometimes achieve at any level of political power. This is particularly the case for Serbia, where political control over the new business class is the tightest, and sometimes the most deadly. Given Thomas' great familiarity with parties and their primary leaders, one would think he wields at least a passing level of familiarity of the political battles for economic power in Serbia. Certainly any later update of this book should reflect the post-Zajedno scene on this score, as the regime's latest maneuverings emphasize how worried they are about electoral loss while they attempt to cushion any potential fall by shifting their power into the economic realm, i.e., into the nests they've feathered for 10 years.

Note that this book, while good about reporting electoral results, will not be sufficient in and of itself for those doing or seeking more in-depth electoral behavior studies. It also tends to emphasize the rhetoric of political leaders--sometimes striking and self-explanatory in itself--again, for knowledgeable readers--but not always examined or probed for its validity or intent. Still, one has to be impressed with Thomas' assiduous collection of the Serbian press (back when it was functioning semi-normally), and he does a very good job when it comes to interpretation of some of the gaps.

The introductory chapter raises some interesting conceptual points, but really does not provide a tight, convincing methodological argument despite some attempt at appearances. One should realize that Thomas hails from a more British/European orientation of political science, resulting in a more narrative/chronological story as opposed to rigorously developed argumentation. For example, you will get an excellent description of the bitter internecine warfare among opposition leaders, but not an explanation as to why.

I don't mean to slight the book overmuch: we need good, well-researched description as a necessary foundation before we can attempt more convincing causal theories, and Thomas gives us a wealth of excellent material on the case of Serbia. It's an essential work for observers of contemporary Balkan politics, whether political scientists, journalists, or interested laypeople, and that's why I give it four stars.

Despite the array of books published on former Yugoslavia in recent years, only few have dealt with Serbia, although politics in Serbia have clearly determined the wars in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo. The book by Thomas is surprisingly balanced and loaded with facts hard to come by eleswhere. Although a more analytical approach might be desirable, the chronological account of Serbian politics is useful for anybody researching of former Yugoslavia and a "must" for those working on Serbia.