Another snap election is upon us. The period since the last election held in 2022 has been special. Although we are already used to snap elections, never before has the date of the next election been so debated in the public. Before all the votes from the previous election were counted, the first, albeit vague, promise of new elections in a few months was already made. That date has been moved and put off for more than a year, and the public was kept in constant uncertainty until November 1st.
Deciding on the date of snap elections has become one of the ways in which the electoral process in Serbia is manipulated. The opportunistic dissolution of the Parliament in order to hold new elections, if made a regular occurrence, as is the case here, distorts the meaning of constitutional and legal norms and allows the ruling majority an electoral advantage. In the last decade, Serbia has become unique in Europe in terms of the frequency of opportunistic snap elections. In this article, I will show which norms are being violated and how, and I will try to explain why the ruling majority does this and how they benefit.
Free, fair… periodic?
The Code of Good Practice in Electoral Matters of the Venice Commission states general, equal, free, secret and direct suffrage as the starting principles of the European electoral heritage, but also that elections should be held at regular intervals. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights states that elections should be periodic, and the Protocol to the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms states that they should be held at “reasonable intervals.”
This norm is primarily related to establishing term limits for elected representatives. In democracies, the mandate of the legislature is limited to a maximum of four or five years. However, there is no norm that explicitly establishes the shortest term of office, and solutions vary from country to country. The duration of the mandate goes beyond the framework of electoral law and depends on various constitutional solutions that regulate the relationship between the executive and legislative powers, that is, the ways of early dissolution of the parliament.
Countries with a fixed duration of the mandate of the parliament are rare. One of those consolidated democracies is Norway, where elections are held every four years, without exception. Other examples are most often states with a presidential system, in which the executive government is formed after a presidential election, and states with a Westminster legacy, although there is a great deal of debate on this issue, especially in Great Britain.
All other countries have different constitutional models that determine which actors, how and under which conditions, can dissolve the parliament, which as a rule leads to new elections. But what happens after dissolution is also important. In France, the president has a lot of power to dissolve the parliament, but he can’t do it again in the first 12 months of a new term. In Sweden, the mandate of a parliament formed after a snap election lasts only until the end of the mandate of the prematurely dissolved parliament, i.e. there is no reset of the election calendar. All these provisions can affect the incentives of the ruling majority to call new elections. But why would any parliament be dissolved before the end of the mandate in the first place?
The most common reason for the dissolution of the parliament, which leads to snap elections, is the inability to form a government, that is, when elected representatives cannot form a majority. In most systems, this means that after some time the parliament will be “automatically” dissolved, and its new composition will be elected. Another important reason can be a broken relationship between the government and parliament. For example, a government may lose the confidence of a majority of MPs, and elections may be a way for voters to have their say on who has more legitimacy in such a conflict. If a coalition government is unstable, elections can be a solution to the political crisis caused by the conflicts between the coalition partners. Even in the case of sudden political changes, in relation to the policies that the parties advocated in the election manifestos or government work programs, the dissolution of the parliament can also be a way to check the will of the voters regarding those changes, but even in this case there are less extreme mechanisms, like a referendum.
While parliaments have often been dissolved in Serbia before, it was almost always due to loss of support for the government or coalition splits. This was the case, among others, in 2003, 2007 and 2008. However, since 2012, something completely different started to happen. In comparative practice, there are known cases when parliaments were dissolved as a way to pick an opportune time for holding new elections. But this has now become the main reason for dissolving the parliament in Serbia.
2-2-4-2-1
Two, two, four, two, one year – that’s all that’s left of the “reasonable intervals” between elections since the SNS came to power. This is the fourth time that snap elections have been called, while MPs have served the full term only once. Unlike Serbia, where special elections are more frequent than regular ones, this possibility also exists in most consolidated democracies, but it is not common. One of the most famous examples is from 1983, when Margaret Thatcher dissolved parliament early in order to ensure her party a better electoral result after the successful intervention in the Falklands.
Empirical research shows that this timely dissolution of parliament pays off. In a 2016 paper, Goplerud and Schleiter show that the ability to call elections when leading in the polls, during periods of economic growth, or at times when the opposition is in crisis, can bring incumbents an electoral bonus of 4.1 to 5.8%. But it always carries the risk of electoral defeat and can cost the government part of its mandate. That is why it happens in consolidated democracies, but rarely. But what about Serbia?
Our constitutional arrangement enables the political majority to stomp over all mechanisms of checks and balances like a steamroller. If the president and the government are from the same parliamentary majority, this gives them enormous power to dissolve the parliament, which is one of the elements, in addition to the electoral and party system and arrangement of the parliament, which enable the concentration of power in the executive branch. All the government has to do is send a reasoned proposal to the president. This year, the explanation used almost identical wording as last year. Anything can be written in the explanation, because, in our system, the content doesn’t really matter. And that has serious consequences in real life.
Out of the 46 member states of the Council of Europe, Serbia, along with Bulgaria and Greece, is among the top three countries in terms of the number of elections held. This holds regardless of which period is considered, from the first multi-party elections in 1990, the change of government in 2000, from 2012, or in the last 10 years. But there are huge differences, especially since SNS came to power, between Serbia and other countries where early elections are also frequent. The main reason why Bulgarian voters went to the polls as many as five times in the last three years, and three times only in 2021, is the inability to form a government. In Greece, snap elections were called when a government could not be formed or when it lost its majority. Spain is fast approaching the top three countries in terms of the number of dissolved parliaments for the same reason. Only in Serbia are so many snap elections called for other reasons.
In the last ten years, Serbia is a unique case in Europe in terms of the number of snap elections that were not caused by a government crisis or a damaged relationship between the government and the parliament. The Serbian Progressive Party has had the majority of voter support since 2014, its majority in the parliament has never been questioned, nor have the majority MPs or coalition partners caused instability in the government. Also, since 2014, there have been no major political changes that the voters of the ruling majority would have to approve.
Therefore, a specific way of manipulating election conditions was developed in Serbia, in which the ruling majority decides to shorten the parliament’s mandate and to strategically call elections when (and where) it suits them. This is especially illustrative now when, simultaneously with the dissolution of the parliament whose mandate lasted only about a year, 66 local parliaments were also completely arbitrarily dissolved. And all of this happened after a year and a half of constant announcements of upcoming early elections. Why does the government do this, and to what end?
Shadow of the future
There are two main reasons for this phenomenon in Serbia. First, Aleksandar Vučić is calling early elections because he can. This means that the advantage of the ruling majority, which is achieved with the help of uneven representation in the media, misuse of public resources and clientelistic practices, is already so convincing that the risk of new elections is acceptably low and they do not expect negative consequences. The second reason is equally important. Calling special elections, in circumstances when the ruling majority can manifest its advantage, allows Vučić to avoid calling elections when he has to – because he does not know whether that advantage will exist when the mandate of the parliament comes to its end.
Vučić calls the elections opportunistically. With very little risk, he postpones regular elections further into the future and thereby reduces the likelihood that elections will have to be held under circumstances that are less favorable to his remaining in power. These could be moments of economic or political crisis, pressures from the international environment, or mass mobilization of the opposition. The more distant the obligation of regular elections, the more room for maneuver the ruling majority has to avoid elections in undesirable conditions.
There are several more specific reasons that make this kind of election so opportune for the government. First, the strategic announcement of elections can serve as an alibi for external observers, for avoiding the implementation of some policies, but also as a justification for internal conditions within Serbia. By calling early elections, Vučić can pause or slow down some political processes. It seems that this is most often the case with the dialogue with Priština. On the other hand, snap elections, as well as coalition partners, can always serve to shift the blame. Things would be even “faster, stronger, better” without all those limitations.
Second, Vučić always announces snap parliamentary elections so that they are held simultaneously with lower level elections. Snap elections in 2014 were held together with Belgrade elections, in 2016 with local and Vojvodina elections, in 2022 with Belgrade and presidential elections, while in 2023 they will be held together with some local, Belgrade and Vojvodina elections. This is one of the ways in which national resources can be directly put at the service of local elections, which gives the ruling party an additional advantage in them. Additionally, the fact that it has been arbitrarily decided that snap local elections will be held only in some of the local self-governments makes these December elections even more special. This allows the ruling majority to use resources in phases and concentrate them in a way that suits them.
This has an effect on both voters and opposition actors. Empirical studies of opportunistic elections generally show that this happens when the economy is booming and voters are better off. But these findings cannot be directly applied to Serbia. The way in which the power of the SNS is maintained is through distributive measures, by targeting resources in the pre-election period to the voters who support the ruling majority. Being able to influence the quality of life of their voters in the short term makes it seem like the voters are constantly living in the “good times” and, thus, reduce the risk of losing support. By coming to the polls so frequently, the voters are rewarded through clientelistic networks and the base is consolidated. This is an important effect, especially after the failure of the authorities to show their supremacy at the counter rally in May this year.
The existing literature on this topic teaches us that frequent elections lead to voter fatigue, but in Serbia this can have different effects on the voter base of the opposition and the government, that is, on voters who are guided by programs and those who are motivated by distributive measures. Opposition voters go from defeat to defeat, are less motivated, and may become more inclined to abstain, while government voters may feel the direct benefits of electoral victories, both material and psychological. On top of that, in circumstances of marked disparity in resources, intensification of the pace of elections means that opposition parties are depleting their resources and cannot match the parties in power.
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Although it often seems that some things are only happening here, it isn’t true most of the time. We are surrounded by countries with similar historical heritage, institutions and political culture. But snap elections in Serbia are an excellent example of the development of an unusual practice in specific circumstances. Vučić calls snap elections because he can and because it brings him an additional electoral advantage, always avoiding some dark specter looming in the future. It is actually a reflection of the imbalance between the almost unlimited power he has at home and the constant anxiety of what he cannot control, which usually threatens the government from the outside.
If there are any lessons to be drawn from this, it is that electoral manipulations must be seen in an ever-widening context. In the past, election manipulation meant theft on election day. But today we have to understand that the instruments of authoritarian rulers are much more diverse and complex. In this case, the outcome of the election is influenced even at a level that was traditionally not considered a part of the environment in which elections are held, but a part of constitutional design. To begin with, this phenomenon should be understood and exposed to criticism. And in the future, when the time comes to build new institutions, they will have to be smarter and more resistant to an ever-widening spectrum of abuses of power.
Translated by Marijana Simić
Peščanik.net, 15.11.2023.
