The process of cancerous "personnel conquest" and dismantling of the republic's governing institutions has reached their neuralgic center - the Republic Secretariat for Public Policies (RSJP). After years of pressure, the process was accelerated by decrees Vlada recently exempted "EU harmonization of regulations" from the competence of the Secretariat. Last week, its director of many years, Bojana Tošić, was replaced. It is about the most important professional and modernizing pillar of the republican administration in Serbia.
It is easy to read this as another step in the consolidation of autocracy. That would be a misreading. The dissolution of the RSJP does not strengthen the regime - it is a symptom of its weakening. But that's not good news either. Functional democracies are much easier to build out of functional autocracies than out of chaos.
RSJP did many things, but two tasks were key. The first was the regulatory reform: "forcing", but also teaching the ministries that, before proposing a new regulation, they should say what kind of problem it solves, how much it costs, and what the alternatives are. He asked to consider several options, not only the pre-selected one: to consult the public; to say who will be affected and how one will even know if the regulation has succeeded. It sounds ordinary. It's not. For our administration, whose professional culture is built around the question of "how to act" and not "what do we want to achieve" - this is revolutionary.
IGNORANCE AND CONSEQUENCES
The following example shows that this is not trivial. The Institute for Public Health "Batut" had 2000 employees at the time I started working on it. His task was, first of all, to collect data on public health and to make policy recommendations based on them. However, the data it produced was often unusable because it was lumped together: if an institution failed to provide data one month, it would be treated as zero; in the second month, everyone submits data - and the indicator jumps; in the third month, someone submits wrong information. I ask them - why don't you correct it? Why don't you do an assessment? Oh, no! Their task is, as the regulations say, to collect and collate data exactly as the institutions provide it. And then experts from the World Health Organization would have to come, look for the originals, make corrections and assessments - and let them tell us how the solution to a problem is progressing. And we also have statisticians and medical experts - but outside the administration.
In Djindjic's government, many thought that Milošević's cadres were undermining us. Maybe some are. But above all, they did not know their new task. In the self-governing Yugoslavia, the administrative machinery prescribed in detail "how" to act, and the goals, the initiative and the very answer to the question "why" were given by the all-pervading political consensus within the party, which was built outside the administrative institutions. When that consensus disappeared in 2001, a stifling regulation remained in the hands of an administration that did not know what to do with it - and which very quickly began to use it to defend itself against ambiguities, political arbitrariness and corrupt pressures.
The second task was to teach Serbia to act according to plan. I know from experience that it is not trivial either. Even before my ministerial duties, in the Ministry of Finance I was in charge of public companies - which we had to manage as economic entities, while the relevant ministries managed them through sectoral goals. You can imagine two warring parties: two legitimate mandates, one and the same enterprise. If Zoran Đinđić did not have time to reconcile us, there was no other - nor logical, let alone expert coordination to reduce misunderstandings and vanity. Who in the wedge, who in the plate.
HOW SERBIA BECOME UNGOVERNABLE
At the time of the establishment of the RSJP in 2014, the annual work plan of the Government, in the preparation of which civil servants invested serious time and paper, was realized with - I am writing from memory - about 40 percent. And an even greater number of activities that the Government actually implemented in that same year in that plan were not foreseen at all. For this, the RSJP set a framework that had not existed before: an action plan for the implementation of the Government's program.
It is a document that for the first time concretely translates the Prime Minister's exposition - the one for which the Prime Minister receives the confidence of the Assembly - into a list of measures, with holders, deadlines and indicators of results. In other words: what the prime minister promised in front of the deputies was no longer a general position, but an obligation that can be followed. Only from there does a more meaningful coordination between the ministries begin, and only from there can true responsibility for the results be taken. That work remained unfinished because above all, the authority of one man began to spread.
And before Vučić the political leader of the country could make the decision about which traffic roads will be built first - or even whether to build the Belgrade-Budapest high-speed railway - on his own. That's where Vučić brought power to shocking proportions, especially for a European country where every possible democratic institution exists. But the source of his personal power is also the source of his growing weakness.
We should therefore not fear that the regime, by destroying institutions such as the RSJP, will become capable of establishing the much-desired dictatorship unhindered. On the contrary. Because even for a firm dictatorship, institutions are necessary.
Functional institutions are those that have clear goals and strive to achieve them through well-known and established (they don't even have to be written) rules of conduct. Only in this way is it possible to make thousands of decisions necessary for a country to move, no matter how slowly, in a clear direction.
The work of functional institutions is not the same as democracy. China and Singapore also have such functional institutions. Rwanda has them too - taking into account the relative African context. None of these countries are even remotely democratic. But like South Korea, which was similar to them until the Park regime fell in 1987 - they are all moving forward and developing because their institutions have the necessary autonomy to work consistently in their field of action. They produce solutions, allocate funds, strengthen personnel (even with scholarships and training abroad), thoughtfully adapt other people's solutions to the needs and goals of their country. And the central "boss" does not interfere in their work every day. Not that they won't. But one boss can't do that, even if he doesn't sleep at all. There must be more brains - fine or rotten, but capable. And there must be rules. Otherwise, chaos ensues.
That is why this regime is also falling. And that's not because institutions are collapsing - the regime never relied on institutions. First of all, because the process of cancerous personnel conquest is destroying both the institutions and the regime itself. In the case of institutions, it really resembles the spread of a tumor; in the case of the regime, it looks more like a wasp in which poisonous and nervous wasps are increasingly wresting from Vučić's control. When you think about it, it's shocking how little Vučić actually manages to implement the way he wants. And less and less. He used to change personnel at a high speed, so as not to let his own ones get too strong, and sometimes to bring in someone new who knows something and wants to do it. Regime cancer swallowed people with ideas, and the latter turned into new angry wasps.
Thus, Serbia becomes ungovernable - not an autocracy in consolidation, but a centrally intervened chaos. And institutions do not come back from chaos alone. Institutions are being built. "Everyone wants institutions," said Jasna Atanasijević Dimitrijević, former director of RSJP, "but they don't understand the pain of creating institutions."
HOW TO REACH A FUNCTIONAL AND LEGAL STATE
Dear students and somewhat less dear opposition: when you finally deal the final blow to this regime, you will face a pile of rubble. Look through them carefully to find people like Bojana Tošić and many others whom I will not name now so as not to hinder their efforts if by any chance they are still trying to build or save parts of the system. RSJP will have to be rebuilt. Only with their experience and their commitment will Serbia get a functional and legal state - without waiting for our great-grandchildren.
The author is the founder and director of the Center for Advanced Economic Studies
