Political Elites and Decentralization Reforms in the Post-Socialist Balkans

Alexander Kleibrink is Senior Fellow at the European Research Centre for Anti-Corruption and State-Building and Associated Fellow at the Free University Berlin. He has been working on regional development, innovation policy and open governance, and has engaged in several projects on good governance.

• List of Figures and Tables Foreword List of Abbreviations 1. Centre-Periphery Relations in the Balkan 1.1. Problem definition and research question 1.2. Regional autonomy and decentralisation 1.3. The case studies: Serbia and Croatia in the context of former Yugoslavia 1.4. Research design, methodology and case selection 1.5. Outline of the book 2. A Framework for Studying Elite Access to Resources 2.1. Existing accounts of decentralisation 2.2. Resource dependency and elite agreements between centre and periphery 2.3. Conclusion 3. The Role of Institutional Legacies from Yugoslav Decentralisation 3.1. Pre-socialist legacies 3.2. Socialist legacies: Accommodation 3.3. Nationalist-authoritarian legacies from the 1990s: Confrontation 3.4. Conclusion 4. Access to Electoral Resources 4.1. Electoral resources in centre and periphery 4.2. The electoral systems in Serbia and Croatia 4.3. Access to electoral resources at regional and national level 4.4. Conclusion 5. Information Exchange and Cooperation 5.1. Centre-periphery relations during autonomy negotiations since 2000 5.2. Methodological note 5.3. Information exchange between centre and periphery 5.4. Strategic cooperation between centre and periphery 5.5. Conclusion 6. Access to Patronage Resources 6.1. Access to patronage resources as a causal mechanism 6.2. The extent of patronage in Serbia and Croatia 6.3. Methodological note 6.4. Expert survey results 6.5. The politicisation of state-owned enterprises and government funds 6.6. Conclusion 7. Conclusions APPENDIX ANNEX I: List of interviewees ANNEX II: List of organisations for network analysisANNEX III: Descriptive statistics of expert survey ANNEX IV: Timeline of decentralisation in Croatia (Istria) and Serbia (Vojvodina), 1990-2010 BIBLIOGRAPHY INDEX

“The monograph is a useful and welcome work in several respects. It offers a fresh take on decentralisation studies, shifting away from ethnically-centred discussions on decentralisation … . the study is a refreshing and important one. The shift of focus towards the agency of the political elites, and in particular towards a resources-driven framework, is much needed; for anyone familiar with the region … .” (Tena Prelec, Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 69 (6), 2017)“There are several reasons to recommend Alexander Kleibrink’s Political Elites and Decentralization Reforms in the Post-Socialist Balkans to anyone interested in the politics of decentralization in Europe. … The analytical core of the book is a comparison of decentralization reforms in Croatia and Serbia, or more specifically of the devolution of powers to two historical regions within each country – Istria in Croatia and Vojvodina in Serbia.” (Vera Šćepanović, Regional Studies, July, 2016)