The two faces of polarization

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A specter haunts Europe, the specter of polarization. In polarized democracies, persistent hostility and lack of trust among political actors have negative consequences for democracy: they undermine the possibility of political agreements and, ultimately, can even threaten the functioning of democracy. However, polarization in Western and Eastern Europe has two different faces: in some countries, the debate is polarized around political issues, such as the economy, while in several Eastern European countries, political disputes arise over corruption, the erosion of democracy and the rule of law. Therefore, the response to polarization cannot be the same either.

Polarization is manifested today in major European democracies such as Germany, France and Poland. There, the political public is divided into extreme leftists and rightists, extreme conservatives and liberals, and their political enmity also opens up social divisions. When the parties are polarized, the ground for creating a parliamentary majority is lost. In some circumstances, such as the current situation in Poland, with a conservative president and a liberal parliamentary majority, the search for consensus becomes a challenge. Second, due to polarization, more and more citizens see the political opponent as illegitimate, which means the denial of democratic norms in the fight with the political enemy.

In a number of other Central and Eastern European countries, however, the political debate is fueled by corruption. The problem pointed out by students in Serbia exists in different forms throughout the region, in Bulgaria, Montenegro, Georgia, Hungary, Moldova and Slovakia. Perhaps the term "corruption" even trivializes the problem, because we are not talking about bribing traffic policemen, but about the close ties between the actions of politicians and organized crime, and about the enormous misuse of public funds. Of course, each of these countries has political actors and civil society, which rebel against corruption and crime.

THE CRIMINAL FACE OF POLARIZATION

The criminal activities of politicians and "businessmen", to use a euphemism, can bring entire economies to the brink of collapse. Moldova has barely recovered from the 2014 banking scandal. Then the three largest banks stole 12 percent of GDP through fraudulent transactions, and the state stepped in and is still suffering the consequences of the financial collapse today. One of the oligarchs behind the bank robberies, Ilan Shor, became actively involved in politics. Now he is fighting against the reformist president Maja Sandu by all means, by, for example, buying votes. A little further, in Georgia, the biggest oligarch, Bidzina Ivanishvili, decided to enter politics, founded his own party "Georgian Dream" and finances it. He turned the country into an authoritarian regime. All these examples show symptoms of polarization: they lead society to a loss of trust and non-recognition of legitimacy between political actors. However, there are significant differences between the two faces of polarization. Of course, after Moldova banned pro-oligarchic, criminal political entities, they complained that it was a ban on political opinion. However, when it comes to the second, criminal face of polarization, the battle is not about the rights of the LGBT community, as the banned parties in Moldova claim, for example, but democracy itself is at stake.

This second type of conflict often moves from the parliamentary arena to court proceedings or to the street. In Slovakia, the demonization of political opponents and investigative journalists culminated in the murder of the well-known investigative journalist Jan Kuciak and his partner in 2018. Six years later, left-wing authoritarian Prime Minister Robert Fico fell victim to an attack. We don't even have to mention the murder of Zoran Đinđić. The term "polarization" has the smell of symmetrical conflict, but in all the mentioned countries political threats and violence can primarily be attributed to one side. Two attacks in Slovakia bear witness to this: it seems that the attack on Fitz was politically motivated, but the perpetrator is politically a little confused, he carried out the attack alone, while the murder of the journalist is linked to business actors and the secret service, who are again close to some politicians, and according to Slovak media, also connected to the former/new Prime Minister Fitz. Of course, there is a doubt that Đinđić's murder also has a political background. Against the first, ideological type of polarization, dialogue is often prescribed as a remedy. However, this drug can have very dangerous side effects in the case of another type of polarization. Namely, when the pro-democratic opposition or civil society is criticized for refusing dialogue and compromise with the government, it is trivializing the problem and humiliating the victims of violence and crime.

NON-IDEOLOGICAL GOVERNMENT

Ideology is sometimes used as a by-product. In particular, the former entity president Milorad Dodik used nationalism and the specter of separatism to distract attention from the abuse of power. In Hungary, Fidesz's campaign against Djordje Šoroš and LGBT rights was staged to divide the opposition and obscure the poor state of the economy and corruption. It even seems that the Hungarian government deliberately led to the escalation of the migrant crisis in 2015, in order to bring the issue to the fore and thereby secure the support of right-wing voters. Milo Đukanović and the Montenegrin Democratic Socialists (DPS) may have even had the most creative formula for a thirty-year rule: the ingredients were clientelism, vote buying and the issue of independence. Đukanović accused all other parties of being either pro-Serbian, or potential coalition partners with pro-Serbian parties, and thus all but DPS became traitors to independence. With that cocktail, legitimate alternatives disappeared, while the DPS had a free hand to cooperate with the mafia, and it certainly won the elections. Orban, Dodik and Đukanović have one point in common in their biographies: they all completely changed their ideology during their political careers. I would not rule out that this is an indication that they are primarily using ideology as a strategic weapon.

However, Eastern European polarization also works without ideology. The Serbian SNS, for example, barely talks about the party's history from the nineties, but today everything revolves around the rather non-ideological promise of the "economic tiger". Of course, for that purpose he uses the monopoly on national television and collects voters through clientelistic networks. Nationalism is used only temporarily, in order to overcome crises. Last year, in the election campaign in Georgia, the ruling party emphasized its merit in obtaining the status of a candidate for the EU. With that, she took over the main argument of the opposition and overcame the main political difference. However, that was a lie: even before the elections, it was clear that the main obstacle to European integration was precisely the ruling party and its abuse of power. Immediately after the election, the government completely slammed the door to the EU.

FORCED FOR DIALOGUE

Throughout history, smaller Western European countries have developed a tried and tested – but currently very controversial in France and Germany – formula for combating polarization: depolarization through engagement and compromise. Politics in my home country, Switzerland, is based on this formula. But in the fight against the other face of polarization, this formula can create a problem for the opposition and pro-democratic actors. Of course, dialogue and pacts were once very successful in countries affected by corruption and mafia structures, and led to the restoration of democracy and the rule of law. This was the case in North Macedonia in 2015, after large-scale protests against corruption and wiretapping scandals. There, the government and the opposition agreed in the "Pržin Agreement" to establish a special prosecutor's office and call new elections, which led to a change of government. This, however, requires the willingness of the ruling party, or at least one significant faction, for genuine reforms, that is, the willingness to step down from power. But dialogue and compromise cannot be a universal panacea, despite the fact that many international actors use it. Because whoever enters into business with organized crime risks getting his hands bloody. In this way, the international community's pressure on political actors to respond to the call for talks exposes the opposition and civil society to the risk of discredit. Namely, the success of the dialogue in North Macedonia was the result, above all, of the international community's pressure on the prime minister to resign and agree to a transitional cabinet and a criminal investigation. There are other reasons why dialogue is not an option: in Georgia, recently, most of the opposition leaders are behind bars.

The author is a professor of political science at the University of Belgrade and the Central European University in Vienna. He leads the EU project "Horizon Europe" on international support for democracy in Eastern Europe