Serbian government dissolves

10 March 2008, 1512 EDT

Ellie Tzortzi of Reuters:

The coalition government of Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica was formally dissolved on Monday, opening the way for an early parliamentary election.

The decision was taken at a brief cabinet session following Kostunica’s announcement on Saturday that the government could not continue in office owing to deep disunity over defending Kosovo versus pursuing a place in the European Union.

“The government did not have a united and common policy any more,” a statement said, “and this kept it from performing its basic constitutional function, to define and lead Serbia’s politics.”

The key question is whether Kosovo will usher in a less EU-friendly and more nationalist government.

President Boris Tadic must now disband parliament and set a date for the election, probably on May 11. It will be the most important election since voters ended the era of the late autocrat Slobodan Milosevic in 2000.

The vote will be a close race between the Democrats and the nationalist Radicals, the strongest party.

Kostunica, whose party lies a distant third, quit after tacitly accusing his coalition partners, the Democrats and the G17 Plus party, of giving up on Kosovo, the 90-percent Albanian province which seceded last month with Western backing.

I don’t know enough about Serbian politics to make any predictions, but it strikes me that radicalization remains a strong possibility. One could argue that the benefits of an independent Kosovo outweigh a more nationalist Serbia. After all, the Serbs remain pretty hemmed in and international forces remain in Kosovo. Any thoughts from our better-informed readers?

Dan Nexon

Daniel H. Nexon is a Professor at Georgetown University, with a joint appointment in the Department of Government and the School of Foreign Service. His academic work focuses on international-relations theory, power politics, empires and hegemony, and international order. He has also written on the relationship between popular culture and world politics.

He has held fellowships at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation and at the Ohio State University's Mershon Center for International Studies. During 2009-2010 he worked in the U.S. Department of Defense as a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow. He was the lead editor of International Studies Quarterly from 2014-2018.

He is the author of The Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe: Religious Conflict, Dynastic Empires, and International Change (Princeton University Press, 2009), which won the International Security Studies Section (ISSS) Best Book Award for 2010, and co-author of Exit from Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global Order (Oxford University Press, 2020). His articles have appeared in a lot of places. He is the founder of the The Duck of Minerva, and also blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money.