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This is the final volume in a series devoted to civic and uncivic values in the post-Yugoslav region. The following books have been published previously:

In addition, the volume The Liberal Project and the Transformation of Democracy: The Case of East Central Europe, Texas A&M University Press (2007) by Sabrina P. Ramet is associated with this series and focuses on many of the same themes as the volumes listed above.

The purposes of this series and of this volume in particular are: to probe and analyze the progress in the region in the building of liberal democratic systems operating according to the rule of law and respecting the equality of people, including religious, ethnic, and sexual minorities; to show how civic values are important for the building of stable democratic systems; to track the performance of the Yugoslav successor states in building free and professional media; and to assess the state of the local economies, focusing especially on unemployment and poverty.

How successful or unsuccessful has Macedonia been since its declaration of independence in 1991? The question sounds simple enough. At first glance, one is inclined to say that it has been unusually unsuccessful, even by Balkan standards. The country has been blocked by Greece in its quest to join the European Union (EU) and NATO, was forced – again by Greece – to change its flag and modify its constitution to renounce territorial aspirations it never nurtured, and was admitted to the United Nations only under the humiliating name Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia – a designation which suggests to Macedonians that their state is a kind of pariah. Then there is the fact that 30.4 per cent of its people were living below the poverty line in 2011 (see the Introduction to this volume). Again, as noted in the Introduction, Macedonia's ranking on press freedom in 2015 was the lowest among the seven Yugoslav successor states. And finally, there is the extent of corruption through which the ruling party has maintained itself in power since 2006 (detailed below in the subsection Allegations of Abuse of Power and in the section Political Transformation II below).

On the other hand, Macedonia was successful in staying out of the War of Yugoslav Succession (1991–95) as well as the 1999 War for Kosovo, avoided being carved up between Greece and Serbia in 1992, and has been relatively successful in boosting revenue from tourism, earning 110 million euros from that sector in 2013. In addition, in 2001, an Albanian insurgency was successfully resolved with the signing of the Ohrid Peace Accords (discussed below).

In March 2004, the Republic of Macedonia applied for membership in the European Union. The European Commission reviewed the country's application and delivered a favorable opinion in November 2005 and, the following month, Macedonia was granted candidate status. In order to gain membership in the EU, Macedonia will have to meet certain criteria laid down by the European Council at its meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark, in June 1993.

As the communist organizational monopoly collapsed in one country after another across Central and Southeastern Europe, the peoples of the region faced the dual challenge of constructing valued democratic institutions and invigorating or reinvigorating local economies. Nowhere in the region was this challenge harder than in the new states which emerged out of the dying Socialist Federated Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY). The war which, after touching Slovenia only briefly in summer 1991, raged across Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina for four years, like the subsequent war in Kosovo during 1998–99, resulted in casualties, the flight and displacement of refugees, the ethnic homogenization of areas which had earlier included two or three peoples, the destruction of entire villages, damage to infrastructure, and serious impact for the economy of every Yugoslav successor state without exception. This volume endeavors to make a contribution to understanding how well the seven successor states of Yugoslavia have done in meeting this dual challenge, while bearing in mind that global problems, such as the economic crash of 2008, the spread of organized crime, and severe summer and winter weather have also played some part in the economic, and thus also in the social and political, calculus.

The War of Yugoslav Succession and the Liberal Democratic Project

It is usually overlooked that “the Yugoslav crisis began no later than the mid-1970s, when the combination of oil price hikes and overborrowing started the Yugoslav economic meltdown.” As long as Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito remained on the scene, centrifugal forces were kept in check. But after his death in May 1980, critical voices began to be heard. Especially striking was the outbreak of province-wide protests in Kosovo in April 1981, signaling that many of that province's Albanians had lost faith in the system. By 1983, leading figures in the ruling League of Communists of Yugoslavia (LCY) were admitting that the country's much-touted system of workers’ self-management had never operated as originally intended; there were also warnings from prominent figures, about the same time, that the country might be sliding toward civil war.

For the last twenty-five years, some of the most prominent international organizations (Freedom House, Transparency International, the World Bank, the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD), Amnesty International, and the Human Development Report) have repeatedly characterized Slovenia as a champion among Yugoslav successor states for its development of liberal democracy. Nevertheless, aspects in many areas of Slovene democratic and economic life have changed or worsened in the last several years, while signs of stagnation have also been recorded in other areas. It therefore appears to be an appropriate time to assess Slovenia's progress in developing a liberal democratic system, focusing in particular on characteristics of the party arena, the costs of transformation of its economic system, problems of corruption, and the young republic's record in establishing independent media and in protecting ethnic, religious, and sexual minorities.

Political Transformation

At the end of May 1988, at a time when Slovenia was still part of the Socialist Federated Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY), the Military Council of the Ljubljana District of the Yugoslav National Army (JNA) had three Slovenian journalists and one army sergeant arrested and put on trial. The charge brought against them was that they had published secret documents showing that the JNA had been preparing to arrest a number of liberals in Slovenia and put an end to efforts to democratize the republic. The army magnified the offense to Slovenian public opinion by conducting the trial in Serbo-Croatian, even though it was being held in Ljubljana, Slovenia's capital. The trial galvanized Slovenes, with crowds of 10,000 to 12,000 gathering in protest in downtown Ljubljana day after day for the duration of the trial. In this context, an extralegal Committee for the Protection of Human Rights emerged; the Slovenian communist authorities made contact with this committee and declared their full agreement with the views and aims of the committee. On 27 July 1988, the four accused – among whom was the future defense minister and eventual prime minister, Janez Janša – were found guilty and sentenced to prison terms ranging from five months to four years. An opinion poll conducted at the time revealed that 63 per cent of Slovenes wanted to see their republic secede from the SFRY.