Understandings of democracy for a compound state: Croatia's (un)democratic experiences in federal, multinational states

The idea of the social contract has been intimately connected with ideas of democracy, government by consent of the governed, and the idea that those bound by a social contract should have a say over its terms. In compound, and especially multinational political units the social contract plays even more fundamental role than in unitary states, but its relation to democracy is more complicated. Besides the usual questions of the terms of the contract and who is defining them and in which procedure, the compound states are troubled by the question what makes the social contract more democratic. Is democracy secured by the equal participation, equal powers and equal say of the units that make up a compound political whole, or by the equal political weight and participation of each citizen? These questions have been especially salient in the making and unmaking of the larger political units that Croatia has been part of since the beginning of its national and political subjectivation in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, to its present membership in the EU. Our paper will explore the lessons that can be learned from the historical ruptures that have led to dissolution of old and creation of new social contracts tracing the relevance of different ideas of democracy in those processes. A social contract for Croatia that started emerging in the 19th century had a final breakdown with the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. New social contracts were mainly consistent with the forming and dissolution of the two subsequent multinational polities that Croatia was part of – the so called First Yugoslavia and the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia. The historical ruptures and reconfiguration of the social contract for Croatia show a dynamic of integration in wider polities and disintegration and "souverenisation" that has a political, social and economic dimension. Tracing both the more stable features on the one hand and breakdowns and ruptures in the social contract on the other, will show the continuities and discontinuities of the social contracts.