Serbia’s Bulldozer Revolution Reconsidered

This paper examines the consequences of the mode of extrication for democratic consolidation in the context of regime hybridity. It provides an in depth analysis of one instance of so called electoral revolution: Serbia’s ‘Bulldozer’ revolution witnessed in October 2000. Applying the concept of path dependency, it seeks to understand how the remnants of the Milosevic regime have stood in the way of democratic reform. The primary argument brought forth in this paper is that while pacts forged between members of Serbia’s democratic opposition and members of the previous regime’s security sector enabled the immediate transition from regime hybridity to electoral democracy, their long-term effect would be to preserve the previous practices, prerogatives, and powers of Milosevic’s security sector. Ultimately, the legacies of this reserved domain would hinder the completion of democracy in Serbia. The core argument of this paper thus challenges the assumptions of both transitological and post-transitological studies. While the former argue that pacted transitions have beneficial consequences for democratic consolidation, the latter locate the major drivers of regime change in exclusively bottom-up initiatives. This paper’s findings question both of these interpretations, and thus challenge scholars and practitioners alike to reconceptualise their understandings of transitional processes.