Jill A. Irvine

From Civil Society to Civil Servants: Women's Organizations and Critical Elections in Croatia

This work examines the role of women’s organizations in the 2000 elections in Croatia in an effort to understand when and how they play a significant role in promoting democracy and, in particular, the election of female candidates. Croatia offers a crucial case for the study of gender and democratization because it challenges two significant generalizations from the comparative literature on postcommunist transitions: first, that women’s organizations have been more likely to succeed in postcommunist countries where democracy has proceeded the furthest and, in particular, where ethno-nationalist conflict and ideologies are least salient; and, second, that widespread opposition to gender quotas in postcommunist countries prevented their use as a tool for promoting women’s equality. What conditions were present that facilitated the effectiveness of women’s organizations in Croatia in promoting their goal of electing more women? Four factors are key to explaining their success: the organizational strength and unity of women’s organizations; the extent of involvement by international organizations and donors; the perceived central role of women’s organizations in democratization; and, finally, the character of their alliances with political parties.

From International Courts to Grassroots Organizing: Obstacles to Transitional Justice in the Balkans

Most research on transitional justice in the Balkans focuses on international mechanisms, particularly the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). Little attention has been given to domestic responses because, until recently, there has been relatively little domestic participation and organizing around the topic of transitional justice. Our study seeks to fill this gap by examining the establishment of the Regional Truth Commission for the Former Yugoslavia (RECOM), which began officially in 2006. Using insights from social movement theory and literature on transnational advocacy networks, we identify the conditions necessary for a regional justice movement to succeed. Drawing upon interviews, survey research, as well as secondary material, we provide an interpretive analysis of RECOM, identifying the obstacles to its development, as well as the impact and role of international actors. We contend that although justice and peace are moving forward in the Balkans, ongoing dilemmas underscore important lessons about transitional justice; specifically, grassroots efforts to promote transitional justice must overcome significant challenges in defining issues, creating coalitions, and engaging the state. While international actors have thus far focused primarily on the ICTY, they can and should support grassroots efforts.

Negotiating Interests: Women and Nationalism in Serbia and Croatia, 1990-1997

Delija Štrbaja, 41 year old mother of two, was working in a sugar factory in the Vojvodinan town of Žabalj when the war with Croatia broke out in the summer of 1991. During the first two months of the conflict, Delija nervously awaited the moment when her husband, Zoran, would be called up to serve in the Yugoslav army. He too waited and spent many long hours with a friend who had fled Osijek, discussing the conflict and endlessly debating what should be done about it. Delija listened to them daily as she also stayed informed through the news media. Finally, she said, she could take it no longer and told them, “Ok boys, since you wont do it, Im going off to enlist. I will fight in your place.” Delija did enlist and served 46 days on the front line of the conflict in Banija, from September 25 to November 11, 1991. Fifteen of those days she spent with a rifle in her hands until the captain persuaded her to organize and run the units medical section.

Bounded altruism: INGOs’ opportunities and constraints during humanitarian crises and the US intervention in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo

International humanitarian nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) and government donors have grown increasingly close in the past two decades as they responded to conflict and post-conflict situations, with effects on each other that remain unclear. We advance a dynamic understanding of the opportunities and constraints that international NGOs (INGOs) experience in their relationship with the US government in conflict zones, arguing that shifts in INGOs’ potential to influence US responses are situationally determined. We offer three explanatory variables (aid market structure, bureaucratic regulatory environment, and US government demand for INGO services) to explain when and why INGOs possess opportunities for autonomy, and when their actions are constrained by donors. Applying this framework to the conflicts in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo, we conclude that INGOs possess the greatest opportunities during violence-induced humanitarian crises and experience many more constraints during peacekeeping scenarios.

Boys Must be Boys: Gender and the Serbian Radical Party, 1991–2000*

On 27 June 2004, Serbian voters went to the polls for the third time in a year to choose a president. The winner of the first two rounds of voting, Tomislav Nikolić, Deputy to the President of the extreme right Serbian Radical Party (SRS), lost the third round of voting to the more liberal Borisav Tadić by just under 8 percentage points (53.2 to 45.4), and the Radicals failed to form a ruling coalition in government. Nevertheless, more than five years after the last war in the disintegration of the Yugoslav state, the largest political party in the largest of the successor states has been characterized as the most extreme right party in the Balkans today. Indeed, the Radicals have been an enduring force in Serbian politics for the past decade and a half, sometimes ruling in coalition with Slobodan Milošević’s Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS). SRS founder Vojislav Šešelj, a flamboyant, obstreperous, highly influential figure, and his fellow Radicals have sought and in many ways succeeded in shaping the postcommunist transformation of Yugoslav politics and society, calling for a return to the true spirit of Serbia, when the nation was strong because its men defended its honor as well as its borders. This article examines the gender messages and practices of the SRS during the period from its formation in 1991 through the Balkan wars of the 1990s to the election of the democratic opposition in 2000. Numerous studies have highlighted the importance of gender to the post-communist transformations and the ways in which they fundamentally altered the gender order, often in ways that appeared to restrict women. The war and political turbulence that accompanied the post-communist period in the former Yugoslavia brought gender roles into even sharper relief. As one of the most enduring and significant political actors during this period, the SRS had an important impact on discourse and practices concerning gender roles, and it expended considerable effort in attempting to redefine them in new, “post-communist” ways. While some attention has been paid to the SRS and its relations to other European neo-fascist and extreme right organizations, there has been no study to date of SRS gender policies and practices. An examination of this subject can help us understand not only the critical forces at work in Serbia since 1991, but the role of gender

US Aid and gender equality: social movement vs civil society models of funding

ABSTRACT Despite the fact that the assumed link between women’s empowerment, peace, and democratization has taken a firm hold in both theory and practice, the effectiveness of funding empowerment remains highly contested in the literature on gender, war, and democratic transformations. Drawing upon over a decade of fieldwork, this article offers lessons from the Balkans for funding women’s empowerment, with a particular focus on postconflict political transitions. I argue that there are two fundamentally different approaches to funding women’s empowerment, what I call the civil society model and the social movement model, and I lay out theoretical reasons why the social movement model is more likely to achieve enduring political change. I then provide a case study of how the United States government promoted elements of the social movement model in Croatia and Serbia as part of its democratization assistance, focusing on the challenges and promise of this approach.