almanac on security sector oversight in the Western Balkans

Accountability of Statutory Security Actors in the Western Balkans
or Iraq – can hide and/or compensate for serious setbacks not only in SSR, but in the
consolidation of democracy in these countries.
This helps explain why political and security elites in the region adopted democratic
vocabulary so quickly and successfully. An uninformed observer may get the impression
that relationships in the “authorities - security actors - citizens“ triangle in the
Western Balkans countries run smoothly, without serious tensions. He/she may wrongly
assume that the local security sector no longer generates serious threats to the
democratic system and personal safety of its citizens.
5 . Conclusion
As many studies point out, 209 numerous incongruences between the proclaimed and
realised goals in the Western Balkans call for caution. Major discrepancies were observed
in many SSR areas, as well as in the process of establishing accountability. For
instance, it is obvious that new legal and systemic structures do not in themselves
guarantee responsible and democratic behaviour by state security institutions and
their leadership. Evidence for this claim is the ease with which the governments of
these countries support the increased competencies of intelligence services for the
implementation of special measures and for permanent control of electronic communications.
It is also difficult to see how national authorities managed to reform their
security institutions without undertaking lustration or opening the intelligence services’
secret archives. Moreover, ’selective memory’ is still a prevailing policy across the
states that emerged from the former Yugoslavia, where previous wars are perceived,
for different reasons and despite numerous crimes, as not only legitimate, but necessary.
When armed conflicts ended, instead of clearing up the war mess and establishing
individual accountability for crimes, the local heads of state started apologising to
one another. This gives rise to suspicions that members of state security forces are still
being socialised on the remnants of the ideology and value system inherent to previous
wars. However, these remnants are now disguised and covered under the veil of
a democratic narrative.
There is also a huge discrepancy between the system of democratic control as installed
and its results in practice. It becomes evident when the outcomes of parliamentary
control and oversight are carefully analysed. The majority of case studies explain these
deficiences as the absence of “political will“ of the ruling parties and unwillingnes of
deputies (MPs) of the majority parties to control their party colleagues who exercise
power in ministries charged with overseeing security forces. Other reasons include
the small number of parliamentary support services and simultaneous participation of
209 Here I refer to the majority of the context analysis publications produced by the consortium members
of this project. The only exception is Croatia, which achieved, according to the authors of the context
analysis, the highest standards of SSR and of securing the responsible work of state security actors.
See: Knezović and Staničić, 2011.
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Almanac on Security Sector Oversight in the Western Balkans