Judicial Change in Yugoslavia: The Rise of Ethno-Political Justice

Abstract

During 1990 Yugoslavia underwent a radical political transformation which ended 45 years of single-party rule, but also seriously threatened the unity of the country. Failure to resolve the serious economic and political crisis that beset Yugoslavia during the second half of the 1980s, together with the ‘demonstration effect’ of the fall 1989 democratic revolution in East Central Europe, were the two most important factors finally frustrating the ability of the communist regime to perpetuate its novel admixture of one-party monopoly and ‘self-management’. In several regions of the country (Slovenia, Croatia, BosniaHercegovina and Macedonia) the communists were defeated by non-communist center-right parties in free multi-party elections. In other areas (Serbia, Vojvodina and Montenegro) former communist elites and party organizations — reconfigured and sometimes newly labelled as socialists — managed to retain power, but were now faced with substantial parliamentary and extra-parliamentary opposition from non-communist parties (Table 5.1). By the early fall of 1990 the country—s intrinsic diversity and liberated associational impulses had resulted in the formation of over 200 political parties, most of which were small regionally based organizations, striving to advance specific ethnic interests.

Today in Yugoslavia we have a condition of state anarchy… Ten or twenty years ago we were dissatisfied with the legal state, but at least we had one (Srdja Popovic, Yugoslav human rights lawyer, November, 1990).

We now practically have six separate legal systems…. The present situation is characterized by the strengthening of political power over the law. It seems that everyone is talking about democracy, but there is very little real democracy (Milovan Buzadzic, president of the Constitutional Court, 6 May 1991).