The Balkans are a region where, over several centuries, two large and influential empires met, producing two models of society that, even after more than a hundred years, remain very much alive in everyday life. The Habsburg and Ottoman empires were, in simplified terms, based on two completely different systems, as well as on different historical circumstances.

THE HABSBURG MODEL: A STATE OF RULES AND ORDER

The Habsburg state, or the Austrian Empire, was a Central European state that developed over centuries through a complex network of relations between the Austrian archduke, the dukes of the Austrian lands, the counts of various counties, the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, and a large number of Central European princes and rulers. Its history was marked by turbulent conflicts during the late Middle Ages and the early modern period.

The wars that followed the emergence of Protestantism, or the Reformation, further complicated relations in Central Europe. Several centuries of wars, tense relations and countless minor feudal rulers who, under different circumstances, could remove a king, change a dynasty or bring about radical changes in the state created a need for generally binding rules that everyone had to respect and obey in order to preserve peace.

Following the Peace of Augsburg in 1555, the decades-long conflict between Protestants and Catholics within the Holy Roman Empire came to an end, and from that peace emerged the principle cuius regio, illius religio – whose realm, his religion. In practice, this meant that the population accepted the religion of its ruler, establishing a principle that everyone had to respect regardless of personal preferences and regardless of who stood at the head of a principality or duchy. If the ruler was Protestant or Catholic, the population of his territory had to accept his religion.

In this sense, the principle represents one of the early examples of a political order in which peace and stability are maintained through clearly defined rules that apply to everyone within a given territory.

THE OTTOMAN MODEL: A STATE OF PERSONAL RELATIONS AND LOYALTY

On the other side, a different type of political order emerged. In the late Middle Ages, the Ottoman Turks established their state, the devlet, which in many respects differed from the political systems of Central Europe. In Asia Minor, around the city of Bursa, the Ottoman state grew stronger, with the sultan as the supreme ruler of the territory under his control and pashas, beys and aghas subordinate to him. In the Ottoman state, the concept of nobles and nobility in the European sense did not exist, and a person could, depending on his abilities and the sultan’s will, rise to the position of bey, pasha, vizier or even grand vizier, a kind of prime minister of the Ottoman state.

With the conquest of Constantinople and the proclamation of the empire, the Ottoman sultan further strengthened his personal authority and became an undisputed ruler. This system also included a concept known as adalet, linked to the sultan’s personal role in establishing justice. The primary issue here was therefore not that the sultan ensured compliance with the law, but that justice in the empire was his personal duty. In such a system, the institution begins to be identified with the person who represents it. This is why Ottoman history remembers Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, or the Lawgiver, Selim the Drunkard, Ahmed the Mild and other rulers whose personal characteristics and character became part of the way their rule is remembered and understood.

Another important concept in the Ottoman state was the millet system, meaning the organisation of non-Muslim religious communities living in the Ottoman Empire. On the same territory, alongside the Muslim population, members of other religious communities could live with their own internal structures and recognised religious authorities. In such a system, relations between people became extremely important, perhaps more important than the rules themselves. The millet system connected people of the same faith throughout the Empire, while the system of adalet, or the sultan’s personal justice, created a society in which people often had to rely on one another, rather than only on abstract rules. As a result, human relationships became more important than the rules themselves.

A certain qualification must, however, be made here. Nepotism, clientelism and personal relationships were by no means foreign to the states of Central Europe, but, at least in the ideal model, they represented deviations from the rules. In the Central European model, the law was supposed to be the rule, while the personal relationship represented the exception. Likewise, rules were not absent from the Ottoman state. On the contrary, there were numerous laws, regulations and institutions. Their application, however, depended to a large extent on the particular people responsible for implementing them. A person was expected to be able to rely on the character and fairness of whoever had the power and responsibility to apply a rule.

This is where the concept of sadakat also enters the picture, meaning personal faithfulness and loyalty to the sultan, but also to a particular pasha, bey or other authority. In a society where protection is often sought through a person, his position and his relationships rather than exclusively through an abstract written rule, loyalty and faithfulness become highly valued. Conversely, a departure from personal loyalty can easily be labelled betrayal or selling out, even in situations where an individual believes he is acting in accordance with another rule, including a religious one.

ADALET AND SADAKAT IN CONTEMPORARY SERBIA: WHEN LOYALTY MATTERS MORE THAN RULES

Paradoxically, this pattern can still be recognised today in certain Balkan societies, particularly in the political culture of parts of the Bosniak and Serbian populations, which in some respects show similarities with patterns present in contemporary Turkish society. Loyalty and faithfulness to individuals, movements and communities can often become more important than consistent respect for general rules. At times this reaches bizarre territory, when even certain key religious rules become secondary to loyalty to a particular person.

One example that can be viewed through this lens is the relationship of some Bosniaks towards religious and political authorities. The relationship towards Muamer Zukorlić demonstrates how strong personal charisma and the authority of an individual can shape the behaviour of an entire community, to the point that some may violate religious rules while remaining loyal to the leader. In the political sphere, a similar pattern can be observed in relation to leaders such as Rasim Ljajić or Sulejman Ugljanin, where personal or party loyalty has, in certain situations, been more important than consistent adherence to a particular principle, law or religious rule. In this sense, a parallel can be drawn with the relationship between the millet and the sultan: belonging to the community and loyalty to authority can rise above an abstract rule, even if that rule is a foundation of the faith.

Among members of the Serbian people, a similar pattern can be observed in the relationship of some citizens towards political leaders. Loyalty to Aleksandar Vučić, for example, can among his supporters be stronger than certain principles or political ideas that these same people publicly claim to support. Here, however, the contemporary phenomenon of the Student List is particularly interesting.

Ironically, the relationship of some citizens towards the Student List can also be viewed through the prism of personal and collective loyalty. Representatives of the student movement insist on respect for laws, institutions and rules, while the process of forming the list is based on plenums, discussions, consensus and the possibility of veto. At the same time, however, the strength of the movement also derives from the strong collective identification of its supporters. In this sense, all those who identify with the movement may become a kind of “millet”, while those who oppose it can, in parts of public discourse, be viewed as opponents or even traitors. This is precisely where the paradox emerges. The Student List formally operates without a classic political leader and with an emphasised idea of collective decision-making, yet at the same time a significant part of its political appeal rests on a strong sense of belonging and trust in the community itself. This raises an interesting question: why do concepts such as justice, fairness and the restoration of dignity appear so often in its political language? It is not necessarily the case that the students reject the European concept of the rule of law; on the contrary, respect for laws and institutions is one of the themes they publicly emphasise. But there is a difference between justice as a system of rules and justice as a moral expectation linked to a particular political community. It is precisely in this difference that a contemporary parallel with the concepts of adalet and sadakat can be found. Adalet and sadakat are not merely the application of a predefined rule, but the expectation that the authority, meaning whoever possesses power and responsibility, will act justly (adalet), together with loyalty to that authority (sadakat) in expectation of just behaviour. When such an expectation is transferred from an individual to an entire movement, a kind of collective version of the same pattern emerges: what is expected is not merely a change of rules, but the arrival of an actor believed to be capable of establishing justice.

From this, a broader thesis can be proposed: both the government and its strongest political opponent can, despite completely different language and political goals, remain trapped in the same deeper Balkan matrix – the matrix of loyalty. One side attaches loyalty to a leader, the other to a movement and a community. The difference lies in whom loyalty is owed to, while the relationship towards institutions and rules remains more complicated.

If this parallel is correct, then adalet and sadakat did not disappear with the disappearance of the Ottoman Empire. They changed form. Instead of the sultan, today we have a political leader, movement or collective that assumes the role of bearer of expected justice. Instead of personal loyalty to the sultan, there is loyalty to a political community. And it is precisely this transition, from loyalty to a person towards loyalty to a movement, that is one of the key problems that must be understood if we want to understand why Balkan societies find it so difficult to move from a culture of personal loyalty towards a culture of impersonal institutions and the rule of law.

THE HISTORICAL PARADOX: ASIAN ROOTS OF THE AUSTRIAN SYSTEM AND EUROPEAN ROOTS OF THE OTTOMAN MODEL

Thus, the Balkans became a meeting point of the Central European, Austrian system and the Asian, Ottoman system of state organisation, which were based on different foundations. Rules and laws are products of Central European history and political processes in that region, while personal relations and personal loyalty are associated with the Ottoman legacy. In principle, this text explains how these relationships developed throughout history, but it must be emphasised that, although one system may appear European in origin and the other Asian, and therefore one “more advanced” and the other “more backward”, the situation is in fact much more complex and, in a certain sense, even the reverse.

The system of personal relations and undisputed personal power actually has deep roots in the period of the Roman Empire, where the Roman emperor possessed enormous and, in certain periods, almost absolute power, while personal relationships with authority were crucial for a “good life”. The Roman emperor could replace governors, prefects and envoys, just as the sultan could replace viziers, pashas and beys. Nobility in the later European sense did not form the foundation of the Roman imperial system, and almost anyone who gained the emperor’s favour could rise to very high positions in the Roman Empire, much as in the Ottoman state.

With the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, this system was inherited by the Eastern Roman Empire, centred in Constantinople, which later historians would call Byzantium, although its inhabitants considered themselves Romans. The Ottoman state adopted a large part of this political legacy precisely from Byzantium, modifying it and combining it with the Islamic system of law and moral education. Thus, absolute power, personal relationships, loyalty and betrayal are not some “import from Asia”, but have deep European roots. What we call the Ottoman model of personal rule is to a large extent the continuation of a much older Roman and Byzantine political pattern.

The other invention, however, did not simply arise from some “European enlightenment” either. It too was the result of a convergence of historical circumstances, but in this case we may speak of a different, even “Asian”, origin. Although bureaucracy and a system of rules are generally associated with the modern period, particularly the period after the 16th century, their roots reach much deeper into the Middle Ages.

Medieval nobles, who constantly represented a certain kind of threat to a king or emperor, constituted a kind of proto-bureaucracy, or proto-system of rules and laws. Complex systems of power, in which almost no one possessed absolute authority and in which power was frequently constrained by other actors, created the need for rules on which everyone could rely, and later for the creation of a system that would enforce those rules: bureaucracy.

If we go even further back, the ancestors of feudal nobles can be found in military democracies that developed in the western part of the Roman Empire, which was in the process of collapse at the end of antiquity and the beginning of the Middle Ages. The short-lived states of various tribes, including Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Germanic peoples, Avars, Huns, Franks, Bavarians and others, were, in different forms, political communities in which warriors and their leaders played an important role. They had certain forms of democratic decision-making, with various councils of warriors, elders or priests advising the ruler, meaning that the ruler did not possess the absolute authority of the Roman emperor.

These communities therefore had certain types of rules that both the ruler and his subjects had to respect. This is precisely where the historical paradox emerges. Although the “civilised” Romans called them barbarians, their political structures became one of the foundations of the later European medieval order, from which nobility, limited government, institutions and the system of rules characteristic of Central Europe would eventually develop.

An even greater irony lies in the fact that a significant number of these tribes had origins or historical connections with regions east of Europe, meaning areas we today call Asia. The Avars and Huns are obvious examples, while other tribes, through their migrations, connected the European space with the steppes and territories further east. Consequently, what we today imagine as a “European” system of rules, nobility and limited government also developed through the political legacy of peoples whom the Romans themselves regarded as barbarians, many of whom came from Asia or were in direct contact with Asian regions.

This is where the greatest paradox of the comparison can actually be found. The Asian model of absolute power is not, in its deepest roots, exclusively Asian, but has strong Roman and Byzantine, and therefore European, roots. On the other hand, the European system of rules, limited government, nobility and later bureaucracy is not simply the product of some European “enlightenment”, but developed out of medieval political structures of peoples whom the Romans called barbarians, many of whom had origins or connections with regions of Asia.

In other words, history makes almost a complete irony out of our contemporary division between “European” and “Asian”. The model of personal rule that we today associate with the East has deep European roots, while the model of rules and institutions that we today associate with the West and Europe owes some of its roots precisely to those whom Europe once considered barbarians.

THE BALKANS AFTER THE SULTAN: FROM TITO TO THE STUDENT MOVEMENT

Despite these origins, it is a fact that Austria, as a Central European formation, and Turkey, as an Asian formation, significantly influenced the Balkans and political processes in the previous and current centuries. That influence is especially visible through the most important political creation of the Balkan peoples in the previous century: Yugoslavia.

Considering that the majority of the population, as well as most of the territory within Yugoslavia, had historically been under Ottoman rather than Habsburg rule, the system of personal rule and the importance of interpersonal relations also prevailed. Although Yugoslavia was formally based on a system of socialist self-management, which in its roots was Central European and highly bureaucratic, in practice the great majority of the population experienced it through the personal rule of Josip Broz and the rule of the Party.

Here Josip Broz and his personal power become the sultan, his personal decisions become adalet, and the Party becomes a kind of millet and identification with the community. Through this lens, it becomes clearer why today, for example, in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Macedonia, memory of Yugoslavia is largely associated with Josip Broz and membership in the Party, while in Croatia, and particularly in Slovenia, the period is more often associated with communism or socialism.

Communism and socialism represent that bureaucratic and Central European legacy, while Josip Broz represents the personal power of the sultan. After the collapse of Yugoslavia, the European Union has today taken over the role of communism and socialism as a bureaucratic system of rules and laws, while the role of Josip Broz has been assumed by political and religious leaders of the Balkan peoples.

The European Union is precisely such a system of bureaucratic rules and laws which, although ironically born from “barbarian and Asian roots”, provides an answer to the question of how personal rule can be replaced with a system of institutions and rules. The EU itself bases its order on the rule of law, meaning that public authorities act in accordance with the law, with transparency, accountability and equality before the law. Today, among the many anti-system movements in Serbia, a student movement has also emerged that “seeks to establish a system”, making it very important to analyse how this anti-system movement is attempting to influence political processes.

A SYSTEM THAT NEEDS NO MASTER, EVEN A COLLECTIVE ONE

Moving from a system of personal rule to a system of rules does not simply mean changing the people at the top, but changing the very logic of power. If institutions continue to depend on loyalty, relationships and belonging, we have merely acquired a new bearer of the old politics. This is precisely why the problem with the current Student List is that, despite its rhetoric about changing the system, its political model still relies heavily on loyalty and belonging to the movement. If loyalty to the movement matters more than predetermined rules that also constrain its own people, then a system of rules is not actually being built, it is being negated. Instead of breaking with the legacy of personal rule, a new version of it is created: there does not have to be one person whom everyone obeys; it is enough for there to be a group to which loyalty is owed.

The real break is therefore not replacing one elite with another, but creating institutions that constrain everyone who comes to power. We do not need a new master with better intentions, but a system in which a master is no longer necessary. If the Student List does not make this step, it will not change the political pattern, only the actors within it.

SERBIA BETWEEN A NEW SULTAN AND THE EUROPEAN SYSTEM

In this sense, the European Union represents the most concrete attempt to subordinate politics to rules rather than personalities. Its essence is not who will be in power, but that rules exist which constrain both governments and states regardless of who currently represents them. For Serbia and the Western Balkans, this is precisely the essential step forward: not searching for a new master, a new political elite or a new saviour, but accepting an order in which even those who govern are not above the rules. However, the European Serbia list that is appearing in the elections does not yet represent this model either. Although it invokes the rule of law, an independent judiciary, free media and European integration, it still operates as a classic political alliance whose primary goal is to win power and which rests on a high degree of loyalty. This is why there remains a deep gap between the idea of a European institutional order and domestic political practice.

Perhaps this is precisely why we may still have to wait for a genuine political breakthrough: for a generation that will not ask to be trusted because it is “better” than the previous one, but will agree to be constrained by the same rules that apply to everyone. Serbia’s European path, in this sense, is not merely a change of government or political direction, but a change in the very nature of power. We do not need a government we trust, but a system we can trust precisely because it does not depend on who is in power. Only when that becomes more important than personalities, movements and parties will Serbia and the Western Balkans truly break with their legacy of personal rule.