Author: Željko Zidarić
Part 1: Political Quackery and the Incompetent Citizen of the Balkan State.
‘The West’ is not successful due to geographical location but because of mindset. The Balkans is not just a geographical location but a mindset as well. For almost 1,000 years we Croats have been part of Western empires, Hungarian, Austrian, Austro-Hungarian and for hundreds of years the Bulwark of Christianity stopping the Ottoman advance into Europe. We want to be a part of the Western world but we do not know how to be Western and for that reason we are stuck in the Balkans.
To move out of the Balkans requires that we first understand that we are in the Balkan mindset. The first step to solving a problem is to admit and understand that you have a problem. The Balkan mindset and inactive citizens are the environment in which political charlatans can sell their quackery to unsophisticated customers.
Background
Complaining about a problem without proposing a solution is called whining. Theodore Roosevelt said, ‘The worst lesson that can be taught a man is to rely upon others and to whine over his sufferings.’
Tihomir Dujmovic, a ‘anti-communist pro-Croatia’ journalist came to Toronto in March to promote his book about the children of communism and how they are responsible for the ruin of Croatia. The presentation was about the communists carrying out their evil deeds and how they are destroying Croatia. Like almost all presentations and social media conversations ‘from the right’, there was hardly anything about taking responsibility for the failures of ‘our side’ and no presentation of ideas for solutions or mention of positive role models or leaders. We know the problems of the past, how much more time do we need to discuss them?
I am tired of all the whining. If we lose we are responsible for losing. You don’t criticize the winner for winning, you criticize the loser for losing. The ‘red team’, the Yugoslav, Tito-loving communists, are a special interest group fighting for their interests. We need to stop living with a victim mentality and blaming the communists, the neo-Yugoslavs, England, France, the ‘udbaši’, Masons and Serbs for our poor performance.
The ‘blue team’, the democratic pro-Croatia side that won the Homeland War of Independence is slowly losing the nation because they do not know how to play the game. Not only are they incompetent I would say they are willfully negligent. They are willfully negligent because they are not learning how to play the game better. If your tactics have brought failure in the past why keep using the same ineffective tactics? Whining and lack of evolution and progress is part of the Balkan malaise.
Victims are helpless. How long do we stay victims?
We need to lose the Balkan mindset, the learned helplessness and our victim status.
Political Quackery
Croatia is unhealthy, we know that. We do not need more diagnoses of symptoms, we need to find the root cause and prescribe a cure. While we complain and wait for someone else to solve the problems we are easy victims for political quacks that can win our confidence and sell us their political snake-oil.
Quack
• a charlatan, a snake-oil salesman
• a person who dishonestly pretends to have medical skills or knowledge
• a person who pretends, professionally or publicly, to skill, knowledge, or qualifications he or she does not possess;
Quackery
• the promotion of fraudulent or ignorant medical practices.
• medical methods that do not work and are only intended to make money
Political quacks, like medical quacks, are political charlatans with few legitimate credentials that sell cure-all wonder-medicines to unsophisticated voters using charisma and deceptive sales techniques. There are far too many political quacks peddling their fraudulent elixirs in Croatia and far too many unsophisticated and incompetent citizens (people that Franjo Tuđman called ‘stoka sitnog zuba’) buying ineffective elixirs.
When we are defrauded by a charlatan who is to blame? Charlatans can swindle only unsophisticated customers that fall for hope but do not do their due diligence. Ignorant customers buy bad products. Today, the charlatans from the established parties are selling placebos while the political quacks from the ‘new right’ are trying to sell the people a new hope called conservatism. By Western standards the conservative medicine the quacks are selling is a diluted and impure version of conservatism, but the people don’t know any better and have no better options. The people should be more sophisticated and demand real medicine and not just placebos and snake-oil.
Few sophisticated people would knowingly go to a medical quack for treatment yet in Croatia people readily and happily support political quacks, and hope for the best. The people have the government they ‘bought’, the government they deserve, based on the parties they blindly support.
The Balkan mindset in Croatia
Being Balkan is more than a location, it is mindset. Croatia is a Balkan state. I can say this because I live outside of Croatia. I have a broader perspective and ability to compare and benchmark nations. The Hofstede Centre culture studies show our greater similarity to the Balkan rather than Western mindset. We see real world examples of the Balkan bickering in online social media conversations and political fragmentation. It seems that in the Balkans people are guided more by passion than by reason, more focused on the past then on the future. 
For more culture differences see the Hofstede research.
Croatia is very provincial. Leaders are small-minded localists with a parochial mindset that suffer from a ‘not invented here’ mentality. Political philosophies are incoherent and without direction. Try to talk to a Croatian political leader about election campaign strategy based on marketing, sociology and psychology and you quickly realize that they are satisfied being amateurs, satisfied with an ad hoc 60% solution rather than being professionals and developing the 100% solution.
Professionals constantly strive for developing some competitive advantage; they actively broaden their perspective, develop capabilities and seek improved performance. Ignorance and willingness to stay ignorant is our downfall. Being ignorant does not mean unintelligent. Being ignorant means you do not have the information and knowledge required to carry out a task properly. Being willfully ignorant might be a sign of lack of wisdom.
Ignorant
• lacking knowledge or awareness in general;
• uneducated or unsophisticated.
• not informed about or aware of something
• being illiterate
The symptoms
According to culture research carried out by the Hofstede Center, based on the research of Prof. Geert Hofstede´s, if we compare Croatia on the cultural parameters of individualism and masculinity we find that Croatia has far more in common with the Balkan mindset than any other mindset. 
Individualism (level of interdependence)
The fundamental issue addressed by this dimension is the degree of interdependence a society maintains among its members. In Individualist societies people are supposed to look after themselves and their direct family only. In Collectivist societies people belong to ‘in groups’ that take care of them in exchange for loyalty. Croatia, with a score of 33 is considered a collectivistic society. Loyalty in a collectivist culture is paramount, and over-rides most other societal rules and regulations.
Masculinity (level of competition)
The fundamental issue here is what motivates people, wanting to be the best (masculine) or liking what you do (feminine). Croatia scores 40 on this dimension and is thus considered a relatively feminine society. In feminine countries the focus is on ‘working in order to live’, managers strive for consensus, people value equality, solidarity and quality in their working lives.
Apparently, low masculinity and low individualism do not mix well and it appears to correlate to being submissive and accepting a high power distance between the people and those in power, either in the workplace, in society or government. 
Power distance
Power distance is defined as the extent to which the less powerful members of institutions within a country expect and accept that power is distributed unequally. Croatia scores high on this dimension (score of 73) which means that people accept a hierarchical order. Centralization is popular, subordinates expect to be told what to do and the ideal boss is a benevolent autocrat
Symptoms of the Balkan mindset
In the Balkans every one wants to be a big fish in a small pond.
• ego is our center, passion trumps reason
• tribalism creates an quarrelsome ineffectual political state
o polarization, you are either with us or against us
o rather fight amongst themselves than unite against a common enemy
o stubbornness is a virtue, unapologetic and non-compromising
o exclusive in-groups that dwell on differences rather than form inclusive groups based on commonalities that unite
• fight old feuds that never end rather than look to build ideas for a better future
• glorify or fight historic leaders (Tito) rather than build modern statesmen
• sabotage the successful rather than to cooperate for the common good
• know what we are fighting against but don’t know what we are fighting for
• satisfied with minimal standards
The Diagnosis
There appears to be significant similarities in the cultures of the Balkan states and the Balkan states are all poorly performing nations and so this leads me to believe that the Balkan mindset is a bad mindset to have.
Low individualism + low masculinity + high power distance = inactive citizens
Inactive citizens = bad government = unhealthy state
The people are inactive citizens, they are unsophisticated and do not stand up for themselves. As long as the people are willingly incompetent citizens and unsophisticated voters they will continue to buy the political snake-oil being peddled by political charlatans. As long as the people keep drinking the snake-oil the longer we will suffer from the Balkan sickness of bad government.
Only the people can keep the government honest. When the government has no fear of the people the government has no desire to be accountable. Part of the Balkan mindset is acquiescence to incompetent and corrupt governments. There is a high tolerance for ‘abuse from above’ resulting in a victim mentality and high levels of learned helplessness. People resign themselves to ‘that’s the way it is and will be’.
The government is like a bad soap opera that the people watch
and discuss but aren’t willing change the channel.
The Cure
As a Croat with a conservative Canadian mindset I prefer a forward-looking perspective, to look to the future and to take responsibility for creating a better future. ‘Being a man’, a rational and moral being, requires that I take responsibility for my failures rather then place blame on ‘the other’. I try not to live bounded by a victim mentality and whining about being taken advantage of.
The Balkan mindset and learned helplessness is destroying us. In the second part of this article, I will provide some thoughts on how to get out of the Balkans. If we want to get out we can get out. This is part of the Western mindset, provide an analysis of the problem and propose solutions.
Datum objave: 15.04.2015.
