THE PHENOMENON OF LEADERSHIP MEETINGS IN THE MACEDONIAN POLITICAL SYSTEM: AN INFORMAL POLITICS THAT DETERMINES THE FORMAL POLITICS

Abstract

The adoption of the Ohrid Framework Agreement in 2001, contributed to the implementation of elements of consociational democracy in the Macedonian model of democracy. In that direction, after 2001, the Macedonian political elites began to use leadership meetings, which brought solutions to difficult issues on the Macedonian political scene. It is informal politics and informal institutions composed of party leaders of the biggest political parties and as such they are activated in a situation when formal institutions can not solve the burning political issues. Thus, leadership meetings represent the substitution of the formal institutions and the transfer of decision-making processes to a small number of political actors, who, after agreeing on delicate issues, transfer the decisions back to the formal institutions for their formal adoption and implementation. Since 2001 until today, such informal politics have been applied often in our political system, but in recent years it seems that major differences in their background, format and organization can be noticed. Despite the changes, the Macedonian political system has failed to remove these informal institutions. Unfortunately, over the years the Macedonian institutions often have ended up in a dead end when resolving delicate political issues, so the leadership meetings were the last and only mechanism for removing the blockades and moving the political process forward. As such, the leadership meetings in the short term have had some positive effects because they contributed to solving the most delicate political issues. However, in the long run, it seems that such informal politics and institutions cast a big stain on the functioning of the Macedonian democracy. Such a stain is a consequence not only of the fact that the formal institutions are substituted and passivated, but also of the fact that such leadership meetings are held on an ad hoc basis and without clear rules or firm guarantees that what has been agreed will be implemented in practice. Therefore, the leadership meetings are a vivid example for the Macedonian citizens that the system does not work and that in the end, decisions in the Macedonian society are made secretly, behind closed doors, by small number of people (party leaders) and not by the institutions of the system that have been elected to make, adopt and implement such decisions.