The UE and Civil Society in Serbia: Governance Rather than Politics

This paper looks at the impact of EU intervention on the third sector in post-Milosevic Serbia. We argue that the framing of EU pre-accession assistance to Serbia in terms of ‘developing civil society’ is a political distraction; it obfuscates the true purpose and outcomes of EU intervention by implying that the focus of aid is the empowerment and strengthening of civil society as an arena of political contestation and as the basis of democratic regime change. In practice, EU assistance has as its goal far less politically radical objectives: the aim is to build governance and state capacity.