Democracy Index, 2008
Publisher: Center for Democracy and Human Rights (CEDEM), Montenegro
Date: December 2008
Volume: 83 pages, pdf
Description
Montenegro, as a state, at the moment of writing of this Report, has already applied for the membership in EU, and in that way has gone one step further in a process of European integrations. Therefore, since the last year when we presented the results of our democracy survey in 2007, social and political dynamics have been an important characteristic of Montenegrin society. By applying for the membership, Montenegro qualified itself as a state which has come closer to EU in a political sense, and this status at the same time represents the evaluation of to what extent a big number of social life areas are democratic, and these areas are the object of a careful monitoring of EU bodies from the standpoint of a future integration of Montenegro within European Union. In that sense, the Report we are presenting this time, and which by identical methodology as the one from the previous years represents a survey of democracy in Montenegro in 2008, is especially interesting. In fact, it points to the absence or presence of a discrepancy between formal political conditions and reality of Montenegrin society, where when we say reality we mostly think of a relation and estimation of Montenegrin citizens. Thus, on one hand, there are formal conditions which always prompt political elite fulfils in order to realise already planned political goals. On the other hand, there are real reforms which happen in a post-transitional period, and the third party is the citizens who live in that society and who have their own perception and attitudes towards that reality. Research of democracy which we really survey includes this third component, the citizens’ attitudes as a reflex of a dominant political discourse, and changes in a social organism itself.