Background Analysis of the Serbia/Kosovo Peace Process

Serbia and Kosovo have a long history of conflict, which surpasses the scope of this article (Judah Reference Judah2002). For this article, just a brief contextual overview is necessary to set the background against which the ongoing peace negotiations are taking place. Since the 19th century, Kosovo has been construed as Serbia’s holy land, the core territory of central importance for national history and identity (Ejdus Reference Ejdus2020). Kosovo was annexed by the Kingdom of Serbia in 1912 and spent most of the 20th century as part of Yugoslavia. To quell separatist tendencies in its autonomous province of Kosovo, Serbia curbed its autonomy in 1989. In the early 1990s, Yugoslavia broke apart along its administrative borders, and former republics gained independence.Footnote ² In 1998, a low-intensity conflict in Kosovo spiraled into a civil war triggering NATO intervention in 1999. In June, Yugoslav and Serbian forces withdrew from the province while UNSC Resolution 1244 allowed for the international military (KFOR) and civilian (UNMIK) presence in the province.

In the years ahead, the UN attempted to negotiate a final solution. Still, the two sides failed to reach a compromise as Belgrade was ready to grant Kosovo everything but independence which was the red line Kosovars did not want to negotiate. As a result, in 2008, Kosovo unilaterally declared independence which Serbia fiercely rejected as illegal. Soon after that, most western states and the majority of UN member states recognized the independence of Kosovo. However, permanent members of the UN Security Council (Russia and China), five EU members (Spain, Cyprus, Slovakia, Romania, and Greece), and many states in the global south have still not recognized it. Over the years, it has become apparent that without Serbia’s approval, Kosovo will not be able to obtain full international recognition and a seat in the UN (Rossi Reference Rossi2014). Since 2011, the EU has initiated and facilitated a new round of talks which led to the conclusion of the First Agreement of Principles Governing the Normalization of Relations, also known as “The Brussels Agreement” in April 2013 (Beha Reference Beha2018). The very name of the agreement suggested that this agreement was just the beginning of the normalization process, and the EU soon openly stated that it was expecting the process to conclude with a legally binding agreement (EU 2013). Although the EU does not officially insist on Serbia’s recognition of Kosovo, the legally binding agreement is expected to serve at least a de facto recognition that would clear the ground for Pristina to get a seat in the UN. It would, therefore, have to be not only ratified in the Serbian Parliament but also approved by a simple majority in a referendum.

Previous Research on Referenda

We draw upon the works in political science, and our starting assumption is that framing plays a significant role in the formation of political attitudes (Klar, Robinson, and Druckman Reference Klar, Robinson, Druckman and Ridout2013). This applies to referenda, even if the electorate is well informed about the referendum issue (Dvořák Reference Dvořák2013). To understand the effect of framing on political decisions, including referenda, political scientists have often drawn upon the prospect theory, which predicts how and under which conditions people’s decision-making process deviates from norms of rationality (Kahneman and Tversky Reference Kahneman and Tversky1979). Specifically, this descriptive model of decision making predicts that people’s decisions are systematically dependent not upon real values and probabilities but rather upon subjective estimations of both. It postulates that a decision-maker estimates the (given, objective) value of any offered option, comparing it to their own reference point, thus estimating whether he losses or wins by making that specific choice (Damnjanović and Janković Reference Damnjanović and Janković2014).

Furthermore, the fundamental notion of prospect theory is that losses matter more than gains, and people are inclined to make risky decisions to avoid losses (Kahneman and Tversky Reference Kahneman and Tversky1979, Kahneman Reference Kahneman2011). This theoretical assumption led many to argue that positive framing is counterproductive and that framers have more chances of succeeding when they put the risks of refusal front and center in their campaigns (Shuck and de Vreese Reference Schuck and de Vreese2009; Hancock and Weiss Reference Hancock and Weiss2011; Hancock, Weiss, and Duerr Reference Hancock, Weiss and Glen2010; Hancock Reference Hancock2011; Hager, Roy, Hancock, and Ensley Reference Hager, Roy, Hancock and Ensley2019). Some authors, for example, show that the focus on positive aspects of the proposed EU constitution only mobilized sceptics to vote against it in the 2005 Dutch referendum (Shuck and de Vreese Reference Schuck and de Vreese2009). Similarly, Hancock argues that the strategy to focus on the risks of failure rather than on the benefits of success had led to the successful passage of the Good Friday Agreement in a referendum in Northern Ireland in 1998 (Hancock Reference Hancock2011). Following the same logic, Hancock and Weiss argue that the Oslo Agreement failed because its advocates focused on its expected benefits of a better future instead of emphasizing violent alternatives (Hancock and Weiss Reference Hancock and Weiss2011).

We tested this line of argumentation in an experimental poll, which simulated the gist of a referendum campaign on the currently negotiated legally binding agreement on the future status of Kosovo. In the poll, we exposed respondents in Serbia to a specific frame and then asked them if they support a future arrangement with the Kosovo authorities. The poll was conducted online in May/June 2019 and consisted of 4,016 participants in total. In the poll, we tested whether the acceptance of the deal with Pristina is higher if it is framed in positive terms as a way to achieve gains or in negative terms as something needed to avoid losses. In addition to this, we tested which substantive arguments have the biggest saliency: peace/war; prosperity/poverty; yes/no EU membership; and protection/loss of the Serbian heritage in Kosovo.

Traditional view suggests that, when the issue has been known for some time, and the electorate has entrenched predispositions about it, voters are supposed to gather relevant information from political agents to make informed and predictable decisions about the referendum issue (Hobolt Reference Hobolt2005). Our argument presupposes that framing matters greatly in formulating referendum questions and that most voters have no strong preferences (Zaller Reference Zaller1992). Even if the voters are quite familiar with the issue, it is possible to influence public opinion in specific directions (LeDuc Reference LeDuc2002; Reference LeDuc and de Vreese2007). In other words, a preference reversal is possible even with entrenched beliefs and informed voters.

The most potent empirical examples to this effect are the two Danish referenda on the Maastricht treaty in 1992 and 1993 and the two Irish referenda on the Nice treaty in 2001 and 2002.Footnote ³ Danes rejected the Treaty in June 1992 but then supported it in May 1993. A similar reversal took place in Ireland in June 2001 and October 2002. The explanation for both cases was not that at the second referendum, the Danish and Irish electorate learned something that they did not know at the first one. Instead, the proposal was reframed, which caused the preference reversal (Hobolt Reference Hobolt2006; Reference Hobolt2009; Marsh Reference Marsh and de Vreese2007; Dvořák Reference Dvořák2013).

To fully understand the current situation, one also needs to consider the changing relevance of Kosovo for the Serbian electorate. Traditionally, as discussed above, Kosovo has been regarded as a territory of high symbolic and identity importance for the Serbs, firmly entrenched in the Serbian history and culture (Bieber Reference Bieber2002; Ejdus Reference Ejdus2020). Moreover, since the 1999 war, all Yugoslav and Serbian governments have continued to make a legal claim for their sovereignty over Kosovo based on the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1244. Moreover, for many years Serbia kept its effective control in Kosovo’s north, mostly populated by Serbs (Clark Reference Clark2014). However, in the past few years, we have witnessed the Serbian officials’ attempts to gradually redefine this reference point. Since 2013, Serbia gave up its parallel institutions in the north of Kosovo. Moreover, Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić has invested efforts in lowering the reference point by repeating that “Serbia does not have anything in Kosovo [and that] even one meter [of the territory] would be a gain.”Footnote ⁴ He has recently stated: “Kosovo to be fully recognized in the future.”Footnote ⁵ At times, he mitigates such radical statements by repeating that “we must understand that Kosovo is not ours, but it’s not theirs either,”Footnote ⁶ which indicates the willingness to accept the partition of the territory between the Governments in Belgrade and Pristina.Footnote ⁷

The campaign has already brought about a visible shift in public opinion. According to a recent survey, 47 percent of the respondents believe that Kosovo has been lost, although 74.5 percent would still never support the independence of Kosovo.Footnote ⁸ According to another research, 33 percent of respondents consider Kosovo to be lost, while 52 percent do not think it is lost (CSDRI 2019, 17).Footnote ⁹ For our research, it is of relevance to note that all polls show that the younger and better-educated population, which is by and large the profile of our respondents, tend to think of Kosovo as the lost cause. For instance, while 42 percent of the 18–34 age group agrees that Kosovo is lost, only 22 percent of the over 55 age group agrees with this assertion (CSDRI 2019, 22). Also, the same poll showed that while 45 percent of the population with higher education concurs with the statement that Kosovo is lost, only 20 percent of the people with primary school agrees with it (CSDRI 2019, 23). Such a low reference point favors specific outcomes containing any gain and discourages gambles with unfavorable odds even if their expected value might be high. This suggests that the winning campaign strategy would be to prepare the ground by continuously insisting that Serbia has nothing to lose in Kosovo and then focus in the heat of the campaign on positive consequences of peace, stability, and prosperity of the country. In our experimental poll, to which we now turn, we tested these assumptions and studied the effect of framing on the potential referendum in Serbia on the peace deal with Kosovo.

Discussion and Explanation

The main finding of our research is that the positive frame is preferred to the negative one. This appears to run contrary to several recent works which draw on the prospect theory to claim that negative frames have a stronger impact on voters because losses matter more than gains (Shuck and de Vreese Reference Schuck and de Vreese2009; Hancock Reference Hancock2011). We argue that our findings are a product of a particular sort of framing – namely, attributive framing. It differs from two other types, risky choice frame and goal frame, in that it involves an implicit evaluation of choice. This section considers all three frames, thus explaining why attributive framing is most suitable for our findings.

Tversky and Kahneman (Reference Tversky and Kahneman1981) formulated the risky choice frame. People who were asked to choose between two options framed in positive and negative terms, where the positive frame involves gains and the negative frame involves losses, revealed they are unwilling to take risks when faced with a sure thing. However, they are more willing to do so when they face a loss. Tversky and Kahneman explained this by loss aversion, a cognitive bias under which losses are valued more than equivalent gains (Tversky and Kahneman Reference Kahneman and Tversky1979; Reference Tversky and Kahneman1981).

We claim that risky choice, does not apply to the Kosovo referendum campaign, at least for the segment of the population in Serbia for whom Kosovo is lost. The essence of our argument is that the ruling elites in Serbia have already lowered the relevant reference point, thus assuming that Serbs have nothing (or very little) on Kosovo and can therefore only gain if the peace agreement is to be struck. Under such a reference point, it might be that many people experience that it is not possible to lose anything because all (or almost all) had already been lost. This practically makes risky choices inapplicable in this case.

There is a type of framing that resembles a risky choice in that the framer is interested in one unique goal. The only reason why the framers would use a positive or negative frame would be to establish which frame is more efficient to achieve this goal (Levin, Schneider, and Gaeth Reference Levin, Schneider and Gaeth1998). Goal framers are, therefore, indifferent between the frames. Instead, they are interested in their efficiency to bring about a unique outcome. A typical example of goal framing is the experiment about preventive breast examination, which showed that women who were faced with an argument to do breast examinations framed as a loss expressed more willingness to do the examination than the women who were faced with positive or neutral arguments (Meyerowitz and Chaiken Reference Meyerowitz and Chaiken1987).

In contrast to risky choice and goal framing, attributive framing offers a possibility for an evaluation of choice. For example, in the experiment of branding meat as 75 percent lean or 25 percent fat (Levin and Gaeth Reference Levin and Gaeth1988), selecting the former states that one dislikes fat provided that it is vilified within a community. Here, positive frames are found to generate more positive evaluations than negative ones because the majority of people prefer winning to losing, given the reference point has been set to be low or non-existent.

We argue that in our research on the hypothetical referendum on the Serbia/Kosovo peace deal, positive messages had more effect than negative ones because we framed the question as an instance of evaluative choice. The support for a positive referendum campaign, where people choose to accept the agreement to receive something, offers the voters a possibility to evaluate their choice, which is why positive frames appeal to voters more than the negative ones. We asked if the respondents would accept/reject the agreement with Pristina, given that this choice could result in two opposite worlds (e.g., peace/conflict, economic prosperity/poverty). If they choose lasting peace in the Balkans, they must also be against armed conflicts. Similarly, they must also be against economic poverty, blockade of EU accession, and the loss of the Serbian cultural heritage and population in Kosovo if they had previously chosen economic prosperity, EU accession, and the protection of the Serbian cultural heritage as well as Serbs in the province.

The importance of the reference point is further exemplified when we disaggregate the data through different arguments or tokens. Although differences between tokens were not significant, at least in our sample, respondents were slightly more inclined to accept the deal if it was designed to preserve peace than if it was designed to lead to membership in the EU. In this case, peace might be a more desirable carrot for our sample because it is something that is universally praised and within reach. By contrast, the EU membership is an uncertain and high-hanging fruit but also a contested foreign policy goal. According to an opinion poll from March 2019, 46.80 percent of Serbs are for, 25.38 percent against; while 27.82 percent remain undecided when it comes to EU membership (Pjevović and Subotić Reference Duštan and Subotić2019, 2). Another research shows that 71.7 percent of respondents would reject recognition of Kosovo if it were a precondition for membership in the EU. In comparison, only 14.15 percent would accept such a bargain (CSDRI 2019, 17). But, as we mentioned before, differences in framing effect between tokens were not significant, which suggests that in a real referendum campaign, framing would not substantially depend on whether someone uses peace, economic prosperity, population/cultural heritage, or EU membership as an argument in the assumed referendum.