This article deals with the social accountability activities of civil society organizations in Serbia and Cambodia. In both countries, they emerged with the conceptual and financial support of ...international development agencies; yet, the outputs were mediated by the social and political contexts. Still, these activities have some joint features: they (1) boost both understanding and awareness rather than solely mobilizing social interests; (2) target the interests of individual citizens rather than the interests of social-based groups or classes; (3) promote state cooperation instead of confrontation and (3) insist on the use of technical policy-related tools and mechanisms instead of political mobilization. The social accountability initiatives analyzed here have followed a policy-not-politics or depoliticized approach. As a consequence, they were ineffective in mobilizing citizens and social groups in a manner that would efficiently demand more accountability. On the other hand, governments contested civil society and appropriated its accountability discourses and strategies in an effort that can be read as an attempt to resist imposing government accountability and rule of law and pacifying present and future civic activism.
Drawing on a 2018 survey on a convenience sample of 716 Serbian and 393 Croatian legal professionals, we assess their attitudes towards Serbian and Croatian judiciaries against their key dimensions: ...independence, efficiency, quality, and fairness and impartiality. Legal professionals in both countries have little confidence in their judiciary, which we take as a proxy for legitimacy. Hence, both judiciaries are faced with an internal crisis of legitimacy. Respondents also scored judiciaries low on each of the key dimensions, while regression analysis confirmed that these attitudes are strong predictors of legitimacy. The results indicate that apparent differences in historical trajectories have not undermined common post-transitional political struggles over the role of judiciaries.
In this paper we analyze attitudes of members of the legal professions in Croatia and Serbia with regards to the judicial systems – the trust in judicial institutions and satisfaction with their ...performance. In the first part of the paper we present arguments of the cultural and institutional approach to explaining the foundations of trust in institutions, then define the characteristics of a “good” judiciary in the context of the democratic rule of law, and present the socio-political context of judicial reform in both countries over the last twenty years. In the second, empirical part of the paper we analyze the data collected through the online survey conducted among members of the legal professions in 2018 in Croatia and Serbia. The results from both countries show a low level of trust in judiciary and deep dissatisfaction with the functioning of judiciary on a list of dimensions. Our analysis confirms the link between (dis)trust in institutions and (dis)satisfaction with their work and thus also the assumptions of the institutional perspective on trust. We conclude that the obtained results point to an “internal” crisis of trust in judiciary in both countries, which accompanies the evident “external” crisis of the Serbian judiciary and the latent tensions in and around the Croatian judiciary.
In this article, we analyse the social accountability (SA) mechanisms that have recently been established in Cambodia. These initiatives take place in a socio-political context marked by pervasive ...neo-patrimonial structures. Our focus is on the "strategies" implemented by state actors, CSOs and ordinary citizens (mediated by neo-patrimonial structures) - strategies that demonstrate a "neo-patrimonial trap" into which SA initiatives have fallen, whereby official institutions and accountability lines have been undermined. These "strategies" are: to focus SA activities on local level authorities who have no means or power to introduce changes in governance or to improve public services, and to allow SA practices to emerge only to the extent that they do not threaten actual authoritarian distribution of power, norms and practices of clientelistic exchange, and the benefits obtained through patron-client relations. As a result, citizens have not been empowered to demand accountability but, paradoxically, have been encouraged to take over some government responsibilities. This, in turn, strengthens the networks of clientelism and patronage. These insights indicate the weak potential of externally-imposed SA mechanisms in an authoritarian and neo-patrimonial setting in which the government is only partly committed to achieving accountability. The findings are based on a two-year study conducted using a combination of qualitative sociological methods and an ethnographic approach.
The article analyzes how various societal interests and groups influenced employment and social policies in contemporary Serbia. These policies were shaped under the influence of international actors ...and current mainstream ideas. However, various societal interests and interest groups have affected them. Using policy network analysis, we identified key actors, their interests and ideological preferences, and the influence they exerted on the employment and welfare policies. The research indicates that the potential for the redistribution of power and resources is a trigger for establishing policy networks. In the field of social welfare we identify a stable policy network connecting various professional groups (from the public sector, academia, and the nongovernmental sector). There was a lack of other social interests in the debate, that is, welfare beneficiaries or civil society pressures that would influence policy process. The policy network was thereby primarily based on clearly identified interests of professional groups, and new welfare policies redefined and improved their professional and social status. In the field of employment policies, there was a lack of societal interests and organized interests groups that would influence policy process and outcomes. No policy network was identified, and obviously key actors in shaping of employment and labor policies (i.e., economic elites) were not even among the direct participants in the process. During the course of the policy reforms, direct and specific redistributive interests of groups that could have benefited from the new policies had mediated various policy inputs and at the end prevailed over the broader ideological frameworks.
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