AUTHORITARIANISM - RESEARCH ATLASAVtokratija

How the authoritarian system works in Serbia

General research connected to documented examples, findings, and sources from Serbia.

Start with a question→

100questions

20areas

148academic works

130Serbia sources

SIX ENTRIES INTO THE MATRIX

Which question do you want to start with?

Concrete questions are the starting point. The other 94 are available through the map of 20 areas.

22How can elections be unfair if no one stole my vote?What elections are for when they are not fair 62Why do people use connections even when they believe connections should not be necessary?Why people stay silent, adapt, and think they are alone 48What happens to institutions when people are hired and promoted mainly for political loyalty?How the system changes public administration and public services 33How does a court lose its independence while remaining independent on paper?How law, courts, and parliament are used 49Why do employees find it harder to say 'no' when their job or term continually depends on a new government decision?How the system changes public administration and public services 36How can an institution be captured if no one ordered every employee what to do?How independent institutions are neutralized and crises are used

MAP OF THE AUTHORITARIAN SYSTEM

Twenty areas guide you through the system as a whole.

Select an area to see why it matters and which five questions it opens.

01How to recognize authoritarian rule and distinguish its forms5 questions 02How democracy disappears step by step5 questions 03Who really rules and what happens after the leader5 questions 04Why the police, military, and security services obey5 questions 05What elections are for when they are not fair5 questions 06How the ruling party and local networks hold the system together5 questions 07How law, courts, and parliament are used5 questions 08How independent institutions are neutralized and crises are used5 questions 09How money, jobs, and state assistance preserve power5 questions 10How the system changes public administration and public services5 questions 11How those in power shape what people can learn5 questions 12How digital surveillance and bad news change power5 questions 13Why people stay silent, adapt, and think they are alone5 questions 14Why people support the government and how power is justified5 questions 15How associations, unions, schools, and churches are controlled5 questions 16How the system punishes and intimidates without open violence5 questions 17How people organize and when protest changes power5 questions 18How an authoritarian system falls and what remains afterward5 questions 19How authoritarian rulers use support from abroad5 questions 20How democracy is defended and rebuilt5 questions

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WHY THIS AREA MATTERS

How the ruling party and local networks hold the system together

The party and local intermediaries connect the top of the government with jobs, services, and citizens' everyday needs. Political support can then become a condition for something that should be a right.

QUESTIONS IN THIS AREA

26What does a ruling party do besides win elections?27How do local party figures become the link between citizens, services, and the top of government?28How do party membership or activism become a route to a job, contract, or protection?29When does state assistance stop being a right and become a tool of political pressure?30When does the ruling party protect the system, and when does it become a threat to the leader?

Research-based answerAUTLAS Research Base

How do party membership or activism become a route to a job, contract, or protection?

Confidence in the conclusionquite substantiated, with important conditions

key academic works5

linked Serbia sources11

Period201226

ANSWER FROM THE MATRIX

Party booklet or activism becomes a way to benefit when the government has a major impact on employment, public contracts, permits, inspections and protection from problems. In such an environment, political work serves as evidence that someone is reliable, willing to return the favor and unlikely to publicly oppose it.

People can, therefore, glue posters, bring voters or attend gatherings not out of conviction, but because they estimate that without it they find it harder to get a job or keep an existing one. The system thus turns existential uncertainty into a political resource. One party employment is not enough to conclude; a repeated pattern in which political activity and benefit are connected is important, and professional criteria, public competition and the right of appeal have little real weight.

SERBIA CASE STUDY

Example from SerbiaChecked 11 sources; 9 manufacturers

11 related sources; 9 groups of evidence producers; domestic NGOs/research producers: 8

Party booklet rarely appears as a formal requirement in the competition. In Serbia, political eligibility is more often seen through temporary contracts, recommendations, work on party stands and meetings, progress without clear benchmarks or the expectation that the employee will provide votes. When access to work depends on the network, the employee owes security to the party, not the rules and professional result.

How the finding is separated in the matrix

01Established fact

CRTA records testimonies of employees and unemployed about party work and pressures, CEP documents dependent appointments, and clientelism surveys connect parties, the public sector and the labour market.

02Our interpretation

The system does not have to employ everyone along the party line; it is enough for enough people to believe that without a political connection there is no access or advancement, so they adapt in advance.

03Does it show the same process?

Yes different sources confirm the connection, but none measures the unique percentage of all jobs obtained politically.

04Important caveat or alternative explanation

Party membership is legal, and a party member can be an expert. The problem is unequal procedure: hidden criteria of loyalty, conflict of interest and the use of a public workplace for political obligation.

LIMITS OF THE CONCLUSION

What the general answer does not allow us to conclude

The fact that politically connected people benefit more often does not in itself prove the agreement. It is necessary to compare similar people and monitor when the relationship arose.

GENERAL RESEARCH BASE

Works supporting this answer, with their evidence type and an explanation of how they relate to the claim.

A01

Explain how the system works

Stokes, S. C., Dunning, T., Nazareno, M. i Brusco, V. (2013), Brokers, Voters, and Clientelism, Cambridge University Press.

Contribution to this answer: Stokes and co-authors show that business, assistance or other targeted benefits can be the political currency with which brokers build lasting support relationships.

How the authoritarian system works in Serbia

Which question do you want to start with?

How the ruling party and local networks hold the system together

How the finding is separated in the matrix

Stokes, S. C., Dunning, T., Nazareno, M. i Brusco, V. (2013), Brokers, Voters, and Clientelism, Cambridge University Press.

Hicken, A. (2011), „Clientelism“, Annual Review of Political Science 14: 289–310.

Petrović, V. (2026), „Under Pressure: The Politics of Clientelism and Coercion in Serbia“, Democratization.

Greene, K. F. (2007), Why Dominant Parties Lose, Cambridge University Press.

Schuster, C. i dr. (2022), „Exit, Voice, and Sabotage: Public Service Motivation and Guerrilla Bureaucracy in Times of Unprincipled Political Principals“, Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 32(2): 416–435.

CRTA. 2022. Preliminarni izveštaj o izbornom nasilju i korupciji. Beograd: CRTA.

European Policy Centre (CEP). 2023. The Neverending Story of Senior Civil Service Depoliticisation in Serbia. Belgrade: CEP.

WeBER 2.0 / European Policy Centre. 2023. Western Balkan PAR Monitor 2021/2022. Belgrade: European Policy Centre.

Cvejić, Slobodan. 2016. “On Inevitability of Political Clientelism in Contemporary Serbia.” Sociologija 58(2): 239–252. https://doi.org/10.2298/SOC1602239C

Lazić, Uroš. 2025. “Predictors of Party Patronage: A Case of the City Committee of a Serbian Parliamentary Political Entity in 2015.” Hrvatska i komparativna javna uprava 25(1): 111–148. https://doi.org/10.31297/hkju.25.1.3

Dragojević, Mila, and Andy Konitzer. 2013. “The Forensics of Patronage: Identifying the Linkage Between Parties and Public Sector Employment in Serbia.” Sociološki pregled 47(1): 3–22.

Tomić, Slobodan, and Dušan Pavlović. 2023. “Blatant, Not Latent: Patronage in Top-Level Appointments in Serbia.” NISPAcee Journal of Public Administration and Policy 16(1): 181–209. https://doi.org/10.2478/nispa-2023-0008

Vuković, Danilo, i Bojan Spaić. 2022. “Parallel Normative Reality: The Informal Order of Corruption and Clientelism in Serbia.” Sociologija 64(4): 519–542. https://doi.org/10.2298/SOC2204519V

Transparentnost Srbija. 2024. Public Enterprises — A Symbol of Abuses and Violation of the Law. Belgrade: Transparency Serbia.

OECD/SIGMA. 2025. Public Administration in Serbia 2024: Assessment against the Principles of Public Administration. SIGMA Monitoring Reports. OECD Publishing.

Transparency Serbia. 2024. Assessing Political Integrity Rules in Serbia. Belgrade: Transparency Serbia.

Based on academic research

Practice documented in Serbia

Sources open to scrutiny

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Focus on the system, not on blaming people

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