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We investigate post-communist redistributive policies in Serbia, focusing particularly on the period after 2000. Our main argument is that market fundamentalism, which posits that the market is the most efficient solution for the postcommunist transition, has failed to deliver on its promises. The expectation was that, after a temporary transitional sacrifice, the worse-off would benefit equally with the better-off by reaping the rewards of market economic reforms. The anticipated faster growth was supposed to generate more quality jobs as the most effective means to alleviate poverty. Unfortunately, growth has been sluggish, while inequalities in Serbia have experienced rapid and persistent growth since 2000. We look into redistributive reform measures to understand the reasons behind this outcome. Our approach combines applied political philosophy with economic policy analysis - a unique intersection of two social science disciplines. Firstly, our research explores the implicit and explicit normative foundations of postcommunist economic reforms. Secondly, we identify and analyse a pivotal juncture of policy reform in the early 2000s. During this period, the newly-adopted neoliberal taxation and social policies were combined with class- and ethnic-based discriminatory approaches inherited from the pre-1990s socialist era and the post-socialist 1990s, respectively. This combination resulted in distinct, notably pro-rich redistributive patterns in Serbia.

In this article, we examine the evolution of minimum income programmes in the Western Balkans (comprising Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia). During socialism, Yugoslavia developed a rudimentary minimum income protection programme, while Albania did not have one. As countries moved towards a market economy, socialism's legacy remained relevant, but especially since 2000, governments have taken more direct responsibility for the minimum income schemes—typically under the influence of the World Bank. The attention was paid to strict targeting accuracy rather than to adequacy or sufficient coverage of the lowest deciles. In essence, neither socialist nor neoliberal policymakers ever recognised anything but the poverty relief function of the minimum income. Both ideologies were hostile, or at best indifferent, to increasing the adequacy and generosity of minimum income programmes, perceiving them as impediments and distractions that slowed socialist and neoliberal transformations. Despite some reform initiatives supported by the World Bank and, more recently, the European Union, the generosity and adequacy of minimum income programmes remain low, and coverage keeps declining. There have been very few efforts to develop inclusion function of the minimum income, while the activation aspect has achieved very little, sometimes degrading into punitive programmes of unpaid community work. In this dismal picture, the European Pillar of Social Rights action framework could serve as a guide for a long overdue third phase in the Western Balkans' minimum income policy evolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International aid and assistance to the Western Balkans, which began more than two decades ago after the disintegration of SFR Yugoslavia, has been severely criticised on various grounds by academics, politicians, and domestic elites. One of the main points of criticism has been heavy foreign interference into domestic affairs, which deprives local policy-makers of 'policy ownership.' This paper uses four paradigmatic examples of reform in Serbia - in the areas of labor market, income taxation, pensions system, and privatization - to show that, despite the widely accepted view of the dominant role of international actors in the creation of the reform agenda, there was significant room for local policy-makers in Serbia to exercise full ownership over the ongoing reforms. What policy-makers really needed was expertise, a clear vision of the desired reforms, the determination to defend their agenda, and technical skills to implement it. The significantly different outcomes of the four areas of reform analyzed in this paper, despite involving virtually the same actors of international intervention, seem to illustrate well our hypothesis that the failure of some important sectoral reforms in Serbia during the post-2000 period was the result of the policy-makers' own weaknesses, rather than the result of external conditionality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]