How the West Ignites: Lessons from Croatia and Serbia in the Illiberal International

How the West Ignites: Lessons from Croatia and Serbia in the Illiberal International

By Lorena Drakula

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Keywords: illiberalism, liberalism, transnational networks, stabilitocracy, anti-gender campaigns

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For scholars tracing the global currents of illiberalism, uncovering the transnational alliances of illiberal actors has proven as vital as delineating their precise ideological departures from liberalism. More often than not, actors such as Viktor Orbán and Jaroslaw Kaczyński are analyzed as part of the same global trends. But when this scrutiny involves Western figures such as Donald Trump, they are often treated as anomalies—deviations from the previously healthy liberal-democratic core. The awareness of the global nature of illiberalism amplifies the challenge to the institutional legacy of the West—a term that civilizationally evokes a cultural and ideological tradition rooted in democracy, individual rights, secularism, and free-market capitalism. In this framing, illiberalism is viewed as a product of an authoritarian ideologue waging a culture war against the West, reflecting a form of conceptual othering—the illiberal becomes the exotic, observed and analyzed as existing outside the frameworks of politics proper. However, as one researcher from Croatia suggests, the story may be more complex: “In the last 15 years, the biggest drivers, intellectual conspirators, and providers of political direction have almost exclusively been the West—95% of the time. Everything we see across Europe, from gender ideologies to civic education, comes from there. Questioning civic education, contraceptives—all of that—was cooked up by lobbying organizations that are American.”[1]

This sentiment captures the paradox at the heart of this paper: while illiberal actors might often position themselves as opponents of the global West and its hegemonic political and cultural script, they are in fact deeply intertwined with it. This paper argues that illiberalism, as it exists today, thrives because of its inspiration from, cooperation with, and dependence on the West.

While few scholars explicitly position illiberalism as completely external to the West, the broader discourse surrounding it often reproduces such a distinction. Much of the literature on democratic backsliding and authoritarian diffusion in Eastern Europe situates the origins of illiberal influence in “authoritarian gravity centers” such as Russia or China, emphasizing cross-border emulation among autocratic regimes while casting the West as the political anchor from which the illiberal states move away.[2] This framing implicitly sustains the moral geography of liberalism itself, presenting the West as the locus of democratic stability and the East as the site of deviation and decline.

Yet the East and West have never been stable geographic or ideological categories; they are historically constructed projects that often essentialized regions into particular patterns of representation.[3] In the European context especially, the East has been repeatedly reinscribed as the West’s “other”—the backdrop against which the Enlightenment imagined progress, civility, and rationality as distinctly Western attributes.[4] Today, this divide persists not only through economic hierarchies and dependency on Western markets and institutions but also as a lived experience of conditional inclusion. In Croatia and Serbia, EU membership or candidacy has not erased the sense of not being completely Western, of having to continuously prove Europeanness according to standards set elsewhere.[5]

For this reason, the paper treats the East/West divide not as a Cold War residue, but as a continuing structure of economic, political, and epistemic asymmetry—a boundary maintained through a catching-up logic. Here, the West refers not to a fixed geography but to a historically constructed center of political, economic, and epistemic authority—anchored in states such as the US, the UK, France, and Germany, and institutionalized through the liberal international order they have historically shaped and continue to uphold. This understanding of the East/West divide as both structural and symbolic also underpins how discourses of illiberalism emerge and gain meaning within Europe today.

Moreover, theoretical debates about illiberalism also frequently assign it a geopolitical or civilizational dimension, noting that discourses both within and outside of perceived illiberal contexts tend to frame it as a civilizational counterpart of the liberal West.[6] Early analyses disproportionately located the “illiberal backlash” in the East, effectively “framing the issue of democratic backsliding as an ‘eastern’ problem in the EU.”[7] Although the geography of illiberalism has since broadened—with the rise of Trumpism in the United States and the spread of far-right politics across Western Europe—these developments were often treated as shocks to the liberal order, as if illiberalism had emerged in an unexpected or unnatural setting. The very framing of such cases as surprising exceptions reveals the persistence of an underlying assumption that illiberalism properly belongs to the periphery of the liberal West, rather than to its institutional and ideological core. Some scholarship, however, has also questioned such binary framings, highlighting instead the entanglements of liberal and illiberal forces across both Eastern and Western contexts.[8] Building on this work, this paper shifts the focus to the complicity of Western actors—the actors and institutions whose pragmatic alliances and normative authority sustain illiberal projects in the semi-periphery.

Throughout the paper, references to Western actors encompass a heterogeneous set of institutions and individuals within that center of epistemic authority—from NGOs and think tanks to political leaders and international organizations. I use this category analytically to capture the various iterations of Western influence in practical and lived settings, rather than to suggest equivalence among these actors or to erase their institutional differences. In practice, these distinctions matter: EU institutions, US-based NGOs, and Western European officials differ significantly in position, authority, and degree of institutional embeddedness. Nevertheless, the analysis highlights how each of them contributes to addressing a different gap in tracing illiberal transnational networks, offering additional insight into how illiberalism has been able to grow in the two analyzed countries. Employing the analytical typecasting first developed by Datta in his description of roles of different members within Agenda Europe (network of anti-gender organizations), the paper discusses Western luminaries (i.e., “who develop the thinking and strategies to be implemented at national levels at appropriate times”), Western insiders (i.e., “influential persons within decision-making spaces such as elected politicians or government officials”), and Western donors (i.e., actors who sustain illiberal campaigns by offering material and institutional resources).[9]

The distinction between liberal and illiberal actors in this paper is not based on any predetermined or essential definition. The designation of certain individuals, organizations, or movements as illiberal follows how they are recurrently described in the field, as well as in academic and policy discourses. Yet, these designations are best understood as empty signifiers—whose precise meaning is necessarily acquired only within specific contexts and struggles.[10] This is partly because the meaning of liberalism itself is historically unstable and internally contested. Moreover, by tracing their connections and juxtaposing field-level perceptions with the dominant view of illiberalism as a “backlash against today’s liberalism in all its varied scripts—political, economic, cultural, geopolitical, civilizational—often in the name of democratic principles and thanks to them,”[11] the paper argues for moving beyond binary models of opposition. Rather than treating liberal and illiberal actors as discrete categories, it examines how their interactions and mutual dependencies blur these boundaries in practice.

This study is based on forty-seven unstructured, open-ended interviews conducted with a range of individuals, including illiberal actors in Croatia and Serbia, as well as journalists and academics who closely follow their activities. The interviews sought to gather specific information about key names, organizations, events, and locations that could illuminate the dynamics of illiberal campaigns. This information was then triangulated with data available from official websites, journalistic articles covering specific events, and existing scholarship on illiberalism and its transnational connections in order to build an elaborate image of patterns of collaboration. While these countries have limited global influence, their regional significance and active participation in illiberal networks provide valuable insights into the influences of transnational actors. The analysis follows an interpretive approach that uses this empirical material to interrogate and complicate established analytical categories, but does not purport to offer a new, inductively generated theory.

The role of the West is then analyzed through three sustaining arguments. First, I situate the evolution of Croatian and Serbian anti-gender campaigns within their broader networks of collaboration, showing how their strategic shifts draw on the US Christian right. I analyze how strategic and ideological concessions to Western luminaries proved crucial for the success of illiberal anti-gender projects in both cases. This part of the analysis builds on existing scholarship that has traced extensive linkages between illiberal actors in Central and Eastern Europe and their Western counterparts within the global anti-gender movement.[12] Second, the paper turns to a different kind of embeddedness—one that involves alliances not with Western illiberal networks, but unexpected alliances with figures and institutions perceived as part of the mainstream liberal establishment. These Western insiders strategically cooperate with illiberal leaders for mutual benefit, often shielding them from scrutiny over democratic backsliding in pursuit of their own strategic or economic objectives. Finally, the paper highlights the material dimension of this entanglement, showing how Western donors and institutions, by providing funding and legitimacy, further enable illiberal actors to consolidate power. Taken together, these three perspectives reveal that illiberalism’s relationship to the West operates through multiple channels (ideological, strategic, and material) and cannot be understood simply as opposition or a backlash to the liberal West.

The Luminaries

Western illiberal actors have not only supported but actively shaped the growth of illiberal civic spheres worldwide.[13] As argued by Phillip M. Ayoub and Kristina Stoeckl, the success of these moral-conservative movements lies in their ability to build transnational networks that transcend cultural, national, and denominational boundaries. By fostering these interconnected civil society organizations, they create an illiberal transnational capable of amplifying their agendas and addressing issues on a global scale: the expansion, or globalization,[14] of the US-specific culture wars found fertile ground in the relatively underdeveloped religious-conservative mobilizations in Croatia and Serbia, where Western influence facilitated the rise of the prosperous anti-gender movements we see today. While notable successes have occurred in national contexts, the strategies behind these campaigns (what, when,andhow to pursue anti-gender policies) reflect a top-down, core-to-periphery transmission of knowledge from the West.

Western luminaries, understood as key ideological and institutional drivers within the broader Western illiberal movement, have influenced anti-gender campaigns in Croatia and Serbia in two significant ways. First, they successfully spread the issues from the United States cultural and political context into the orbit of the international arena and, from there, to the agenda of national religious and conservative organizations in Croatia and Serbia, respectively.[15] Questions that concerned the US Christian right at least in the past fifty years, such as anti-abortion and pro-life advocacy (restricting abortion access and supporting crisis pregnancy centers), opposition to LGBTQIA+ rights (especially same-sex marriage, anti-discrimination laws, or gender identity rights), advocacy for abstinence-based sex education and opposition to contraceptive access, all came to Croatia and Serbia in a much later stage, accompanying the religious revitalization and the opening of the public sphere towards more influence from the West in the ’90s. The connections with transnational organizations in the West are therefore key in understanding the spread of illiberal and anti-gender ideologies in these countries.

Second, the influence of Western luminaries is visible in the types of mobilizations as well as the strategies these new anti-gender organizations employed. At the turn of the century, so far unorganized religious and conservative activists in Croatia and Serbia started institutionalizing their advocacy in the form of civic society organizations, marking the beginning of strategic concessions to the newly established liberal hegemony. This was followed by a shift in framing, also already established among Western anti-gender actors, emphasizing tactical alignment with liberal ideals such as freedom, justice, and individual rights, rather than overtly religious or ideological appeals. As I will argue in this chapter, the successes of anti-gender campaigns in Croatia and Serbia are rooted in the adoption of this ideological and strategic blueprint provided by Western luminaries. The transnational collaboration not only informed the development of anti-gender campaigns but also accelerated their adaptation to local contexts, bridging longstanding socially conservative positions with a new, globally coordinated ideological framework.

While socially conservative positions informed by religious denomination were present in both Croatia and Serbia even before the influence of the West spearheaded the start of the anti-gender movement, there are clear differences in which topics were headlined and how they were presented. Authors Jelena Ćeriman and Tamara Vučković Juroš talk about how the heteronormative model of the family and the constructions of “protecting family and children,” which later on became central to anti-gender mobilizations, were already present in the discourses of 1990s Croatia and Serbia.[16] Rather than a completely new reaction to the successes of liberal emancipation, the new anti-gender mobilizations also showcase significant continuities with previous narratives of return to the traditional family. However, as the majority of illiberal organizations on the political scene of both countries were deeply influenced by the wars in the ’90s, they primarily built their programs around ethno-nationalist claims, issues of territorial sovereignty, and minority rights. Gender and sexuality issues were seen as “not even a topic.”[17]  Even when the narrative of the protection of family was invoked, it tended to reference themes that are now largely absent from the contemporary anti-gender package, most notably national survival, with the care for family frame reflecting the family as a site of national reproduction, social stability, and demographic resilience.[18] Topics such as anti-abortion advocacy, opposition to LGBTQIA+ rights, and regulation of sex education were marginal in the sense that they were not seen as problems enough to warrant political action. Moreover, even when these issues were raised in the political arena, they rarely gained wider traction.

What changed then with the transnational consolidation of the anti-gender movement and the deeper connections with the West was that these new issues started to gain salience. Within the master frame of care for family, the old religious conservatives implied a focus on demographic renewal, strategically silencing but not openly addressing topics such as same-sex unions, etc., while the new illiberal anti-gender activists shifted the focus of these advocacies more to the contestation of liberal emancipatory projects. Interviews also showed a common claim that these new topics on the illiberal agenda emerged in Croatia and Serbia as a new form of cultural colonization, suppressing other issues that were defining the right beforehand (mainly state-building, nationalism, sovereignty, etc.). When discussing old conservative right parties in Croatia, a former radical-right party leader and activist stressed that, with the rise of the anti-gender mobilizations, the old illiberal right parties “had no answers to the questions that suddenly became relevant. And which were imposed on Croatia as relevant. Some actors dealt with these issues before, like Markić, but they were not relevant. Hrast won 1% of the votes in the 2011 elections with such topics.”[19] Other illiberal actors, long present on the political scene, criticized the current anti-gender organizations for forcing them to declare themselves on topics such as abortion rights, rights of LGBTQI+ individuals, or gender identity, which they still find to be of lesser importance compared to issues of sovereignty.

The participants in interviews also strongly contested the idea that the spread of anti-gender ideas in post-Communist Europe was a form of diffusion between countries with a shared past in opposition to the liberal democratic West.[20] On the contrary, topics emerged because actors are inspired through cultural diffusion from Western centers of power: individuals read Western (primarily US) media, intellectuals translate books written in (or already translated to) English, and ideas become more relevant, accessible, and easily copied through the cultural influence the West exerts. In a similar argument, Kristina Stoeckl and Dmitry Uzlaner show that what is now perceived as a paradigmatic example of illiberal mobilization in Russia was in fact co-produced in dialogue with Western conservative networks, a pattern echoed in the Croatian and Serbian cases.[21] As Madina Tlostanova notes, even the most jingoistic forms of Russian conservative scholarship remain “non-original,” rooted in Western essentialist sources, a symptom of what she calls a “chronic intellectual dependency” that persists despite ideological opposition to the West.[22] The same dependency structures post-Communist illiberalism more broadly: the West actively sets the agenda, offering not only ideological inspiration but also informal directives for how anti-gender politics should be done. In this context, the West serves as the luminary of the rest, providing the practical tools for contesting the cultural liberal script and coordinating the spread of its anti-globalist agenda to other countries around the globe.

However, interviewees who belonged to conservative and religious organizations in Croatia and Serbia often directly negated any kind of cooperation with organizations outside of their national/local context. This can primarily be explained by the fact that anti-gender movements actively try to maintain the identity of authentically local and grassroots mobilizations, rather than being part of globalized, interconnected trends. Interviews were, therefore, not as useful in mapping collaboration patterns themselves. Instead, the majority of these connections were discovered through investigative journalism as it has infiltrated the networks and brought to light different active agendas of the religious-conservative lobby.

One key network facilitating the systematic diffusion of ideas and strategies developed in the West across Europe is the Vision Network, previously known as Agenda Europe.[23] This informal platform, which connects over a hundred anti-gender organizations across Europe, serves as the backbone for coordinating campaigns aimed at curbing sexual and reproductive rights across Europe. In September 2024, journalist Hrvoje Šimičević reported on a leaked email correspondence within the Agenda Europe network, which included emails from Croatian and Serbian illiberal civil society leaders (Željka Markić, but also Marijana Petir, Stjepo Bartulica, Ladislav Ilčić, Nemanja Zarić, and Mila Todorović) and confirmed their participation at strategic meetings.[24] Through this network, Croatian and Serbian religious and conservative organizations have established direct connections with the whole pallet of global anti-gender, religious, or conservative organizations, including, but not limited to, CitizenGO, the International Organization for the Family (IOF), ADF International, Pro Vita, Ordo Iuris, the European Center for Law and Justice, the Center for European Renewal, the Political Value Network, and the Heritage Foundation. Most, if not all, of these organizations have not only been formed in the West, but also receive large parts of their funding from Western donors and organize conferences and events aimed at activists within Western advocacy frameworks. Within these networks, interviews confirm that the division of labor follows a pattern: “Americans are mostly in charge of the strategy, and European organizations for its execution.”[25]

The leaked email correspondence from the Agenda Europe network between 2013–2019 also showed an extended level of cooperation and diffusion between members of the Agenda, confirming that the network is more than just an informal gathering of like-minded individuals, but a fully developed, coordinated transnational campaign that has affected laws and regulations surrounding reproductive and sexual rights at a global level. For example, the emails included direct guidance on how to conduct campaigns against the Istanbul Convention in national contexts, which were implemented to the letter in the Croatian context as well, including substantiated arguments and frames to push in public discourse. The emails also produced instructions on reframing abortion as “a form of violence against women,” contraceptives as “harmful to women,” and sexual and reproductive rights in developing countries as “neocolonialism imposing an anti-life and anti-family agenda.”[26] Neil Datta suggests that, besides this campaign, at least eighteen policy initiatives at the EU and international levels have been formulated and pursued through this network.[27] As argued by Lavizzari and Siročić, “by appearing at the same venues and mirroring the language of rights commonly associated with women’s, LGBT, and similar advocacy groups, the anti-gender movement’s activists gained access to the consultative bodies and widespread media attention.”[28]

The conscious efforts to coordinate campaigns, protests, and oppose specific goals at a global level are also demonstrated through the consistency of the campaigns’ claims, discourse, and their political arsenal.[29] Because of this, the level of influence that these connections had on the illiberal anti-gender campaigns in Croatia and Serbia can also be traced through the Western-style shifts in strategy that were implemented throughout their political struggle.[30] The most glaring example is precisely the framing of old vs. new topics: the substitution of religious discourses with secular ones. Research has shown that the shift from a natural-religious frame of the ’90s to a secular-anticolonial frame has been the most significant reason for the sudden success of the conservative NGOs in the 2010s in Croatia. Not only were most of these secular-anticolonial frames already present in the debates within the Western context, but many of the first campaigns were directly mimicking the US trailblazers. The rhetoric of human rights, typical of liberal cultural norms from the second half of the 20th century to today, was appropriated, emptied of its normativity, and reinvented on the basis of Christian morality.

For example, one of the first campaigns of a formally registered NGO in Croatia, GROZD, advocated for the introduction of a religion-based health education module in Croatian schools in 2006, and it was directly modeled after the example of the US-initiated Teen Starprogram. The Teen Star program was an abstinence-based extra-curricular sex education program formed in the 1980s, and it reached the height of activity in Croatia between 1996 and 2005. Strikingly similar to the Teen Star education materials, the suggested GROZD module included classes on human sexuality influenced by Catholic morality: teaching on love, restraint (until marriage), and faithfulness, all taught in separate classes for male and female students.[31] Moreover, presidents of the GROZD organization, Ilčić and Kristina Pavlović,[32] were the initiators of the Teen Star program in Croatia. Besides the direct implementation of Western ideas, the campaign for the implementation of the GROZD-supported module also showcased the Western-style strategicshift to secularized discourse.

Initially, the program predominantly included religious narratives in the construction of “normal” and desirable sexuality, including statements such as “homosexual intercourse stands against the very nature of sexual intercourse.”[33] However, Nataša Bijelić stresses that “the themes of contraception and abortion are unacceptably dealt with from the standpoint of women’s human rights, gender equality or medical science.”[34] The year after, in 2007, GROZD pioneered “values” as a basis for their main narrative, arguing in a debate that “schools should respect the value system of the parents and also the value system and the cultural context of the country,” and stressing that “parents themselves have the right to choose the programme they want their children to follow.”[35] In 2007, the rhetoric of the “loud minority” imposing on the “silent majority” also became clear.[36] The new framings reveal a clash between traditional religious-national arguments and the newer, more inclusive secular framing long present in the Western context, which will continue to expand as Croatian illiberal activists become more tied into the global religious-conservative networks.

Interviews from Serbia confirm that a similar discursive transition happened there as well. An anti-gender researcher stressed: “Dveri were the most persistent proponents of anti-LGBT policy—where L, G, B, and T did not even exist. They existed as acronyms; the acronym was hated, but what kind of people are these acronyms? Not even L—only G! Only the fag threatens Serbia! And suddenly, the discourse changed: now it is acceptable that there are gay Serbs. ‘We won’t say anything if they sit in their four walls’; ‘I even know some’; ‘Here, here, they are good people’, and all that. ‘But they should not organize a Pride.’”[37]

Moreover, the IOF publicly boasted about helping Dveri[38] negotiate with the government and stop the Pride Parade in 2013, and welcomed them as their newest partner, starting a cooperation that has lasted to this day. In the past few years, the anti-gender movement has been particularly active through the Koalicija za prirodnu porodicu (Eng. Coalition for the Natural Family). The Coalition presented a petition against “the three laws” in 2021, arguing that the Laws on Same-Sex Unions, on Gender Equality, and on Prohibition of Discrimination are “unconstitutional, are against common sense, and are directed against the will of the majority of citizens, tradition, and identity.”[39] Today, the coordinator of the Coalition for Natural Family in Serbia, Marija Stajić, besides being a board member at the Belgrade-based organization Pro-Life Center and editor of Orthodox Parent, is also an editor at the IOF media outlet iFamNews.

Naturally, as already noted, contestation of liberal emancipatory projects was already present before the turn of the century, and there is also a level of agency and autonomy in the level of cooperation that Croatian and Serbian actors maintain with regard to the West. In other words, the majority of national-level anti-gender actors maintain authentic ways to mobilize, which allows them to adapt the transnational ideas to their local discursive and political opportunity structures.[40] In this sense, they cannot be conceptualized as merely passive recipients of the ideology of Western luminaries. Moreover, at least since the marriage referendum in 2013, Croatia has not just been an importer, but an exporter of conservative, anti-gender, and illiberal ideas. Figures like Markić rose to the level of luminaries, which is seen in the fact that she is frequently invited to international conservative conferences and forums as a speaker (e.g., World Congress of Families in Verona in 2019), that she served as a consultant for anti-gender campaigns in other countries (e.g., for the marriage referendums in Slovakia and Romania), and can be generally treated as a key player in the European conservative movement. However, such successful individuals still rise to prominence within Western established networks rather than developing separate, parallel ones, or joining other (e.g., primarily Eastern) platforms to contest the West.

This empirical data contributes to the literature that shows the successes of anti-gender are rooted in the adoption of clear ideological and strategic blueprints provided by Western luminaries. The actors in Croatia and Serbia actively fostered transnational connections to enable a coordinated global struggle against cultural liberalism, allowing local illiberal actors to adapt these strategies to their specific discursive and political contexts. Rather than operating as isolated phenomena or as mere products of a global conspiracy, illiberal campaigns in Croatia and Serbia highlight the significant role of the West in shaping illiberal strategies. Yet, the influence of the West extends beyond ideologically aligned luminaries. The next section turns to collaborations with actors within the liberal mainstream (political elites and institutions) that further entrench illiberalism within Western-led frameworks.

The Institutionalization of Illiberalism: Legitimacy, Resources, and the Role of the West

For illiberal actors seeking ideological and strategic inspiration from the West,a second crucial dimension of Western involvement lies in the role of elites who strategically enable the institutionalization of illiberalism by counterweighing negative conditionality mechanisms. By analyzing the actions of both insiders (political elites embedded in liberal institutions who provide legitimacy and moderate criticism) and donors (actors who sustain illiberal campaigns through resource distribution). This section demonstrates how, despite its orientation toward democracy promotion, Western institutions and actors often support the consolidation of illiberalism instead. While the roles of insiders vs. donors serve as analytically distinct influences of the West, they converge in their shared contribution to illiberal actors’ symbolic capital (i.e., national and international legitimacy and opportunities to further expand their reach). Echoing Kurt Weyland’s argument that autocratic diffusion follows interests rather than ideologies,[41] this analysis suggests that what sustains illiberalism across borders is not ideological alignment but strategic compatibility: the shared incentives and dependencies that bind liberal and illiberal actors alike.

Insiders

The second set of actors examined are Western insiders: “influential persons within decision-making spaces, such as elected politicians or government officials who enable or collaborate with illiberal actors either due to ideological alignment or strategic interests.”[42] While most academic and policy analyses of illiberal networks focus on collaborations between overtly illiberal actors (such as exchanges between Central and Eastern European authoritarian leaders or transnational far-right movements) the cooperation with liberal actors is rarely examined. I argue that the exclusion of these connections from analyses of illiberal transnational ties creates a significant blindspot, failing to capture how illiberal actors gain the influence necessary to institutionalize their agendas at both national and international levels. By tracing how Western political leaders and institutions engage in pragmatic cooperation with illiberal regimes in the name of stability, markets, or geopolitical alignment, it becomes evident that illiberal actors do not operate outside the liberal order, but within it, sustained by its incentives and silences.

The most prominent example comes from Serbia, where Angela Merkel was widely perceived as a key strategic collaborator who helped entrench Aleksandar Vučić in power, opting to pursue a policy of stability rather than democracy promotion. Reflecting on the development of Serbia’s four-pillar foreign policy,[43] one interviewee observed: “I think that in the initial phase, roughly from 2012 to 2017/18, the strongest of the four pillars was Berlin—specifically Berlin, not Brussels—because that’s when Vučić tied himself to Merkel, made concessions to her, the Brussels Agreement, and fulfilled what Tadić had refused to do.”[44]

The origin of these collaborations illustrates a pattern of Western pragmatism that continuously favors geopolitical or economic objectives above democratic principles. In the lead-up to Serbia’s 2012 parliamentary elections, the Democratic Party (Demokratska stranka: DS) refused to make concessions in negotiations surrounding the independence of Kosovo, leaving their Western allies in pursuit of more lucrative alliances. They found an unexpected partner in Vučić (former ultra-nationalist, now declared pro-European) who agreed to withdraw the Serbian police forces from Kosovo. In return, Serbia was finally placed on the EU accession path, and the normalization of relations with Kosovo was to be its main condition. A year later, the first agreement on principles governing the normalization of relations between Serbia and Kosovo was signed in Brussels, after which the European Commission formally advised the start of accession negotiations with Serbia. The first chapters were opened in 2015 (while Vučić was Prime Minister), and 22 chapters have been opened to this day despite consistent democratic backsliding and lack of results in the Kosovo negotiations. Notably, the last chapter was opened in December 2021, only a few days after Merkel formally left office. Since Vučić’s arrival to power and until she retired from formal politics in 2021 (a period in which Serbia plummeted to a ranking of a hybrid regime)[45] Merkel met with Vučić sixteen times, rarely criticizing Vučić and even praising him for “always staying true to his promises” during her visit to Belgrade on the farewell tour.[46] As the same interviewee noted, leniency toward Kosovo has been “one of the primary variables that determined the attitude of the West towards the authorities in Belgrade, so that they now turn a blind eye to all other problems.”[47] In other words, Serbia’s participation in the enlargement process was enabled by the West’s strategic shift of support from the Democratic Party to the Serbian Progressive Party, founded by former ultranationalists and collaborators of the Milošević regime. This participation provided Serbia with the material and symbolic capital necessary for the consolidation of an illiberal regime. Moreover, despite consistent democratic backsliding, this process was never properly sanctioned, showing that the Western frameworks provided not only the tools for enabling illiberalism but also legitimized it.

This relationship is not unique to Merkel, as even in recent instances where the EU did try to enforce its pro-democratic values, insiders consistently accommodated Vučić’s transgressions. Following Serbia’s highly contested parliamentary elections in December 2023, the European Parliament issued a resolution calling for an investigation into the electoral irregularities and proposed suspending EU funds if the government was found complicit in electoral fraud.[48] Similarly, the Directorate-General for Neighborhood and Enlargement Negotiations stressed the need to implement the OSCE/ODIHR and Council of Europe recommendations on the election process, and noted Serbia’s limited progress in the areas of rule of law and anticorruption efforts.[49] The investigation did not take place, but under foreign and domestic pressure, the Serbian government formed the Working Group for the Improvement of the Electoral Process.[50] However, the criticism found in the European Parliament resolution and the following statements was offset by warm congratulatory messages and pledges of continued support from Vučić’s Western allies, reaffirming the permissive environment that insiders within liberal institutions have created for Serbian authoritarianism.

Moreover, despite some formal critiques, key Western leaders only strengthened their collaboration with the Serbian government, continuing to prioritize strategic partnerships and downplay transgressions even in the case of a clear threat to democracy. Just months after the elections, Vučić hosted both Olaf Scholz and Emmanuel Macron,[51] both of whom focused more on economic integration and regional stability than on electoral reforms. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, after her conversation with Vučić on October 25, 2024, and two days after the Working Document was published, even described Serbia as “one of the most advanced countries in the EU accession process” and praised its commitment to reforms in the rule of law and democracy.[52] Outside of the EU, Christopher Hill, the US Ambassador to Serbia, similarly refrained from condemning the elections, instead emphasizing the ongoing cooperation and issuing vague statements about the importance of the elections for democracy.[53] As argued by Zweers et al.,[54] this leader-oriented approach, manifested in the frequent interactions between high-ranking officials from the EU and autocrats in the Western Balkans, has inadvertently facilitated democratic backsliding in the region. Moreover, it has fortified the narrative that the West is the one who placed Vučić in a position of power in the first place, exemplified by his label of Europe’s “favorite autocrat.”[55]

The dynamics explored above—where Western leaders, exemplified by Merkel, strategically supported autocrats like Vučić in exchange for perceived geopolitical gains—reflect the entrenchment of a regime often called a “stabilitocracy.”[56] This concept describes a semi-authoritarian regime that receives external support, particularly from EU member states, under the often misguided promise of ensuring regional stability. By strategically framing his concessions on Kosovo as evidence of stability and progress, Vučić manages to leverage Western priorities, securing symbolic capital that offsets domestic and international criticism of his regime. For example, in 2023, after the aforementioned contested parliamentary elections prompted a new wave of criticism from the EU institutions, Vučić decided to finally allow the free movement of vehicles with Kosovo license plates through Serbia, an issue that has caused consistent backlash for years.[57] The offer of continuing negotiations on the issue of Kosovo in exchange for a lenient attitude, however, has not been able to provide the promised stability, as “the lack of democracy in the region is a main source of instability itself.”[58]

At the same time, Vučić’s bargaining power has extended beyond the perceived benefit of stability and now encompasses direct economic gains. Besides the strategic concessions surrounding Kosovo, Vučić was able to mitigate international criticism after the controversial 2023 elections by signing a Memorandum of Understanding on a Strategic Partnership agreement on sustainable raw materials, battery value chains, and electric vehicles with the European Union.[59] The deal ensures Europe secures essential lithium supplies to support its transition to electric vehicles, a cornerstone of the EU’s green transition plan to phase out carbon-fueled vehicles, while also helping to diversify its supplier base. Despite large protests over the Western exploitation of local resources and the negative environmental consequences, multiple Western countries have been quick to jump on this train, including support from the United States and the United Kingdom, seeming to strengthen not only Vučić’s place in the international arena, but also his grip on power and ability to ignore and suppress the democratic voice of the people.

The latest example of this pattern has been the all-encompassing, yearlong wave of protests against corruption, rule-of-law violations, lack of democratic reforms, and increasing government repression in Serbia, which have generated only faint expressions of concern from the West. Despite consistent calls for action from civic movements, intellectuals, and members of the European Parliament, EU representatives regularly remained silent or even expressed support for the regime’s steady progress on the EU path.[60] While the European Parliament once again accepted a scornful resolution condemning violence against protesters, the use of illegal weapons, and the political retaliation against teachers and academics, this is widely seen as an empty gesture without binding force or consequence. In practice, only days before motion was published, von der Leyen met with Vučić, striking a conciliatory tone and even commending Serbia’s minimal progress in the required electoral reforms, while reaffirming that Serbia “can count on the EU” in the energy crisis if it aligns more closely with EU foreign policy.[61] Similarly, during Macron’s visit to Belgrade in April 2025—after months of mass protests—no mention was made of the political crisis.[62]

By prioritizing regional stability and economic goals in their cooperation with Vučić, the Western insiders not only dilute the narrative of EU critique but also maintain close ties with an autocrat, underscoring the need to include their complicity in analyses of illiberal actors’ transnational networks. This inconsistency in the rhetoric and actions of Western representatives not only exposes the superficiality of their pro-democratic commitments but also provides autocratic leaders like Vučić with the means to the space to consolidate power, deflect criticism, and continue to operate comfortably within Western political and economic frameworks. However, besides the influence insiders have had on diminishing the institutional critique towards Serbia, other flaws in the enlargement policies brought not just symbolic, but also material capital into Vučić’s hands. Notably, as shown in the research of Jason Brownlee, democracy often breaks down in states more economically tied to Western democracies rather than to authoritarian powers such as Russia or China.[63] The next section suggests that benefits such as access to EU funds, trade agreements, and other financial and symbolic incentives have been critical in consolidating Vučić’s illiberal regime domestically.

Donors

While insiders play a crucial role in providing illiberal actors with access to decision-making spaces and legitimacy, the material and institutional resources offered by donors are equally significant in institutionalizing illiberalism. Donors, such as European institutions, Europarties (transnational political parties at the level of the European Union), and multilateral organizations, sustain illiberal actors by offering funding, organizational support, and international legitimacy. These resources are not merely misused or diverted but are, in many cases, intentionally directed to reinforce illiberal leaders and their agendas. Often framed as support for democratic development or economic modernization, they serve as strategic tools to empower illiberal actors as much as they do so for liberal actors.

In the case of Serbia, the European Union’s Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance (IPA) has been a vital source of funding, continuously providing billions of euros aimed at fostering reforms in governance, rule of law, and economic development despite the lack of progress in the accession process—often with minimal oversight. These funds have consistently been channeled into projects that bolster the legitimacy of Vučić’s regime rather than promoting substantive democratic reforms. This allocation of resources reflects not just a failure of oversight but also further substantiates the West’s conscious prioritization of regional stability over democratic principles. The economic growth enabled by Western aims to strengthen their influence in the Western Balkans has become a key pillar for Vučić to further cement his authoritarian rule, as he leverages the improved material conditions to stifle dissent and shield himself from domestic and international criticism.

On another level, the material aid offered by EU funding programs and trade agreements is mirrored by the organizational, material, and symbolic support provided by Europarties as well. As Zweers et. al. argue, party-political affiliations are a key mechanism through which Europarties support the consolidation of illiberalism in the region.[64] They serve as hubs of influence, facilitating the exchange of information, expertise, and policy ideas while amplifying the EU’s reach through their networks.[65] European parties such as the European People’s Party (EPP), the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), and the European Christian Political Movement (ECPM) act as hubs of influence, facilitating the exchange of information, expertise, and policy ideas while amplifying the reach of their networks. These relationships are not incidental but deliberate partnerships that illiberal actors strategically leverage to expand their influence.

By fostering societal linkages and creating opportunities for elites, Europarties empower illiberal actors who strategically leverage their ties to Western political networks. For instance, Serbia’s ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) is an associated member of the EPP, a party notoriously silent on the autocratization within its own ranks. After it finally suspended Fidesz in 2019, stating that the Orbán-led party is not in line with EPP’s values,[66] it has taken no such action against SNS, an associated member that does not even play a critical role in the EPP’s European Parliament majority. Even after the contested elections in December 2023, the EPP members voted against the discussion and resolution on electoral flaws in the Serbian system. Meanwhile, SNS has consistently benefited from participation in conferences, summits, and training events. These interactions provide the SNS with a veneer of credibility and legitimacy, both domestically and internationally, while shielding it from meaningful scrutiny over democratic backsliding.

This dynamic is not limited to the EPP. The ECR and ECPM have actively cultivated relationships with Croatian and Serbian illiberal actors, offering platforms for networking, visibility, and influence. Most Croatian illiberal actors actively collaborate with both the ECR and the ECPM, and actors such as aforementioned Ilčić (the initiator of the Teen Star program and the president of the GROZD association) even take positions within the party’s presidency. In 2023, Ilčić organized the European Congress of Families in Dubrovnik in the name of ECR and the think tank New Direction, bringing together key international players such as Spain’s Vox, Italy’s Fratelli d’Italia, Poland’s Law and Justice, and Croatian and Serbian illiberal parties, such as Most and Dveri.[67] Beyond this single event, ECR and New Direction hosted at least four conferences in Croatia in 2023 alone, featuring prominent Croatian politicians like Vesna Vučemilović and Ivan Penava. These forums showcase that illiberal actors leverage the same institutional pathways and resources as their liberal counterparts, further embedding their agendas within formally recognized political frameworks.

Participating in Western-organized conferences and forums provides Croatian and Serbian illiberal actors not only with tactical advantages, such as access to strategic and legal counsel, but also provides them with greater visibility, strengthens their campaigns, and provides a merit of legitimacy as cooperative, educated, and civilized opposition, rather than the “radical” right. Moreover, this visibility allowed Croatian and Serbian illiberal actors to gain international credibility, reinforcing their domestic influence by forming arguments as part of a broader, transnational struggle against liberalism.

The complicity of Western actors in enabling illiberal regimes—whether through financial support, party-political affiliations, or transnational networks—demonstrates the permissive environment in which illiberalism thrives. “Illiberal” actors in Croatia and Serbia actively participate in the same networks, funding mechanisms, and organizational strategies as their “liberal” counterparts. This dynamic highlights the need to expand analyses of illiberalism to include not only the actions of illiberal actors themselves but also the structural and systemic support provided by the liberal order.

Conclusion

This article has shown that the persistence and spread of illiberalism in Croatia and Serbia owes much to their political and institutional entanglement with the West as a source of symbolic authority, economic leverage, and universalized moral hierarchies. What may appear as a local or regional phenomenon (the success of anti-gender campaigns and the consolidation of autocratic regimes) emerges, on closer inspection, as sustained and legitimized through the very political, economic, and institutional linkages that bind these states to the liberal international order.

These relations of dependence unfold along two main dimensions. In the civil society sphere, this study challenges theories that locate the diffusion of illiberal norms primarily within Central and Eastern Europe or attribute their spread to opposition to the West. In practice, there is remarkably little direct communication between illiberal civil society actors in the Balkans and their counterparts in the rest of Eastern Europe. Instead, the majority of norm diffusion and ideological innovation occurs through exchanges with illiberal actors in the West itself. The ideological repertoires that animate Croatian and Serbian illiberal civil society draw heavily on templates and discourses produced in the United States, primarily the moral vocabulary of the Christian right. Western luminaries provide not only symbolic validation but also ready-made arguments, campaign strategies, and legal expertise, allowing local actors to translate global conservative scripts into national idioms.

This suggests that the very logics that define so-called authoritarian gravity centers (ideational influence, resource flows, symbolic authority, and the promise of stability that guide the spread of illiberalism) are not monopolized by authoritarian regimes. Western liberal states, institutions, and actors exert a similar gravitational pull, shaping the political possibilities of their peripheries not only toward democratization but also toward its illiberal mutations. And while the role of Western illiberal right is well documented in the formation of the transnational illiberal networks, it is rarely treated as a geographic quality of an illiberal West in the same way that illiberalism in the East is. On the contrary, the prevailing view still positions the West as the agent of democracy promotion and the East as the carrier of autocratization.

A second dimension concerns illiberal regimes. Even in the case of Serbia, which is often perceived to be geopolitically close to the East (especially due to their lack of sanctions towards Russia), the paper demonstrates that the main gravitational orientation has not been towards Moscow or Budapest, but toward Brussels, Berlin, and Washington—not as democratic role models, but as centers that normalize pragmatic illiberalism when it serves stability and markets. Whether through party alliances, economic partnerships, or geopolitical pragmatism, liberal actors and institutions have repeatedly provided the resources, legitimacy, and access that illiberal regimes require to consolidate power.

This complicity challenges the prevailing narrative of a liberal core besieged by its illiberal others often found in a trope evident in arguments that attribute Europe’s democratic decline primarily to individual leaders from Eastern Europe. In the case of Serbia, democratic erosion would have been impossible without the permissive environment created by Western engagement. It was Western liberal funding–albeit designed to promote democracy–combined with selective silences and strategic alliances that allowed for the consolidation of an illiberal regime.

The differences between NGOs, governments, and supranational institutions certainly matter (each operates through distinct histories and constraints) but their cumulative effect, and the ways they are perceived and mobilized, form a coherent structure of compatibility and complicity. In this sense, they reinforce the West as a liberal and an authoritarian gravity center simultaneously—its political, economic, and epistemic dominance enabling both the reproduction of liberal norms and their selective suspension.

The evidence from the two cases, therefore, reiterates that boundaries between illiberal and liberal forces are neither clear nor oppositional. Rather than reading illiberalism as a backlash to liberalism, it is more accurate to understand it as shaped and strengthened by the dependencies of the semi-periphery in the world order: a byproduct of liberalism’s uneven global positionalities, its hierarchies of belonging, and its capacity to universalize its own contradictions. Even as Croatia and Serbia are positioned as learners of democracy, they remain structurally bound to the norms, expectations, and double standards of the liberal core. Western engagement thus produces a paradoxical form of subordination: the region’s illiberalism is both learned through imitation, condemned as deviation, and enabled as accommodation. The West continues to function as both the model and the measure of political legitimacy, defining what counts as progress, what qualifies as democracy, and what forms of illiberalism are tolerable in the name of stability.

Recognizing this duality demands that we move beyond mapping “illiberal networks” as a self-contained ecosystem. Instead, scholarship must refocus its gaze on the full spectrum of connections that allow illiberalism to thrive, not only across the East or within the global right, but also within everyday collaborations that make illiberal politics viable through liberal frameworks themselves. The task is not merely to map the circulation of illiberal ideas, but to interrogate how liberal institutions, actors, and assumptions enable their success. Beyond the politics of crisis, illiberalism persists through the politics of normalcy, through what is tolerated, ignored, or never implemented. Only by confronting these shared foundations can we begin to understand why illiberalism thrives, and what it reveals about the liberal order that sustains it.

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[1] Interview with Darko R., September 19, 2024. All of the names of the interviewees have been pseudonymized, and all personally identifiable data has been removed. The translations from Croatian and Serbian to English are my own.

[2] Marianne Kneuer and Thomas Demmelhuber, eds., Authoritarian Gravity Centers: A Cross-Regional Study of Authoritarian Promotion and Diffusion, Conceptualising Comparative Politics, vol. 11 (Abingdon: Routledge, 2021); Karina Shyrokykh and Thomas Winzen, “International Actors and Democracy Protection: Preventing the Spread of Illiberal Legislation in Eastern Europe and Central Asia,” Democratization 32, no. 7 (2025): 1774–96, https://doi.org/10.1080/13510347.2025.2461463.

[3] Milica Bakić-Hayden, “Nesting Orientalisms: The Case of Former Yugoslavia,” Slavic Review 54, no. 4 (1995): 917, https://doi.org/10.2307/2501399.

[4] Bakić-Hayden, “Nesting Orientalisms,” 918. She also connects this division to the historical break between the Western and the Eastern Roman Empires, and the domination of the Habsburg vs. the Ottoman Empires after that—a divide which the Balkans has endured until the end of the First World War. For more on how Eastern Europe is a Western construction tied to Enlightenment ideas of progress vs. backwardness, see Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2000).

[5] Bakić-Hayden, “Nesting Orientalisms”; Madina Tlostanova, “Can the Post-Soviet Think? On Coloniality of Knowledge, External Imperial and Double Colonial Difference,” Intersections 1, no. 2 (2015).

[6] Marlene Laruelle, “Illiberalism: A Conceptual Introduction,” East European Politics 38, no. 2 (2022): 303–27, https://doi.org/10.1080/21599165.2022.2037079; Marlene Laruelle, “Introduction: Illiberalism Studies as a Field,” in The Oxford Handbook of Illiberalism, ed. Marlene Laruelle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024).

[7] Ulrich Sedelmeier, “Is There an East-West Divide on Democracy in the European Union? Evidence from Democratic Backsliding and Attitudes towards Rule of Law Interventions,” Journal of European Public Policy 31, no. 3 (2024), 826, https://doi.org/10.1080/13501763.2023.2198569. Some examples of this framing: Jacques Rupnik, “The Specter Haunting Europe: Surging Illiberalism in the East,” Journal of Democracy 27, no. 4 (2016): 77–87, https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.2016.0064; Vít Hloušek, “Linking European Integration with Illiberalism: ‘Laboratory’ of Central-Eastern Europe,” Politics in Central Europe 19, no. 2 (2023): 217–34, https://doi.org/10.2478/pce-2023-0010. Notably, many analyses are substantively nuanced but perpetuate this in the title, which acts as the primary discursive mechanism. For such an example, see Péter Krekó, and Zsolt Enyedi, “Explaining Eastern Europe: Orbán’s Laboratory of Illiberalism,” Journal of Democracy 29, no. 3 (2018): 39–51, https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.2018.0043.

[8]Kristina Stoeckl and Dmitry Uzlaner, The Moralist International: Russia in the Global Culture Wars (New York: Fordham University Press, 2022); Aurelien Mondon, “Really Existing Liberalism, the Bulwark Fantasy, and the Enabling of Reactionary, Far Right Politics,” Constellations, April 11, 2024, 1–12, https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8675.12749.

[9] Neil Datta, “‘Agenda Europe’: An Extremist Christian Network in the Heart of Europe,” Heinrick Böll Stiftung, April 29, 2019, https://www.gwi-boell.de/en/2019/04/29/agenda-europe-extremist-christian-network-heart-europe.

[10] Mondon, “Really Existing Liberalism, the Bulwark Fantasy, and the Enabling of Reactionary, Far Right Politics.”

[11] Laruelle, “Illiberalism.”

[12] Clifford Bob, The Global Right Wing and the Clash of World Politics (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2012); Stoeckl and Uzlaner, The Moralist International.

[13] Stoeckl and Uzlaner, The Moralist International; Neil Datta and David Paternotte, “‘Gender Ideology’ Battles in the European Bubble,” in Edition Politik, ed. Gionathan Lo Mascolo, vol. 129 (Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2023); Phillip M. Ayoub and Kristina Stoeckl, “The Global Resistance to LGBTIQ Rights,” Journal of Democracy 35, no. 1 (2024): 59–73, https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.2024.a915349.

[14] Anja Hennig, “Whose War? The Nature and Analysis of ‘Culture Wars’ in Europe and Beyond,” Illiberalism Studies Program, The George Washington University, September 14, 2022, https://www.illiberalism.org/whose-war-the-nature-and-analysis-of-culture-wars-in-europe-and-beyond/.

[15] Gionathan Lo Mascolo and Kristina Stoeckl, “The European Christian Right: An Overview,” in Edition Politik, ed. Gionathan Lo Mascolo, vol. 129 (Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2023); Hennig, “Whose War?”

[16] Jelena Ćeriman and Tamara Vučković Juroš, “From Gender Re-Traditionalizations to Anti-Gender Mobilizations: Care for Family in Serbia and Croatia,” East European Politics and Societies 38, no. 2 (2023): 662-681, https://doi.org/10.1177/08883254231161553.

 

[18] Ćeriman and Vučković Juroš, “From Gender Re-Traditionalizations to Anti-Gender Mobilizations.”

[19] Interview with Marin S., October 26, 2023, emphasis added.

[20] While activists generally negated both collaboration with the East and the West, multiple independent sources close to some activist and political groups repeatedly complained that there is a frustrating and distinct lack of direct (non-Western mediated) contact between illiberal actors in Croatia and Serbia and the CEE. They often referred to this point as an expression of frustration, implying that they would personally prefer more active collaboration with the CEE countries, who they consider to be close to their positions both ideologically and in terms of the cultural and political background. The fact that no widespread collaboration exists, therefore, was one of their main criticisms of politics being done in the region.

[21] Stoeckl and Uzlaner, The Moralist International.

[22]Tlostanova, “Can the Post-Soviet Think?” 50.

[23] The network rebranded after its affiliates, campaigns, and donors were uncovered by hacker attacks against the Spanish NGO HazteOir. The latest meeting of the network was held in September 2024 in Zagreb, as Željka Markić is one of the network’s European coordinators, alongside Sophia Kuby.

[24] Hrvoje Šimičević, “Istina o Agendi,” Portal Novosti, March 23, 2024, https://www.portalnovosti.com/istina-o-agendi; Hrvoje Šimičević, “U Mreži Agende,” Portal Novosti, March 30, 2024, https://www.portalnovosti.com/u-mrezi-agende; Hrvoje Šimičević, “Otkrivena Agenda,” Portal Novosti, June 4, 2024, https://www.portalnovosti.com/otkrivena-agenda.

[25] Interview with Danijel T., September 27, 2024.

[26] Šimičević, “Istina o Agendi.”

[27] Datta, “‘Agenda Europe’”; Datta and Paternotte, “‘Gender Ideology’ Battles in the European Bubble.”

[28] Anna Lavizzari and Zorica Siročić, “Contentious Gender Politics in Italy and Croatia: Diffusion of Transnational Anti-Gender Movements to National Contexts,” Social Movement Studies 22, no. 4 (2023): 483, https://doi.org/10.1080/14742837.2022.2052836.

[29] Roman Kuhar and David Paternotte, eds., Anti-Gender Campaigns in Europe: Mobilizing against Equality (Rowman & Littlefield International, Ltd, 2017).

[30] Tanja Vučković Juroš et al., “The Rise of the Anti-Gender Movement in Croatia and the 2013 Marriage Referendum,” Europe-Asia Studies 72, no. 9 (2020): 1523–53.

[31] Nataša Bijelić, “Sex Education in Croatia: Tensions between Secular and Religious Discourses,” European Journal of Women’s Studies 15, no. 4 (2008), 332, https://doi.org/10.1177/1350506808095273.

[32] Later on, the vice president was Željka Markić (2009–2013), the leader of the most recognizable religious-conservative NGO in Croatia.

[33] Cited according to Bijelić, “Sex Education in Croatia,” 333.

[34] Bijelić, “Sex Education in Croatia.”

[35] Bijelić, 338, emphasis added.

[36] Bijelić, 339.

[37] Interview with Milica P., March 21, 2024.

[38] Srpski pokret “Dveri” (Eng. Serbian movement—“the Gates”) is a movement party pursuing religious conservatism, nationalism, and anti-globalism in Serbia. The movement was founded in 1999, but they became politically active through contesting the organization of the Pride Parade in 2011.

[39] SRBIN.info, “Kusturica, Bećković, Antonić, Đurković Digli Glas Protiv Predloga Novih Zakona u Srbiji,” SRBIN.info, April 29, 2021, https://srbin.info/kusturica-beckovic-antonic-djurkovic-digli-glas-protiv-predloga-novih-zakona/?lang=lat#gsc.tab=0.

[40] Lavizzari and Siročić, “Contentious Gender Politics in Italy and Croatia.”

[41] Kurt Weyland, “Autocratic Diffusion and Cooperation: The Impact of Interests vs. Ideology,” Democratization 24, no. 7 (2017): 1235–52.

[42] Datta, “‘Agenda Europe.’”

[43] The “four pillars” of foreign policy was an official guiding framework during the presidency of Boris Tadić (2004–2012) and was later rhetorically continued (and reinterpreted) by Aleksandar Vučić. The four pillars referred to the EU (framed as Serbia’s main strategic goal and foreign policy priority), the US (framed as essential for political legitimacy), Russia (framed as a traditional and energy partner), and China (at the time still a relatively minor partner, but included as a future-oriented economic ally).

[44] Interview with Andrija L., March 21, 2024.

[45] Freedom House, “Serbia: Freedom in the World 2024 Country Report” (Washington DC: Freedom House, 2024), https://freedomhouse.org/country/serbia/freedom-world/2024.

[46] Enver Robelli, “Merkel umarmt die Autokraten,” Berner Zeitung, September 15, 2021.

[47] Interview with Andrija L., March 21, 2024.

[48] European Parliament, “Serbia Did Not Fulfil Its Commitments to Free and Fair Elections, Say MEPs,” February 8, 2024, https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20240202IPR17327/serbia-did-not-fulfil-its-commitments-to-free-and-fair-elections-say-meps.

[49] “Commission Staff Working Document—Serbia—European Commission,” October 23, 2024.

[50] June 2024—the elections were repeated in the local municipality of Belgrade, where the results where most contested because the high irregularities with the voter lists. The working group managed to meet once before the repeated elections, but did not come to any measures, and calls for a meeting in the end of May were not responded to by the ruling coalition. The repeated elections were therefore held under same electoral conditions. Since the repeated elections, the working group met four more times, still with no concrete suggestions.

[51] France is deepening relations with Serbia. Macron and Vučić have so far signed eleven bilateral agreements, and Macron visited the country twice in the last five years, after an eighteen-year-long break without official visits from France: Hajdari, Kayali, and Zimmerman.

[52] Ursula von der Leyen, “Statement by President von Der Leyen at the Joint Press Conference with Serbian President Vučić,” European Commission, October 25, 2024.

[53] Oglasio se Kristofer Hil o izborima u Srbiji (VIDEO) – Politika – Dnevni list Danas, Politika, December 22, 2023, https://www.danas.rs/vesti/politika/oglasio-se-kristofer-hil-o-izborima-u-srbiji/.

[54] The EU as a Promoter of Democracy or ‘Stabilitocracy’ in the Western Balkans? (Wassenaar: Clingendael Institute, 2022), https://www.clingendael.org/sites/default/files/2022-02/the-eu-as-a-promoter-of-democracy-or-stabilitocracy.pdf.

[55] Robelli, “Merkel umarmt die Autokraten”; Aleks Eror, “How Aleksandar Vucic Became Europe’s Favorite Autocrat,” Foreign Policy, December 26, 2024, https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/03/09/how-aleksandar-vucic-became-europes-favorite-autocrat/.

[56] Florian Bieber, “What Is a Stabilitocracy?” BiEPAG, May 5, 2017, https://www.biepag.eu/blog/what-is-a-stabilitocracy; Zweers et al., The EU as a Promoter of Democracy or ‘Stabilitocracy’ in the Western Balkans?

[57] B. N., “Kako je Vučić 2022. govorio o RKS tablicama: Posebno vama sa N1, pošto vidim da niste razumeli, nema predaje,” N1, December 26, 2023, https://n1info.rs/vesti/vucic-kosovo-tablice-2022/.

[58] Bieber, “What Is a Stabilitocracy?”

[59] “EU and Serbia Sign Strategic Partnership on Sustainable Raw Materials, Battery Value Chains and Electric Vehicles,” European Commission, https://enlargement.ec.europa.eu/news/eu-and-serbia-sign-strategic-partnership-sustainable-raw-materials-battery-value-chains-and-electric-2024-07-19_en.

[60] Ivana Milićević, “Anti-Corruption Protests in Serbia—A New Challenge for Enlargement Credibility,” Evropski Pokret u Srbiji, September 23, 2025.

[61] European Commission, “Statement—Remarks by President Ursula von der Leyen following the Meeting with President Aleksandar Vučić of Serbia,” Press Corner, 25 October 2025. A sharply critical view of this state visit came from the European Green Party, conveying that “It is deeply regrettable that von der Leyen honours Vučić with an official visit without visible reservations, while his regime unlawfully detains students and opposition members and violently represses protesters. This is not a moment for photo opportunities and handshakes …” European Greens, “Von der Leyen’s Visit to Vučić Sends the Wrong Signal: The EU Must Stand with Serbia’s Citizens, Not Its Autocrat,” European Greens, October 15, 2025, https://europeangreens.eu/news/von-der-leyen-s-visit-to-vucic-sends-the-wrong-signal-the-eu-must-stand-with-serb/.  

[62] Sophia Khatsenkova, “President Vučić Gets Strategic Support from France for Serbia’s ‘European Destiny,’” Euronews, April 10 2025, https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2025/04/10/under-fire-at-home-serbian-president-vucic-gets-quiet-but-strategic-support-from-france. The lack of negative conditionality despite evident democratic regression becomes even clearer when compared to the EU’s response in the Georgian case, where a similar pattern and timeline of autocratization and protest led to public declaration of support from the highest EU officials, the freezing of funds, suspension of high-level meetings, and an explicit declaration that EU integration would be impossible under the current leadership.

[63] Jason Brownlee, “The Limited Reach of Authoritarian Powers,” Democratization 24, no. 7 (2017): 1326–44.

[64] Zweers et al., The EU as a Promoter of Democracy or ‘Stabilitocracy’ in the Western Balkans?

[65] Angelos Chryssogelos, “Europarties in the Neighbourhood: How Transnational Party Politics Bind Eastern Europe and the Western Balkans to the EU,” Comparative European Politics 19, no. 1 (2021): 77–93, https://doi.org/10.1057/s41295-020-00223-4.

[66] Aleksandar Ivković, “A Year after Suspending Fidesz, EPP Still Turning a Blind Eye to Serbian Progressive Party,” European Western Balkans, March 23, 2020, https://europeanwesternbalkans.com/2020/03/23/a-year-after-suspending-fidesz-epp-still-turning-a-blind-eye-to-serbian-progressive-party/.

[67] Notably, the World Congress of Families (WCF) was a co-organizer, signaling the overlap between formally recognized political networks and ideologically driven advocacy groups.