When 55.5 percent of the citizens of Montenegro voted on 21 May 2006 to sever the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro and make their republic a fully sovereign country in its own right, they set the capstone on a political shift that has been noteworthy for its peaceful and orderly conduct in a region which has seen a great deal of chaos and bloodshed since the breakup of the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s.
About the Author
Srdjan Darmanović is professor of comparative politics at the University of Montenegro and a member of the Council of Europe’s Venice Commission. From 2010 until early in October 2016, he served as Montenegro’s ambassador to the United States. On 28 November 2016, he was named Montenegro’s foreign minister–designate.
The gravest challenges facing democracy in the Balkans are problems not of ethnicity or postcommunism, but of citizen disaffection and disillusionment.
