While the global arena has witnessed a solid nine months of relentless, flamboyant norm-busting by the second Trump administration, this dynamic seemed to largely leave previously established American topline policies intact. Of course, the wanton destruction of USAID early in the administration delivered a deep blow in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), the rest of the Western Balkans, and – with devastating effect – globally. The wider Trump family engaged in deals, such as deeply controversial developments in Serbia and Albania. And US embassies became far less vocal and interactive with their erstwhile closest partners, including the EU – which has set the pace for the West through its enlargement policy for two decades. But the fundamentals of Washington’s policies pertaining to BiH and the region remained largely consistent, including the sanctions regime against the Republika Srpska (RS) separatist leader – and now convicted criminal and former RS President – Milorad Dodik and a wide circle of his family, associates, party, and connected businesses……

Read the full blog at BiEPAG here.

The post Where to for EU Enlargement in the Age of Reaction? The View from Sarajevo appeared first on Democratization Policy Council.

Ahead of the 30th anniversary of the Dayton peace agreement that ended the 1992-95 war, citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina are the most dissatisfied in the Western Balkans with the way they are being governed, an opinion survey highlighted.

Read more at Balkan Insight here.

The post Bosnians ‘Most Dissatisfied in the Balkans’ with their Politics – Is Brussels Listening? appeared first on Democratization Policy Council.

From Munich to Yalta

The annual Munich Security Conference (MSC) was even more eventful this year than it has been in the past, due mainly to the disposition of the administration of US President Trump, who in less than a full month in office has demonstrated a willingness to “run fast and break things.” The messaging from the Riyadh summit between US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russia’s veteran Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov amplified fears of a carve up – and not only of Ukraine. Trump’s subsequent verbal assault on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, calling him a “dictator” and saying that he needed to “act fast” (e.g., accede to Russian demands) or “you won’t have a country” (a line he used on the campaign trail) amplified the cognitive dissonance and panic in Europe. 

The implications are existential – and not just for Ukraine, the EU, and its democratic neighbors and allies. The EU’s foundational values and security are being directly and actively threatened. They can only be defended together.

Et tu, America?

American democracy is in peril. The systematic attack on the US Government bureaucracy by Elon Musk’s DOGE, beginning with the attack on USAID and domestic good governance guardrails, its aggressive posture towards friendly neighbors Canada and Mexico, and Trump’s real estate fantasy for Gaza by means of US-sanctioned ethnic cleansing, were unthinkable enough.

But Trump’s call with Russian President Putin and their plan to meet for negotiations to bring Moscow’s imperial war to an end (perhaps by the end of February) – without consulting Ukrainian President Zelensky or planning to include him (or European allies) – ominously tops off a mere month of the Trump regime. The aggressive speeches by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Vice President JD Vance in Brussels and Paris earlier in the week further shocked Europe in both tone and message, and in the clear disdain they reflected. Hegseth effectively demanded European commitment to enforce a peace deal which remains ethereal, but would involve Ukrainian territorial concessions.

EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas correctly framed the American push for a “negotiated settlement,” together with ruling out Ukraine’s membership in NATO, as “appeasement.” European leaders asserted that no peace could be agreed without Ukraine – and Europe.

In his speech to the MSC, Vance sidestepped the central issue of Ukraine and European security to assert in a show of Orwellian doublespeak that the main security challenge to Europe was internal, claiming it was Europe’s democracy that was at risk.

His language was specifically aimed at support for the far right in Germany and beyond, whilst claiming “shared values” – leaving one to wonder what might be the values he claims to want to share.  Expressing such hubris in Germany, which is facing elections in a week, was particularly pointed. As if to add emphasis and clarify the values he is espousing, he met with far-right Alternative for Germany leader Alice Weidel – directly engaging in the final stages of an election on the side of the AfD. What he claimed are “shared values” are in fact a new manifestation of the nationalism, imperialism, exclusion and hate that underpinned two world wars in the 20th century.

Curiously, Secretary of State Marco Rubio – the cabinet member most known to MSC denizens over the past decade, and among Trump’s cabinet and advisors the most “normal” – was the least visible and audible member on the administration’s European tour.

European Cognitive Dissonance

The European reaction was properly swift, demonstrating a broad sense of betrayal and anger. French President Macron called a meeting with a select group of European leaders, including British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, on Monday, Feb. 17 to discuss European defense. Ukraine’s President Zelensky in a speech and interview advocated an “armed forces of Europe,” along with common defense production and foreign policy, to ensure that Europe could defend itself. 

The need for Europe to prepare to go it alone (with as much support as it can muster from democracies further afield – Canada, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand) seems vital, wrenching though this may be. If Europe manages to rise to the occasion – far from a given – its greatest vulnerability will be in the buildup period. To begin to get there, it must successfully confront and prevail over its real “enemy from within:” its illiberal, Russia-friendly member governments, led by Viktor Orbán in Hungary, who was pointedly excluded from the February 17 meeting, and is a darling among many in Trump’s orbit.

A broader concern is that Trump and much of his team see not Europe, but Russia’s Putin and company as values allies; their talking points share numerous similarities. Both prefer to act unilaterally, with contempt for weaker neighbors – and a preference for short-term transactionalism that enables the enrichment of cronies without regard to the broader social and economic stability that has enabled growth for decades. In addition, there is a school of thought which seeks to separate Russia from China – a relationship which tightened immediately before the full-scale invasion was launched three years ago. Yet the effect of the new US policy seems to place the world, including an alliance spanning four generations, on the drafting table of a new three-way Yalta – or 2.5, given Russia’s increased dependence on China.

The emergence of the US as a malign actor and aggressive disruptor already has had global consequences (potentially condemning millions to starvation and death from disease); these will metastasize. In addition to these unconscionable foreseeable impacts – which Europe and other democracies will need to address – there are more immediate security and defense implications for the EU’s neighborhood, particularly its enlargement area. These countries, in terms of their reliability as allies, risks they pose (and harbor), and assets for collective defense, need to be taken into account as Europe scrambles to recalibrate its common defense.

Europe’s Soft Underbelly

When it comes to the Western Balkans – the region in which the EU and the collective West has the greatest leverage – the EU’s policies remain locked on an autopilot. The events of the past week demonstrate that the EU must shift into fifth gear, for its own survival as a community of independent democracies. This requires a fundamental recalibration of its posture in the region.

In no country is this self-defeating dynamic clearer than in Serbia. Aleksandar Vučić faces the most persistent and determined challenge to his nearly 13-year rule from a statewide student-led protest movement demanding accountability and rule of law after the Novi Sad railway station roof collapse in November 2024. 

In a February 6 open letter, European Commissioner for Enlargement Marta Kos encouraged Serbians to have faith in the accession process to resolve institutional deficits, ignoring the role of the Serbian regime in creating the conditions for the kleptocracy and kakistocracy (governance by society’s worst – see also pathocracy) that enabled the Novi Sad collapse. 

It was received – correctly – as tone-deaf and out of touch. Informed observers have shared that the letter’s text was toned down by Commission President von der Leyen, who feared endangering equities with Vučić – an assertion we cannot confirm, but which would be far from surprising given her engagement to date.

In addition to being offensive to the young people who are showing their commitment to the EU’s professed values and simply seek dignity after decades of dysfunction and rising autocracy, this approach shows the willful ignorance of some in the EU; the accession process will not solve the demands of the protesters; the protesters’ demands need to be met so that the accession process may credibly begin.

Instead, the demonstrations continue undeterred by attempts by the Vučić regime to paint them as a foreign plot. The relative sizes of a substantial protest gathering in the central city of Kragujevac (to which thousands marched from across the country), and a spare and minimally energetic regime-organized Serbian unity rally in Sremska Mitrovica supported by Bosnian Serb separatist leader Milorad Dodik and busloads of people from Republika Srpska, was illustrative. The leaders’ tightening relationship seems compelled by their domestic circumstances. Vučić’s efforts to paint the student-led popular movement as financed by USAID and use of the term “color revolution” sounded increasingly desperate and ridiculous. Both hope that Trump & Co’s moves will buoy their sinking fortunes. 

Actors from across the region seek to profit from the transatlantic turmoil for their standing agendas. On the final day of the MSC, a panel provided a chance for Prime Ministers Rama of Albania and Mickoski of North Macedonia, as well as EU Enlargement Commissioner Kos, to look forward for the region from what was felt by attendees as a tectonic shift in the global order. 

Rama demonstrated that he is the premier transactional opportunist in the Western Balkans. He attempted to instrumentalize US officials’ statements, calling them “a gift from God” for the EU, advocating that the Union launch a phased accession process and that the “merit-based approach” should only apply to voting in the Union, not membership.

Mickoski made valid points about North Macedonia’s accession having been stunted repeatedly by bilateral disputes led by EU member state pursuing their own narrow agendas. Both leaders engaged in long, self-serving explanatory answers, Rama being far more aggressive, going so far as to chide the moderator for “inviting Balkan men” if she didn’t want long replies.

Kos’ explanation that the enlargement process is confined by the technical structures of the acquis and member state prerogatives was tone-deaf and seemingly untouched by the past decade of lived experience. 

Moderator Majda Ruge’s question on security threats in the region given the shifting American position, for example against secession efforts by Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik, received no direct answer. And this highlights the failure to date of the EU, as well as its potential to redefine its European security posture. If a geopolitical actor, as it must become to defend itself, it must be capable of implementing area denial – the capability to deny access in a given territory to malign actors. It already has this legal responsibility in Bosnia. 

The EU’s failure to date to convince Bosnian political actors of its commitment was highlighted days after the MSC closed. Following closing arguments in his case before the Court of BiH on February 19 for noncompliance with international High Representative orders, as per the Dayton Accords, Dodik stated that “I’m not threatening anyone, but I’m ready to go all the way” – a clear implication of his long-mooted secession threat. Vučić chimed-in as well, framing Dodik’s violations of the Dayton Accords as a free speech issue, as well as implying that “uncertainty” would follow a guilty verdict. Vučić’s own campaign slogan – “peace and stability” – implied the threat that failure to maintain him in power would precipitate conflict and instability, in true mafia style.

Regional Security – and Democratic Progress – Demands European Leadership

DPC has long advocated closing the deterrence gap in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where 20 years ago the EU took on the peace enforcement mandate articulated in the Dayton peace accords. 

No other single act would have greater impact on the political and social dynamic of Bosnia and the region, robbing Dodik of his sole and central prop of his 19-year role – the threat of secession – than if the EU finally took its peace enforcement mandate seriously and engaged in area denial. 

It would also put paid to Serbia’s irredentist regional ambitions, manifest in the Srpski Svet (Serbian World) concept. These ambitions are useful to and aided by Moscow. As Vučić and his centralized rule face a citizens’ movement growing in popularity in Serbia and the region, he relies increasingly on the link with Dodik, his regional agenda, and hostility toward a host of neighbors, especially Kosovo. He has nothing to offer; which is why Serbia’s young people are on the streets.

Given that threats of US withdrawal from NATO’s KFOR were made by envoy for special missions Richard Grenell both in the first Trump term and during the Biden administration, the EU needs to prepare to fill that gap at short notice. Disinformation that the US had activated plans to withdraw its contingent from KFOR circulated widely on February 20, mainly propagated by media connected to Russian, Chinese, or Serbian governments. The possibility of such a withdrawal has indeed been made in the past by Richard Grenell, former US Ambassador to Germany then Balkan envoy in the first Trump administration, now Trump’s envoy for special missions, as well as Donald Trump Jr. But they have not been made since he undertook his new role. 

The EU faces at present Western Balkan leaders who are either committed illiberals or transactionalists. None currently holding the reins of power are genuine exponents of EU foundational values.

It is untenable to rely on such leaders when Europe is simultaneously under existential threat from both East and now West, but also from among illiberally led member states and growing reactionary threats in established democracies. Far from ensuring stability, they profiteer from curated instability as a reliable extractive tool. Europe must disable their capacity to do so. 

Popular Democratic Impulses on the EU Frontiers

The potential for a different Western Balkans has been underscored by Serbia’s student-led nonviolent mobilization – and the broad and heartfelt moral and material solidarity being provided by the broader Serbian and regional populations. This represents a reassertion of collective self-respect after two generations of misrule, with all its aspects of societal degradation.

When Croatians demonstrated in numerous cities – including Vukovar(!) – in support, taxi drivers from Sarajevo, Podgorica, Skopje and elsewhere offered to travel to Kragujevac to transport Serbian students should their Serbian counterparts be overwhelmed by demand, a phenomenon worthy of support. The EU should show similar resolve.

The EU, institutionally established to deal with institutional interlocutors (and whose enlargement process is predicated on the sincerity of their professions of shared values), has been caught flat-footed by this growing civic self-confidence.  But they should not squander this opportunity to support a mass movement in support of its own declared and besieged values.

The performance of US officials in Munich could one day be viewed as the second bookend of the demise of liberal democracy and the trans-Atlantic relationship – with the first being Putin’s performance there in 2007.

However, it does not have to be this way. The sole good outcome of Munich is that Europe’s leaders see that they cannot count on the US as they have for so long. A geopolitically enabled EU can no longer afford to stray from its values. It must defend them materially, both at home and in the enlargement area, while supporting those beyond who share them.  

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It was her serendipitous discovery of a little known building on the campus of George Mason University, outside of Washington DC, where she found the hard copy archives – papers, letters, and musings – that allowed her to patch together in detail the intentions behind a decades-long effort by a handful of the country’s wealthiest and most fervently anti-government/small government citizens. These men, led by the ideology of a relatively unknown yet profoundly influential thinker named James Buchanan, and funded by the deep pockets of the better known Charles Koch, intended to “save capitalism from democracy” (p.xx).

These oligarchs were troubled that, as more Americans enjoyed and exercised de facto and de jure voting rights – including women, people of color and the poor – these masses would vote for policies they wanted, such as more public education, public health, and consumer and environmental protection, to be paid for through progressive tax rates. Rather than allow this scenario to unfold, an effort to hack the American system began, based on three elements: minority rule (through capturing the Senate, maintaining the electoral college and gerrymandering), highly conservative judicial activism (most notably in the Supreme Court, but also through lower levels), and voter suppression. The country would technically be democratic, but calculated and targeted restrictions would ensure it would be a democracy “in chains.” MacLean’s historical narrative is chilling in its prescience.

The fruits of recent doom-scrolling led me to ponder that three variations are unfolding, in three very different places. The first symbolizes a possible consolidation stage that leads one to wonder whether and how the juggernaut can be stopped; the second outlines efforts at an endgame of political hacking in an institutionalized system in which norms and values of participatory democracy for all have long been discarded; and the third provides a glimmer of hope that resistance to such well-executed, anti-democratic strategies can begin to be rolled back.

First, the ramming through in record time of Amy Coney Barrett to serve a lifetime appointment on the US Supreme Court, represents the pinnacle of the generational effort to control the Supreme Court. The new 6-3 conservative majority could make broadly popular programs impossible to implement (such as some sort of Medicare for All), and could lead to sweeping federally mandated deregulation at odds with voter preferences at the state level (think environmental protection or gun control measures in California.) As awareness of this fait accompli sets in, a variety of options seem to be on the table, ranging from court rebalancing, to commissions on more fundamental reform, to perhaps simply start ignoring certain rulings. However, none of these options will be quick, or smooth. A country with a population that is increasingly diverse and left leaning – particularly among the young – could find itself chained to the ideological goals of an oligarchic few.

Second, and illustrating the chains at a more advanced micro level, is evident in the divided city of Mostar in Bosnia and Herzegovina (population ~ 110,000 and falling due to braindrain and out-migration borne of frustration with corruption, patronage and gridlock). In this case, a city that has been divided, exploited and increasingly malgoverned since the darkest days of the wars in the early 1990s is on track to have this dysfunction finally codified and legitimized. It is not a surprise that the city’s two leading parties, the HDZ and SDA, have agreed on a plan to change the city’s electoral representation system in a manner precisely and mathematically tailored to ensure their dominance of city neighborhoods/party fiefdoms while allowing for the veneer of democratic choice. What is a surprise is that some  international actors, desperate for a “deliverable” and a good news story, seek to portray this as a move away from the stagnation in that city that has prevented local elections for more than a decade– willfully ignoring the reality that this will dig the hole of divided malgovernance ever deeper. This external legitimization risks further emboldening party actors as they continue to chain citizens to a system geared solely toward party loyalties rather than represented citizens. Even more troubling is that following local elections in December according to these engineered election apportionment rules, the same parties will claim a popular mandate to continue rigging the system at higher levels of government, finishing by political cleansing the aims that the war in the early 90s did not complete.

The third example – and the only one that leaves one feeling any sense of grounded optimism – happened in Chile, following strong support among voters to re-write that country’s constitution. This case provides a directly relevant glimmer of hope that constitutional rigging can be reversed, because, as described by MacLean, Chile’s political, economic and constitutional structures were put in place not only according to the same “economic liberty” ideology underlying the American experiment underway, but with the direct support of some of the same ideological fathers. Following the 1973 Pinochet coup, this hitherto democratic, now-authoritarian country provided these ideologues – “the Chicago Boys” – with an ideal, anti-communist tabula rasa upon which to test their theories in real-life, as Chile’s military leaders, “wanted to find a way to ensure that Chileans never again embraced socialism, no matter how strong the popular cries for reform. The solution they came up with was to rewrite the nation’s constitution to forever insulate the interests of the propertied class they represented from the reach of a classic democratic majority” (p.155).

This was part of a significant social-structural overhaul in the ‘70s and ‘80s in which industry-wide labor unions were banned, social security and health care were privatized, education was reformed to minimize critical thinking in terms of utilitarian workforce preparation, and the ability of the central government to set regulations was curtailed. While on the one hand this created economic stability that stood out in the region – particularly when compared to less stable neighbors in South America. But the fact that it remained fixed after the country’s democratic transition as part of the price of that transition also ultimately fed the widespread discontent with the endemic and worsening economic inequality, the decrepit social services and education available to the people, huge public debt, and an “endless opportunity” for corruption with no meaningful checks and balances. The description of the damage this economic liberty experiment in Chile wreaked on society could serve as a warning for the US of the perils of placing economic rights above all others.

Taken together, these three cases shine a light on the role structures – constitutional and institutional – play in either enhancing or limiting meaningful political participation, representation, accountability and policy. In a system in which “locks and bolts” (to use another phrase referenced in MacLean’s book) seriously constrain democratic participation, it is facile to suggest voters are somehow to blame for not wanting effective governance “enough” to change it. Chile shows that even when facing such obstacles people can get fed up. This week we will have a glimpse of whether US voters have had enough. And upcoming local elections in Bosnia will serve as a barometer of the lived and expressed frustration of those citizens, and also of the extent to which extent structures expand or contract rights, deter or facilitate corruption, and reflect majority or minority rule.

The post Breaking the Democratic Chains appeared first on Democratization Policy Council.

I read an opinion piece in The New York Times this weekend about a parent observing his eleven-year old son developing a vision for how a fictional planet could be best governed and managed, as a part of a COVID-era home schooling assignment.

Watching the homework evolve, the author explained his son’s obsession with, “creating a system of governance that was both efficient and incorruptible,” pondering that this was at least in part related to what the child has been experiencing as he observes life, absorbs media content and seeks to interpret the reactions to all of this by his own family network. He also juxtaposed the young constitutionalist’s previous interest in young adult dystopian fiction with this more reality-based exercise in social organization and jurisprudence. The boy’s vision was less about spaceships and aliens and more about rule of law aimed at effective decision-making and fairness.

While the eleven-year old likely didn’t know it, this exercise has strong echoes of liberal American political philosopher John Rawls, who, in his own efforts to dissect moral human and social behavior, envisioned the possibilities of free institutions, civic unity, and legitimate uses of political power.

Rawls’ developed the notion of a veil of ignorance – a conceptual approach aimed at ensuring that decisions made by individuals, and by individuals working collectively, should be developed by people who would be ignorant of what their personal circumstances might be in a given scenario. So a person tasked with developing a model for a community,  society, or country would not know when drafting the laws, tenets and institutions whether they would be male or female, black or white, or religious or atheist, when living in that polity, under those rules.

Not knowing how you yourself could personally be situated in terms of socio-economic circumstances would increase the likelihood that systems would be derived in a fair, just, objective, and egalitarian way. For example, one would be less likely to propose economic structures that reinforce patriarchal systems if one was not certain whether they might be a female in that society. Or, one might be less inclined to favor laws relate to the privatization of fresh water supplies if they were not certain that they would be living in a society where clean water is always taken for granted.

I’ve contrasted this reminder of Rawls’ philosophizing with the “deal” made by two political party leaders on how to divide up the city of Mostar in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and how to begin to finally divide up higher-level political positions. Mostar hasn’t had local elections in over a decade as a result of the parties’ inability to implement a 2010 constitutional court decision that annulled the city statute and part of the election law. The ruling parties couldn’t agree on the rules, and so as a result, citizens were deprived of the right to a local level vote for over 10 years. Now, without public consultation or open deliberation, these two parties have apparently decided on the rule and division they want. The lack of transparency in the “deal” lends a very different sort of veil of ignorance to the whole scenario, especially as foreign diplomats praise this non-transparent, non-participatory, non-civic “deal,” hashed out far from the public square, and behind closed doors.

It remains to be seen how the  details of the deal will be implemented in practice, but if the parties have agreed on it then it doesn’t really matter what people in Mostar or elsewhere think. This is the essence of the partitocracy that defines the country; party trumps demos in a trend that is disturbingly familiar elsewhere, from Spain to the US, where one’s decision to wear a MAGA hat or a face mask is now an immediate sign of presumed political party preference.

The two political parties that hashed out this deal will claim it will ensure effective power-sharing. However, two and a half decades have shown that power-sharing driven by political parties results in unaccountable power allocation, divorced from accountability. Combined with a history of political party-aligned patronage that determines one’s employment prospects, or success in winning tenders, state and party capture becomes the norm.

This method of decision making is the polar opposite of Rawls’ moral proposal. Rather than being ignorant of whether one may be rich or poor, male or female, or Bosniak, Croat, Serb or Other, power-allocation deals in Bosnia are only about knowing what you are, and what you have to be.  It is the worst combination of identity politics and  zero-sum essentialism. If a Bosniak party is allocated one seat in a public company, a Croat will be allocated another. If one party “gets” a director position, the other gets to be the deputy. Locking in power regardless of a vote, regardless of a census, regardless of the success or lack of success in governing – none of it matters if the system is rigged. This is not unique to Bosnia. We are seeing this play out through blatant gerrymandering in the US, and it is common in other peace cartels, such as  Lebanon.  It is about structuring a system based on knowing exactly who gets what in advance, and in ensuring that votes to further support this fait accompli are secured through either blatant or subtle vote buying, voter suppression, or electoral fraud.

I’ve long wanted to see what a group of students in Mostar, or in Sarajevo, Banja Luka or Brčko might come up with for a method of governance in their country if given the conceptual framework of Rawls’ veil. How would they want society to work if they didn’t know what label they or their parents seemed to carry, how or if they or their neighbors worshipped, and whether or not they had contacts in influential positions? I suspect that such a youth-driven vision of the future would be very different than the deals being brokered by the adults in the room, who continue to be shaped by a different kind of veil of ignorance that has shaped their approach to politics for a generation.

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I’ve increasingly been using this space to work through what I’m thinking as I watch history in motion on both sides of the Atlantic. While the parallels have been emerging since 2015, as with so many things the COVID-19 crisis makes some things much more acute, either by opening up opportunities for new problems, or shining light on problems that have been lurking, hidden from view to anyone not actively looking.

Reading an article about a Republican effort to deploy 50,000 poll watchers for the November US elections – allegedly to reduce fraud, but largely interpreted as being aimed at voter suppression in key states – was troubling, but not surprising. It also brought back memories of my first experiences in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

In mid-summer 1997, I got a call from an old friend from my university days who was working for the Peace Corps. On short notice, he had been asked to find around 300 Americans who were interested to go to Bosnia and Herzegovina to serve as supervisors in the country’s first post-war local elections. I was one year into a doctoral program in conflict analysis and resolution, and jumped at the chance.

It was a long time ago, but certain things stand out in my mind. Refueling a charter flight in Shannon, Ireland. Landing in Zagreb and taking a bus to Tuzla via Brcko, as there was a policy of ensuring that the American observers stayed in the zone where American troops were stationed as a part of the NATO Stabilization Force. Serb soldiers in purple camouflage taking a long time to check all of our documents before we continued our journey, then passing through the wild west of the Arizona Market.

There were a lot of older retired Americans who routinely went out to supervise elections around the world – “election tourists,” some called them. And a lot of people in their 20s looking to get involved in international relations careers, in that short-lived, post-Cold war euphoric period between the end of the war in Bosnia, and before 9/11, the war in Iraq and the financial crisis began to erode the clarity of the elusive yet seemingly achievable democratic peace.

I remember sitting in a large hall in a school in Tuzla getting briefed. In the presentation of the Dayton political structure, after listening to an earnest young man (I think he was Irish) talk about the Federation and the Republika Srpska, I remember one American observer standing up and asking, “The Federation? Republika Srpska? Just what country are we in right now?” It was only with time that I would come to appreciate the irony of this question.

We were there to ensure that every single one of the country’s 2000+ polling stations would have a foreign, independent observer present to give credibility to the voting process, the count and the ballot delivery; back then the ballot boxes were escorted by NATO peacekeeping troops to ensure confidence in the results. These measures were seen as necessary as the war had only been over for a little over a year and a half; no one wanted to take the possibility of a trusted, participatory and free and fair vote for granted. The 1996 general elections a year earlier had been widely criticized, marked by intentional and unintentional voter disenfranchisement, misinformation and logistical problems. The voter turnout was estimated to be over 100%.

The army of observers in September 1997 was part of an effort to improve the situation. And some aspects had improved, though the political aim of pressuring, deterring or otherwise inhibiting voter choice was still clear. This was not entirely surprising after a war that displaced half the population, ravaged the country’s infrastructure and was from start to finish predicated on unravelling social bonds and trust. It was also an early example of war by other means, and of using ballots rather than bullets to achieve narrow political aims.

Except for my translator, a good-looking, very tall young man who simply disappeared at some point, people were friendly and open and positive as we patched together English and some dusty Russian from my college days. The experience and the people I met led me to settle on a dissertation topic on the peace process, which in turn brought me back. And kept me here for two decades.

And now I’m more worried about my parents in New York during the pandemic than they are of me in Sarajevo.  As I follow news in the U.S., I’m seeing independent inspectors general being dismissed; states being pitted against one another in a twisted demonstration of feudal federalism; armed individuals and “militias” claiming the public space resisting any semblance of shared public solidarity.

And now efforts that are viewed as intended to reduce the vote among the marginalized and the poor; the exact opposite of participatory democracy. Republicans will claim a commitment to fight voter fraud, in spite of the fact that voter fraud is less likely than being struck by lightening. Democrats in turn are expected to organize their own poll watchers. Regardless of what happens on November 3, the erosion of trust has already begun. America’s increasingly tribal, us. vs. them politics will stake out and divide yet another part of the public sphere, further destroying the civic.

As I continue to wish that the US would look to Yugoslavia in the early 1990s to recognize the consequences of undermined institutions, weaponized nationalism and party divisions based on identity rather than policy, I find myself wanting to see a corps of international election observers deployed to the US, to do what I did in Tuzla in 1997. They could never have the coverage possible in a small territory like Bosnia, but could focus on population areas in swing states.  Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Ohio would likely be as exotic to some as Tuzla, Banovici or Kladanj were to us.

It would be an investment in the shared human interest in the ability to participate in the basic decision of who governs one’s community and country. A reminder that no country or society is immune to challenges to accountable democracy. And a signal that in the 21^st century the struggle to protect these values is a global two-way street. Balkan election tourists: welcome to Wisconsin.

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Ivan Stefanovski, Eurothink, Skopje

It’s difficult to think of a less sexy basic public service than the postal service, yet in two NATO  countries – one of the founders and the newest member – good, old-fashioned snail mail is at the center of controversy and politics.

The postal services in the United States and North Macedonia provide a reminder of the perils of allowing partisan political agendas to trump independent, professional services free from disruptive party politics.

In the US the postal controversy is linked to the basic continued functioning and solvency of the US Postal Service.

In short, the Trump Administration, supported by the Republican Party, has stated it does not support the provision of emergency aid to the Postal Service, in spite of the funds going to prop up other sectors of the economy. Some attribute this to the long-standing public feud with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, as Amazon deliveries depend to a large part on the postal service. Bezos also owns The Washington Post, which Trump regularly claims is “fake news.” Others suggest that torpedoing the postal service would allow Republicans to privatize it, which would be in line with the party’s broader ideological tenets. 

While in and of itself this option should not be discounted as terrible (Germany’s post office is private, for example), it would require a level of regulation needed to ensure service to all American communities, including those in remote locations that would not turn a profit. Such regulation tends to be opposed by Republicans and those seeking to “deconstruct the administrative state.”

This would be a critical issue of domestic policy at any time, but is particularly dire now. It is an election year in the US, and with the pandemic more people than ever are expected to want vote-by-mail options. Republicans who have been opposed to postal voting could use the threat of a full postal shutdown to secure a negotiating advantage. Some might liken this to simple opportunism described by the adage, “never let a good crisis go to waste.” Others might want to pull out Naomi Klein’s study of disaster capitalism.

And this is all also playing out as the US Postal Service awaits the arrival of a new Postmaster General, a top donor to the Trump campaign, who, unlike the outgoing head , does not have any experience in the USPS.

Meanwhile, in North Macedonia, we can see what happens in the advanced stage of political institutional ownership trumping objective, meritocratic public service.

In brief, there was a minor fiasco when North Macedonia issued a new stamp. Normally, when selecting birds or bridges or flowers, this would not be too controversial. However the recent stamp in question, meant to thank former Yugoslav republic Croatia for its support in moving North Macedonia forward in its own EU accession journey, instead introduced a flag-embossed map of the region that is reminiscent of WW2 era Croatian Nazi puppet state territorial ambitions, particularly over Bosnia and Herzegovina.

This outraged several countries in the region. The Serbian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) cried “historical revisionism,” and issued a formal letter of protest claiming that the reference to the fascist Independent Croatian State (NDH) reminds Serbia and its people of the darkest moments of its modern history. The unveiling of the stamp was even more scandalous as it was published on 9 May, when most modern democracies, especially those throughout Europe (including Germany, whose President Frank-Walter Steinmeier called it Germany’s “day of liberation”), mark VE-Day and the defeat of fascism. The fiasco ended when the Macedonian MFA apologized to  Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Croatia; the stamps have been pulled off the market, surely to be a collector’s item.

Whether the release of the stamp was a mistake or a deliberate – if ill-considered – provocation is difficult to say. The very fact that both scenarios seem plausible to citizens is in itself very telling, and says nothing good about North Macedonia’s institutional capacities. The most likely scenario – profound ignorance – reaffirms the conclusion that North Macedonia’s institutions are continuously staffed with incompetent partisan cadres. This is even more evident in institutions led by the Democratic Union for Integration (DUI) – the traditional junior partner in almost every coalition government since 2002. This ethnic Albanian party deriving from the former NLA (National Liberation Army) which participated in the 2001 conflict, has constructed and maintained a clientelistic and kleptocratic organization dominated by negative selection in which party loyalty is paramount, and expertise an afterthought (if a factor at all). The lack of any electoral changes that could counter this nearly two-decade monopoly makes the party fundamentally unreformed, and consistently unchallenged.

The other scenario – a deliberate provocation – would seem designed to hurt the ruling social democrats (SDSM), which gained power in 2016 following civic protests against the status quo, toppling an increasingly authoritarian government that had been embroiled in multiple corruption scandals, and which had arrived at an accepted division of spoils with DUI. That such political maneuvering is considered to be not-unreasonable  points to the country’s democratic deficit, and tensions between factions that want a forward-looking Euro-Atlantic future, and those who won’t hesitate to stoke nationalist tensions domestically, or further afield.  

A few lessons are evident amidst this mail madness.

First, public services need to be organized for the public, free from political party agendas and machinations. The North Macedonia case shows what happens when one party “owns” a public service, making it far too easy to give party fealty pride of place over competence in hiring decisions. While in the US, North Macedonia and globally, high-level positions are indeed very often political appointees, this should not absolve those doing the appointing of some sense of commitment to hiring seasoned professionals. Meritocracy matters, and when merit is replaced by patronage-fueled hiring and appointments, public trust suffers as much as quality.

Second, this is a reminder that as governments globally respond to the COVID crisis, there will be endless opportunities for agendas to be pursued, either openly through public discussions on post-COVID social visions, or  non-transparently as governments try to use the current news and information overload to push through measures that they know would not enjoy public support.

That both North Macedonia, which is taking long-awaited steps to move towards membership in the EU in order to fully participate in the trans-Atlantic community of values, and the US, which is experiencing a domestic and global crisis of leadership, are exhibiting symptoms of the result of the politicization of public services, is a reminder that functional and accountable government is never “done,” but requires constant vigilance.

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