Fall - Winter 2010

Written by: Juan Fernandez Ochoa Friday, December 17, 2010

State violence and the acceptance of LGBT individuals and rights in the Western Balkans.
Throughout the 20th century, democracy and its liberal sense gained widespread acceptance in what has been called The West. Without wanting to enter in debates about the appropriateness of the geopolitical and social construct theorized by Samuel Huntington (Huntington 1996), there seems to be an agreement about the fact that around one-third of the world countries are considered performing democracies (Encyclopdia_Britannica 2010).

One of the reasons that have been considered to be at work for the advent of this brand of democracy in Europe was the traumatic experience of the World Wars. The gruesome violence unleashed by the belligerent States lead to long-term human and material costs. Thus, it is not surprising that only ve years after the end of the inter-State conict occurs the creation of an European cooperation project aimed at limiting the power of by-gone enemies to ensure the raising of the living standards and to promoting peaceful achievements (Schuman Declaration, 1950).

To do so, the Union has determined as its foundational values ideas such as human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities (Article 2 of the Treaty of the European Union, 2009). These values constitute limits to the States violent potential and encourage horizontally structured civil societies and civil economies based upon the rule of law (Bideleux and Jeffries 2007).

This apparent virtuosity of the Unions core ideals seems to be at odds with certain generalized perceptions about a currently neighboring region: the Balkans. If generally rejected by the inhabitants of the region itself, the term Balkanization have been equaled to:

endemic propensities towards highly debilitating (and often self-perpetuating) political, cultural and socio-economic fragmentation, deeply destructive and often fratricidal inter-communal conict, political destabilization, intemperate or intolerant attitudes and mentalities, pervasive clientelism and corruption, a preponderance of relatively oppressive vertical power relations and power structures, weak development of the rule of law, stunted development of impersonal horizontally structured civil, legal, and associational ties and relationships, the exercise of unstable and strongly personalized power and inuence, a prevalence of polities with strong coercive but weak infrastructural capabilities and widespread feelings of victimization, vindictiveness and fatalism (ibid).

We must concede that there is a high degree of caricature in such visions as they constitute simplistic generalizations regarding the populations and States of a territory thats hardly ever dened

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without sound contestation. Plus, the accession of Bulgaria and Romania to the European Union in 2007 is an evidence of the diverging dynamics within the region itself.

However, to different degrees, some of the aspects compiled by Bideleux and Jeffries persist to the detriment of the quality of life of a great deal of the population of these countries.This situation is particularly worrying in light of the EU enlargement policy vis--vis the Western Balkans. In 2003, during the Thessaloniki Summit, the European Union formalized a commitment with the countries of the Western Balkans in matters of accession prospects. The wishful approach that led to declare that the future of the Balkans is within the European Union in 2003 seems to materialize as accession negotiations with Croatia are progressing (European_Commission 2008) but many questions remain unanswered, specially as there are three unnished states in the Western Balkans: Bosnia, Kosovo and Serbia (Rupnik 2009).

Our study will address one of the unresolved dilemmas persisting in the heterogeneous Western Balkans: the social acceptance of LGBT individuals. Borrowing notions from structuralist and historical institutionalist approaches in sociology we will posit that State violence acts as an independent variable conditioning the level of acceptance of LGBT rights in the Western Balkans. Our study will be nourished by extensive literature on the issue of State violence; recent, but limited, research on the eld and general statistics on LGBT matters in the countries at stake: Albania, Bosnia Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia. We will structure our presentation in four steps: the rst will be to dene which violence our study needs to focus on, we will see how restricted visions are incomplete to understand complex long-term social phenomenon like the one were addressing; the second step will analyze who constitute the sexual otherness that is marginalized in the region; a third part will try to build bridges between what we consider to be intricate processes (State violence and Societys rejection) to; nally, present our hypothesis and submit it to statistical test.

Theoretical framework on State violence.

I. Concrete / Physical violence.
Writing in 1919, Weber afrms that the relation between the State and violence is an intimate one (Weber 1959). This link is, in his theory, so intimate that physical violence becomes a constitutive trait of the modern State; dened in turn as the entity possessing the monopoly of legitimate physical violence. Building his theory on the Hobbian Leviathan, Weber posits that the absence of the State would lead to anarchy, a chaotic state of nature that would irrepressibly lead to conict, the violence of all against all (Braud 2004). In this sense, the monopoly of physical violence appears, quite paradoxically, as a means for peace.

This uniqueness of the State in this paramount to understand the action of its administrative apparatus as its institutions crystallize the prerogative dened by Weber as articulating the State. The action of the police forces, the army, the legislative instances and the judicial order esh out the States monopoly of legitimate physical violence by borrowing legitimacy from it. Master in European Affairs - SciencesPo - Paris 2

However, even if we agree on the basic premises identied by Weber as dening the modern State and its relation to violence, for the purposes of our study his theory is insufcient to evaluate the realities of the States action. In order to ll this gap, we will adopt a broader approach to the States physical violence that allows us to classify concrete realizations of it. Through this lens, proposed by Mark Ungar, we recognize three forms of State physical violence: judicial, semi-judicial and extra-judicial.

The judicial variant refers to all acts of violence committed under the aegis of the legal order. This kind of violence is the most evident in the Member States of the European Union as it is directly related with the prerogatives of the State we described before. One of the clearest illustrations of this type of violence can be found in Article 3.3.2 of the Code of Practice on Police Use of Firearms and Less Lethal Weapons of the UK; which allows the use of rearms with fatal risks if the protection of life so requires it (Home_Ofce 2003). But State-allowed killings are an extreme example of a kind of violence that can express with more subtlety through discriminatory and violent practices against individuals by the courts, the prisons and other government institutions (Ungar 2000).

Semi judicial violence is related with practices that are just partially backed up by the legal order. Excessive edicts, military laws and extraordinary operations (ibid) with high levels of opacity in the exercise of State competences can give room to unaccountable violence.

Finally, theres an extra-judicial violence related to killings, torture and harassment that, while out of the legality, develops either because of the inaction of the security apparatus of the State or its complacence. For instance, during the post-transition governments of Felipe Gonzalez in Spain (1982-1996), a counter-terrorist group known as the GAL (Grupos Antiterroristas de Liberacin) executed several members of the separatist terrorist group ETA over a period of time going from 1983 to 1987; it was revealed afterwards that the Ministry of Interior nanced the campaign as an attempt to end with the separatist threat.

As we have seen, concrete and/or physical violence where the State acts as the subject can take different forms. By adopting Ungars model of State violence we will be able, further on, to empirically identify expressions of State violence against LGBT groups in the Western Balkans.

II.

Symbolic violence and the power of the discourse.

Notwithstanding the clarity of this classication, we consider State violence exists beyond the possibility of identifying without doubts the existence of a perpetrator and a victim. By doing so, we take position against moralist denitions of violence that rely on

the supposed existence of universal norms, of juridical or ethical order, that are or, acMaster in European Affairs - SciencesPo - Paris 3

tually, should be unanimously admitted (Braud 2004). But also the limited positivist approach that considers violence an objective matter that can be quantied.

We believe both positions miss important aspects of State violence: the former, by relying on the normative and the contingent; and the latter, by requiring a victim to feel as such in order for violence to exist, thus excluding less conspicuous forms of violence that are deeply linked to domination and have veriable even if probably more diffuse effects. For our work, being a victim does not require for physical harm to take place as being a victim of violence, is also being affected at the soul (ibid).

By borrowing ideas from structuralist approaches on violence, we will be able to consider those case where State violence does not generate self-recognized direct victims. This perspective is fundamental for our work, as our hypothesis is to assert that State violence affects the society as a whole; while some sectors bear higher costs (especially, in our case, LGBT individuals and groups).

Precisely, structuralist views on violence do not link individual responsibility and the phenomenon of violence. On the contrary, symbolic violence as theorized by Pierre Bourdieu is a soft violence, invisible, unknown as such, chosen as well as suffered (Bourdieu 1980). This view is particularly useful to the extent that in terms of understanding the long-term causes of violence, specially the way that certain social groups (...) tend to be abused by other social groups (...) the emphasis on the intention of the individual may be less than expedient (Bradby 1996). We put forward the argument that this idea can be extended to the violence exerted by elements of the State on society as a whole.

If symbolic violence might ulteriorly lead to physical and/or concrete violence, it is important not to confuse these two ideas we consider complementary. Indeed, symbolic violence refers to the capacity to create signications legitimately without the arbitrary of the production of these representations being perceivable. In other words, the power to institute mental structures and schemes of perception and thought in such a way that their construction becomes invisible and, this way, perceived as natural (Bourdieu 1994). Making use of its symbolic power, the State imposes representations of the world through its complex apparatus. In particular, the school system, which acts as a privileged instrument because of its capacity to diffuse massively long-lasting visions of reality.

The theories evoked lead us to adopt a broader vision of the relation of the State and violence. Transforming Max Webers theory, Bourdieu agrees: the State is a X (to be determined) capable of claiming successfully the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical and symbolic violence on a determined territory and on the population that corresponds to it (ibid). We claim that the interplay between physical/concrete and Master in European Affairs - SciencesPo - Paris 4

symbolic violence will produce patent and long-lasting effects in society, inuencing signicantly the generalized perception of LGBT individuals.

The LGBT movement in the Western Balkans.

I. Historicity and minority status.
The literature on LGBT individuals, groups and movements is particularly limited in the Western Balkans. However, as Helms reports, there is a growing but still incomplete [that] has offered important insights into gender regimes in the former Yugoslav space (Helms 2006). Though our study focuses on a relatively different geographical area 1, we share the appreciation about the absence of information (which is almost total with regards to heterosexual men and LGBT individuals), the recent emergence of key studies and the need for more profound work on the issue and the zone.

The absence of information is telling for a number of reasons. Being aware of the existence of a visible LGBT movement in Croatia (The Zagreb Pride parade is progressively prominent) and Serbia (Gay Pride in 2001 and 2010), the silence around the subject is at the least atypical. While it is true that the LGBT movements are recent, the mutism about the context surrounding the violences against LGBT individuals during the Belgrade Gay Pride 2010 parade points is worrying. Some political analysts, however, have not missed the sign and question the capability of accession of the Western Balkans countries to the EU on the basis that theyre unable to protect a visibly endangered minority (Lowen 2010).

In any case, the question regarding the LGBT population remains far from being solved in the Western Balkans. We believe it is fundamental to understand the minority and fragile situation that dene this group in order to be able to understand its standing amongst the societies of the countries of the Western Balkans. To this extent, we reject to some extent an approach that limits the question to a non-discrimination issue without identifying it with the problems damaging the quality of life of minorities.

The idea of minorities sparks off heated debate when it comes to denition. Conventional wisdom tends to associate this status with numerically disadvantaged social groups. Nonetheless, this restrictive denition forgets the multiple connotations given to the word: quantitative, pejorative, political, ethnical, cultural, ideological, etc. (Brzea 1996); all of the which are regarded as being proper basis for minority status. Though we agree with the work of Birzea preventing from essentialist views of minorities, we will distance ourselves from a perspective that privileges complex cultural dynamics over relations of domination (ibid). On the contrary, we will consider a traditional sociological approach that denes a minority group as any group of persons that, because of its physical or cultural characteristics, is submitted to a discrimination vis--vis the

The Western Balkans (territorially) equals the Yugoslav space minus Slovenia plus Albania.

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other members of the society in the which he lives (Wirth 1945); only to expand it by adding sexual orientation or sexual identity to the characteristics invoked.

The LGBT movements start developing in the 20th century and enter the public sphere after the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York. This founding act saw an expansion throughout the West, then by organizations in Latin America in the late 1970s, in Africa and Asia in the 1980s, and Eastern Europe in the 1990s (Ungar 2000). Though no literature seems to account for the evolution of the gay movement in the Western Balkans, we could mention as examples (though they do not abound): Lesbian and Gay Men Action (LIGMA) founded in Croatia in the early 1990s and Arkadija, founded in 1990 in Serbia. These slow advances, a consequence of social and State violence and repression, set the pace and basis for a more prosperous LGBT community that has begun to ourish, though at different speeds according to the country, since the 2000s. Nowadays, the LGBT movement has diversied and several NGOs, associations and online communities appear as nuclei for activism and socialization.

II.

The European parrainage.

The European Union has played a double role in the evolution of LGBT rights in the Western Balkans. On the one hand, it exercises indirect pressure because of its geopolitical standing and its progressive approach regarding LGBT matters. On the other hand, it has a direct inuence via accession negotiations with Western Balkan States. Both modes respond to the image that the European Union wants to project via its external relations; the image of a civil ethical or benevolent power (Smith 2003).

Regarding its own legal order, the European Union has two major instruments with the objective of avoiding discrimination over grounds of sexual orientation: while primary legislation sets out a general purpose according to the which the Union shall aim to combat discrimination based on sex, racial or ethnic origin, religion or belief, disability, age or sexual orientation. (Art. 10 Treaty of Lisbon; 13 TEC), secondary legislation (through Directive 2000/78/EC) establishes, a general framework for equal treatment in employment and occupation [that] requires explicit and specic legislation to outlaw sexual orientation discrimination (Waaldjk 2006).

By denition, both legal instruments penetrate the domestic legal order, urging Member States to comply with the objective of non-discrimination. Moreover, Directives need to be transposed and internal legislation adapted in order to ensure implementation. However, as implementation is in charge of the Member states and harmonization is rather heterogenous amongst them, the application has allowed for gray areas to emerge in matters of indirect discrimination, sanctions, scope of the prohibition of discrimination, etc. In spite of the shortcomings, these changes at the heart of the European Union have an inuence to the extent they become a part of the political model exported by the EU and integrate the acquis communautaire, the dynamic body of the European Master in European Affairs - SciencesPo - Paris 6

Union law that States who demand accession need to comply with in order to be granted membership. It is in terms of the acquis communautaire that the inuence of the European Union against discrimination towards what we consider sexual minorities becomes most visible. The countries in the Western Balkans can be grouped in three different stages towards accession: the rst stage concerns those countries which have not still ofcially applied to the EU but have been recognized as potential candidates through the 2003 Summit Declaration we mentioned beforehand; in this situation are Kosovo and Bosnia Herzegovina. Then, a second stage has to do with those countries that have submitted an application but are not considered candidates yet; the case of Serbia, Montenegro and Albania. And, nally, a last stage regards the countries that are considered ofcial candidates and go through ofcial negotiations to ulteriorly be given clearance to enter the Union; the case of Croatia.

If, because of this perspective, it is true that all countries of the Western Balkan sare submitted to these normative pressures, we believe the case of Croatia is the most evident as its accession to the European Union is imminent and has been estimated to materialize in 2012. During the rst part of the negotiations, the Candidate is submitted to screening meetings by agents of the Commission that will found the basis for solid reports about the situation of the acquis for each chapter of negotiation. Chapter 19 (Social policy and employment) and 23 (Judiciary and fundamental rights) evaluate the countrys strategies for non-discrimination comparing them to the EUs. As specic binding rules have (...) been developed with respect to non-discrimination on grounds of racial or ethnic origin, religion or belief, disability, age or sexual orientation (European_Commission 2006) by the European Union, the State is expected to provide LGBT individuals with equivalent safeguards. In the case of Croatia, a certain number of provisions within the domestic legal order, such as the Family Act, the Inheritance Act, the Act on Same-Sex Unions, the Criminal Procedure Act and the Act on the Security and Intelligence System of the Republic of Croatia (...) the Gender Equality Act (European_Commission 2007) and also anti-discrimination institutions embodied by three ombudspersons in Croatia: Ombudsman (general issues), Ombudsman for gender equality and Ombudsman for children were highlighted as positive advances.

We do not intend to say that the European Union has a monopoly on the foreign inuence in the region. As a consequence of a recent democratization in the area, numerous foreign-funded NGOs have taken over (socialist) state functions that have disappeared as such (Helms 2006). But due to the UE accession protocol, its inuence is almost tangible in most of the countries were analyzing.

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Connecting the dots: State violence and acceptance of LGBT rights in the Western Balkans.
I. Assessing State violence in the Western Balkans.
Regardless of the evolving situation of the countries nowadays, the Western Balkans have a historical burden of State violence. In the next lines, we will recur to numerous resources to estimate the factors that articulate State violence in the region.

For a long time, until the recent democratization of the region, States incurred in discriminatory and/or violent practices against LGBT individuals. As Ungar afrms for recently democratized countries: The most deeply rooted kind of state violence occurs within the states own institutions (Ungar 2000). Submitted to the power of authoritarian leaders during the 1990s and, for some, even until the 2000s, LGBT individuals faced a double threat: on one side, the rejection of society and; on the other side, the States repressive apparatus. Based on the model on physical/concrete violence explained beforehand, we will try to identify common traits of State violence to validate its part in our hypothesis, that State violence has conditioned the level of acceptance of LGBT individuals and rights in the Western Balkans.

The criminalization of homosexual acts would be one of the rst clues to look for State violence against LGBT individuals. Abolished in most of Western Europe countries during the rst half of the 20th century (and in some, like France or Belgium, during the 18th century), the penalization of homosexual acts have persisted in most Western Balkans countries as an evidence of judicial violence. Croatia and Montenegro seem to be exceptions (1977) in a region were the legislative apparatus reacted late against this virulent discrimination: Serbia in 1994 (Greenberg 2006), Albania in 1995, Macedonia in 1996.

If the criminalization of homosexuality seems to be the most aggressive judicial State violence, many other forms persist. In matters of same-sex cohabitation, only Croatia has allowed for some form to exist (in 2003) (European_Commission 2007), the rest of the countries forbidding same-sex unions of all kinds and even imposing a constitutional ban by dening marriage as between a man and a woman. Other kinds of antigay laws have to do with the possibility for homosexual individuals to serve openly in the military (forbidden in Serbia) or to occupy certain professional posts (professors or lawyers, as in Macedonia since 1995 - (Ungar 2000)).

Forms of semi-judicial violence are harder to explore in the Western Balkans. Most of the times, these relate to common day-to-day practices that remain after a democratic transition in the ambiguity of the legal/illegal continuum. In Bosnia, for example, Article 2 of the Law on Gender Equality, approved by the Parliament in 2003, species that Discrimination on the grounds of gender and sexual orientation is prohibited; but biolMaster in European Affairs - SciencesPo - Paris 8

ogy books for children include comparisons of deviant behavioral traits such as the tendency to crime or suicide, use alcohol or drugs, homosexuality, and many other behaviors (GayEcho 2010).

Other practices, specially those related to security, are often recalled. When political and societal uncertainty is high, when structures and rules are new, when crime is rising, and when ofcers expect antagonism from citizens all conditions common in new democraciesgovernments tend to give security forces even wider leeway and allow many of the violent practices ne-tuned during the pre-democratic era to continue (ibid). Amongst these, police harassment tends to be evoked as such a practice. However, we have not been able to nd empirical and concrete historical data about semijudicial State violence in the Western Balkans as the literature is considerably limited. We believe, nonetheless, that the matter requires following as the President of the GayStraight Alliance recently declared that "Although the police in Serbia made progress in respect of professional standards in dealing with LGBT individuals, yet the majority of police unprepared to work with this population" (GayEcho 2010).

Be it the consequence of its current non-existence (which we doubt) or the lack of institutions reporting it (Amnesty international doesnt have delegations in most Balkan countries), police harassment does not seem to be as problematic as elsewhere. However, some have criticized that the State does not work preventively to discourage all those who want to exercise violence (GayEcho 2010), letting extra-judicial violence remain in impunity. Such visions are slowly changing as governments persevere in their will to enter the European Union and try to give an image distancing from complacence towards these attacks. Nonetheless, as we have already explained, concrete and/or physical violence by the State is far from explaining the complex and harsh treatment given to LGBT individuals by Western Balkan societies. In order to understand why State violence has had such a transcendental effect in inuencing negative perceptions of this minority we are to take into account the symbolic violence exerted by the State.

The greatest trait of such violence in the Balkans has to do with a certain brand of nationalism that seems endemic to the region. Indeed, even today, a fear of the resurgence of a nationalism of the kind that motivated the genocide and war crimes committed between 1991 and 1999 under the support of Slobodan Milosevic in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo (Pocar 2006) persists. Indeed, some agree that the great boogieman of Serbian and Balkan politics was the threat of the extreme nationalists, the radicals, coming to power in Belgrade (Judah 2010).

If a lot has been told about the ethnic component of the State-sponsored nationalism that led to armed conicts in the 1990s, very little is understood about the Gender imMaster in European Affairs - SciencesPo - Paris 9

plications 2. As a matter of fact, the context preceding the war favored the emergence of such a nationalism. Towards the 1980s, critical economic change occurred in detriment of middle-class men who, already conditioned to violence according to some authors (Frantz 2009), felt allured by the nationalist discourse. This type of nationalism aligning masculinity, homophobia, violence and dignity captivated men who felt deprived of their core identity as economic instability and multiculturalism progressed; thus, militarism as a way of winning back both individual manliness and national dignity (Greenberg 2006). On these grounds, the eruption of a war based on essentialist views on national identity and the development of a certain imaginaire collectif (Anderson 1991) around this identity prone to bellicosity became likely. The patriarchate and manly virtues have been exalted during the conict (Derens 2006) and the identity of men became hybridized with the stereotype of a warrior: A male is a man with a gun (Moss 2002).

This violent nationalism that the State hosted and encouraged in different intensities during the last decades in the Western Balkans has persisted even if moderated. Tim Judah, qualies the threat of an aggressive nationalism la Milosevic to be over (Judah 2010). If by threat, the author meant the possibility of it hijacking the State, then we would agree. But, as Rupnik concedes, the question, in the short or mid-term, is less of a decline -unlikely- of nationalism parties, and more about the ways to contain them, see them evolve and make them eurocompatible as it happens in Croatia (Rupnik 2004). This situation is generalizable to different extents to other countries of the region, even if we can question the level of eurocompatibility of a party whose leader claims that gay sex, sex with animals and sex with things [are] of the non-normal kind as Tomislav Nikolic from the Serbian Progressive Party expresses according to a local news outlet (Markovic 2009).

These parties continue to exist for the same reason that in many Eastern European countries we have seen appear communist successor parties during the late 1990s; although they do not want to turn back the wheel of history, they promise less severe economic and social policies. They pledge to reduce the high costs of modernizing and when in power some actually do so (Flam 2001). Extrapolating on the Western Balkan case, we would posit that these parties persist as they protect old identities and a certain statu quo that feels threatened by change. In the Western Balkans, modernization is coming with high costs for a segment of the population that less than a decade ago dened itself according to the violent nationalist credo preached by leaders as Milosevic. Mental structures can be changed, but they are not as malleable as we would expect.

Gender is herein understood as a domination relation between sexes as dened by Delphy, C. (2001). L'en-

nemi principal. Vol. 2: Penser le Genre. Paris, Syllepse. We do not dene it as the study of the role of women in society as many works imply by concentrating on the roles of women in the region; ignoring a denition.

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II.

The resiliency of a discriminatory imaginaire collectif.

During the last decades, to different extent, the State recurred to its monopole of legitimate physical and symbolic violence to produce a national identity xed around a certain vision of masculinity in the Western Balkans. Nowadays, considerable change seems to be at work. Clear illustrations of such changes are the imminent accession of Croatia to the EU or the Serbian Minister of Human Rights participation at the Belgrade Pride Parade of 2010. But even as physical and symbolic State violence have shifted, a certain collective imagery persists based on the old system of representations. This representation of reality is modiable through long-term processes and cannot be expected to suddenly change. Violence is an important part of the peoples imagery (Braud 2004), in the Western Balkans this violence is, amongst others, oriented against LGBT individuals.

This is where historical institutionalism might help us understand the evolution of social behavior. We believe the causality relation we are trying to identify is explained by path dependency. A process understood as occurring when a contingent historical event triggers a subsequent sequence that follows a relatively deterministic pattern (Mahoney 2000). In our case, the contingent historical event was the violence exerted by the States of different Western Balkan countries, which conditioned, proportionally, the domestic acceptance of LGBT rights by society. However, this model explains why a change in the States violence (less oriented against the LGBT population) doesnt lead to an automatic change in the perception of society as it is conditioned by the contingent event we mentioned before.

An empirical prove of our work could be concluded by similar work made in Poland. According to Kliszczynski, the traditional lack of positive information was one important reason for the creation of the grotesque stereotype of a homosexual, however, even if the media has moderated its position and the authorities have accepted the the existence of homosexual groups as part of a rich public life, the attitude of the Polish society differs very much from the ofcial position on this question (Kliszczynski 2001). But the same author nuances his statement as he indicated that the acceptance of homosexual relations have increased from 17% in 1992 to 40% in 1994, mimicking the shift in the Polish States discourse.

Hypothesis
In countries where politics are just recently shifting, we will be able to measure more clearly the inuence of a (bygone) State violence on the acceptation of gay rights by society. Throughout the previous section of our study, we have effectively identied precise means through the which the State exerts its monopoly of legitimate physical and symbolic violence. Consequently, we have posited that this violence will nourish a rejection towards the LGBT population by society to that will vary in proportion of the violences intensity and orientation. Master in European Affairs - SciencesPo - Paris 11

What we call orientation is particularly important as we are convinced that all States put into use, in different fashion, their legitimate monopoly of physical and symbolic violence. However, in the Western Balkans, this violence has been historically tinged with ideologies that foment rejection of the LGBT populations. Through its inuence, these ideas are diffused amongst the population and become a part of their collective imagery; even of their national imagery, as weve explored.

When evaluating such complex variables, jumping to conclusions might seem hasty beyond our general assumption that State violence and LGBT acceptance will be linked. However, we do expect to see a difference for the case of Croatia.

Several factors condition the exercise of State violence in Croatia. Firstly, together with Montenegro it was the rst country to decriminalize sex acts amongst homosexuals; which reveals a certain openness of the States discourse. Then, together with Macedonia, it was the rst country to sign an association agreement with the EU, the rst to start negotiations and the rst to be granted candidate status; this process of europeanization required a previous internal change in terms of State violence as the EU regards itself as a normative power. Finally, even if concrete physical violence has taken place in Croatia (the ethnic cleansing of a Serb minority carried out between 1991 and 1995 having severe demographic consequences (Bideleux and Jeffries 2007)), the homophobic connotation of State-sponsored violence never gained the force it had in countries like Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, etc.

Statistical analysis
Measuring State violence is highly imprecise. To date, we ignore the existence of indexes condensing the different components we have considered during our research. For our statistical analysis well rely on the Freedom in the World index published by FreedomHouse as a proxy for state violence. We concede that the usage of a political rights/civil liberties index is highly imprecise and takes into account but a small part of what our work has considered State violence to be. Nonetheless, we expect to see a certain correlation when we confront the historical data we have obtained from crossnational reports made by this organization with a valuable indicator of LGBT acceptance in the Western Balkans: the World Values Survey and its indicator regarding the justication of homosexuality.

Thee considerations are necessary before the statistical analysis. For the Freedom of the World index, we have decided to use an average of the decade preceding the measurement of LGBT acceptance. The reason is coherent with our argument that State changes in the orientation of violence will only be mirrored in the populations opinions in term. The second precision regards the measurement of the WVS regarding the justication of homosexuality as the data available is from 1995. The limitations of such a late measure have to do with the fact that changes in State violence in most of the Master in European Affairs - SciencesPo - Paris 12

countries of the Western Balkans, as we have explained before, are patent after the 1990s. These two nuances will help to clear doubts on the precision of a statistical exercise that we deem imprecise but can provide us with hints to take our study further. Last, we would like to remark that, because of the recent foundation of Serbia, Montenegro and Kosovo and the international occupation of Bosnia, data for these countries are either inexistent (Kosovo and Bosnia) or fused (Serbia and Montenegro).

On the x-axis, countries are classied according to the FreedomHouse index Freedom of the World. This index based on civil liberties and political rights classies countries from 0 (Free) to 7 (Not Free). To make it easier to understand we have adapted it to a scale of 100 following the work by Pippa Norris3. The y-axis is based on the WVS question Is homosexuality justiable?; we have taken the mean for each country and concentrated on what we considered to be easier to grasp: the percentage of the population that considers that homosexuality is always justiable.

The resulting graph (Fig. 1) has a considerable amount of dispersion from the which we infer the existence of two groups of countries in the Western Balkans: on the one hand, the countries were homophobia has been strongly associated with citizenship and national identity and where the population manifests a generalized rejection vis--vis of homosexuality and; on the other hand, Croatia, which would be an outlier for the reasons weve mentioned beforehand: a State violence for the which homophobia is not a constitutive trait. But the dispersion obtained when including Croatia in our analysis might also be a consequence of the divergences between our broad denition of violence (closer to structural denitions) and the Freedom in the World index thats based essentially on judicial and political considerations .

State Violence and LGBT Social acceptation (Figure 1)

50
Freedom House index (1985, 90, 95)

45 Macedonia 40 Croatia Serbia and Montenegro Albania 30

35

7.5

15

22.5

30

Justiability of homosexuality (1995)

Databases accessible on: http://www.hks.harvard.edu/fs/pnorris/Data/Data.htm

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If we do without Croatia considering it an outlier obeying to different dynamics in matters of State violence, the graph (Fig. 2) reveals a higher degree of correlation between the two variables invoked. But considering the absence of numerous indicators measuring different aspects of a complex social phenomenon like violence and the lack of solid scientic data, our ndings can only expect the research of the Academy on the eld will be directed towards lling the persistent gap on the causes of LGBT social acceptance in the Western Balkans.

State Violence and LGBT Acceptation (Figure 2)

Freedom House index (1985, 90, 95)

45

R = 0.7757
Macedonia

41.25 Serbia and Montenegro

37.5

33.75

Albania

30

1.5

2.625

3.75

4.875

Justiability of homosexuality (1995)

Conclusion
Our study set to sound out the origins of a social phenomenon that has been accounted for in numerous assessments about the Western Balkans: generalized homophobia. Facing this evidence, we proposed a potential explanation based on the links existing between that generalized perception and the historical State violence that has menaced the stability of the region during the last few decades. To do so, we have recurred to a vast literature that allowed us to determine a theoretical framework on State violence in the region.

Considering our dependent variable, we regarded as necessary to adopt a broad approach to state violence that does not limit itself to the identication of victims and perpetrators. To this extent, the structural denition of State violence theorized by eminent sociologists like Pierre Bourdieu have allowed us to complete the panorama of State violence that we took the task to study in relation to social acceptance of LGBT individuals and rights.

Studies about this concrete issue are almost inexistent in a region where countries have not necessarily been able to erect the sufcient administrative apparatus and reunite the conditions to be considered performing States; much instability persists and the situation proves to be a handicap as well as encouragement for the researcher. However, the Master in European Affairs - SciencesPo - Paris 14

existent work allowed us to conrm our hypothesis about a relation between State violence and social acceptance of LGBT individuals and rights. The main vector being a brand of State-sponsored nationalism that constructed identities around the idea of an aggressive masculinity.

In transposing our theoretical study to the domain of statistics, we expected to nd empirical proof of our hypothesis. Given the many limitations when measuring phenomena involving social perceptions and inconspicuous processes, our statistical results have proven only relatively successful. To date, it would be impossible to carry out a solid statistical analysis on the situation because of the inadequacy of indicators that most of the work on the region rely on and the lack of reliable quantitative data from countries as troubled as Bosnia and Kosovo.

Nonetheless, even if the issue requires eld work that has not taken place, we sustain, as our study has demonstrated, that State violence plays a signicant role inuencing society and conditioning its acceptance of LGBT groups. Other variables could rene our study considering their fundamental character for many of the countries explored: religion, education and other values could be the object of further research.

Lastly, we would like to add our study has pointed out to a phenomenon we did not foresee and could also be included in further analysis: the circularity of homophobic attitudes. We believe together with top-down dynamics of inuence (from the State to the society), there is also, through electoral means, a feedback that obeys to bottom-up logics.

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Fall - Winter 2010

Comparative Politics [ S. Persico ]

Written by: Juan Fernandez Ochoa Friday, December 17, 2010

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