There is a particular kind of grim determination that accompanies a Balkan election day, especially when the citizenry collectively realizes that their governing apparatus has worn out its welcome. In Serbia, early reports indicate a record-shattering turnout as voters, spearheaded by an energetic student movement, queue up to deliver what looks suspiciously like a formal eviction notice to longtime leader Aleksandar Vučić. For over a decade, Vučić has occupied the highest echelons of power with the immovable smugness of an eccentric uncle who was invited to sleep on the sofa for a weekend in 2012, promptly rearranged all the furniture, put his name on the utility bills, and now demands you thank him for keeping the lights on.
Watching the youth mobilize against this entrenched paternalism is, I must confess, undeniably refreshing. The modern state always assumes that young people can be bought off with modest stipends, patriotic pageantry, and a few freshly paved roundabouts. Instead, university students have flooded the streets and the polling booths, proving that while youth may occasionally flirt with questionable economic theories, it possesses a keen, visceral allergy to being condescended to by elderly apparatchiks. When a regime spends years micromanaging every facet of civil life, from television licenses to municipal procurement contracts, it inevitably creates a generation of people who just want the political class to leave them alone.
The trouble with longtime political operators like Vučić is not merely that they enjoy the velvet trappings of office; it is that they mistake the machinery of the state for their own personal nervous system. In Belgrade, the ruling party has mastered the dreary art of administrative clientelism. Jobs in state-owned enterprises, licenses for small businesses, and permits to build an awning on a cafe have long flowed downstream through a network of bureaucratic favors. It is the classic East European model of soft autocracy: you do not need to ban dissent outright if you can simply subject your opponents to a lethal dose of regulatory friction while showering your cronies with state-backed subsidies.
Here we must dust off Friedrich Hayek, who saw through the romance of majoritarian politics long before the current crop of Balkan administrators was born. In The Constitution of Liberty, Hayek reminded us that democracy is essentially a means, a utilitarian device for safeguarding internal peace and individual freedom, rather than an absolute end in itself. If a democracy merely offers the public a choice between two competing syndicates to manage an overweening, bloated state apparatus, then liberty has barely advanced an inch. Voting out a strongman is an emotionally satisfying exercise in hygiene, much like scrubbing the grease off an old stove, but the stove still burns if the pilot light of unlimited executive power remains lit.
The great hazard for Serbia’s passionate reformers lies in what comes next, assuming the tallies survive the inevitable recount theater and bureaucratic heel-dragging. The history of post-communist transitions is littered with well-meaning coalitions that successfully dethroned a despot only to inherit his toolbox and decide that, actually, the executive decrees are quite handy when used for enlightened purposes. A new coalition entering government almost always suffers from the fatal conceit that the problem with coercive state authority was merely the character of the man holding the rubber stamp. They promise to direct the ministries with compassion, to regulate the markets with equity, and to staff the state broadcaster with respectable scholars.
Yet the machine remains intact, waiting for the next ambitious functionary to discover its levers. If the brave students lining up at Serbian polling stations wish to achieve a lasting victory, they must demand something far more radical than a change of personnel. They must demand the dismantling of the regulatory empire that makes holding state power so lucrative in the first place. Until you privatize the state’s favorite monopolies, slash the regulatory permits that foster bribery, and restrict the government’s capacity to pick winners and losers, you have not defeated the regime; you have merely hired a new caretaker for the palace.
For today, however, let us raise a modest glass of plum brandy to the Serbian electorate. Watching citizens flood the ballot boxes to strip an arrogant political establishment of its self-appointed mandate is one of the few spectator sports that offers genuine civic pleasure. The state is an embarrassing, overbearing relative that insists on managing your life, misplacing your money, and telling you how to run your business. Whenever the voters find the courage to hand that relative his coat and show him the front door, it is a development well worth celebrating, provided they remember to change the locks the moment he steps outside.