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I know a lot of scholars count Serbia as a democracy, but it wasn't until 2001. Milosevic was a classic post-soviet Eastern European autocratic strongman. While Serbia had a parliament, electoral fraud was rife.

Milosevic's popular support was likely around 10% at the end. The country was governed by a weird coalition of financial interests that made up a ruling class of a few tens of thousands of people - many ex-communists.

In terms of success as a kleptocrat, Milosevic is only beaten out by Suharto, Marcos and a small number of others - he likely stole in excess of a billion.

That said - the Balkan wars do present another case of democracy v democracy at war as at some points Croatia and Bosnia (the Muslim canton) were at a state of war yet both were democracies (altho also arguably ruled by strongmen).



dragonwriter know that Serbia wasn't a stable democracy at the time. He just refuses to discuss it because he is trolling.

Also, Croatia/Bosnia/Serbia were civil wars.

Anyway, how many free elections had Croatia and Bosnia had at that time, to be defined as democratic? :-)

How many peaceful transitions of power had there been at the time (the real gold test)? :-)

If just one reasonably free election is needed, then Hamas in Gaza is a democratic government... :-)




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