Introduction

In this chapter we will focus on Serbian political parties and their organizational structures. Our analysis will be driven by the notion that political parties are one of the few influential political actors or institutions that are functional in contemporary Serbia without real counterweight in civil society or any other social or political institutions. Despite a high level of party membership, political participation and trust in political parties is low.

This analysis will also provide insight into the legal framework set by political parties and their tendency towards concentration of power and cartelization. We will, therefore, start with legal documents (laws, statutes, internal procedural documents), and provide contextual insight based on previous research whenever possible in order to explain the mechanism of power-sharing within parties and its consequences for the democratization of Serbia.

In our analysis, we will focus on the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS – Socijalistička partija Srbije), and the Democratic Party (DS – Demokratska stranka), as they represent the only two relevant national parties that have been in operation since the fi rst democratic elections in 1990. Although the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS – Srpska napredna stranka) has been the strongest party by far in recent years (2012–2016), it is still a young party based primarily on the popularity of its leader and is yet without an established party structure. Due to their political importance and relatively long existence, DS and SPS have the most developed programmatic and organizational structures. Finally, several parties from the liberal and modernist block can be traced back to the Democratic Party (either official factions or unofficial groups that once belonged to DS).

Political Developments in Serbia since the Fall of Communism in Yugoslavia

The Serbian transition took place in two phases and is similar to that of some other Central and Eastern European countries (e.g. Romania and Bulgaria), in which a somewhat transformed communist party won the first partially democratic elections (Kasapović 1996). This left an important mark on the transition that would afterwards ensue. Furthermore, the Serbian case involved the breakup of Yugoslavia. Serbia is not unique among post-communist or post-Yugoslav fragile democracies, yet it must be analyzed with specific scrutiny against the usual paradigms and analytical models.