Intelligence-state relations in democratization: The Croatian intelligence community, 1989--1999

This dissertation analyzes the role of the security-intelligence community in Croatia's democratization process. This analysis posits that democratization can be seen best by looking at how newly democratizing states function in secret and outside of the public view. The role of security-intelligence services has long been relegated to the backwoods of academia because of a lack of source material and the necessarily secretive nature of such communities. Their role in the democratizing process has therefore been understandably limited to democratic states such as the United States, the United Kingdom, and Israel and in many cases without the use of primary documentation. This dissertation shows that through the use of a wide variety of sources, including primary documentation from the Croatian intelligence community and the former head of the Croatian Intelligence Service, that the puzzle can be pieced together, thus allowing an inside view of the relationship between the security-intelligence agencies and the state they serve.; This dissertation utilizes the case of Croatia and documents the intelligence community from its origins through the war with Serbia and to the death of Franjo Tudjman. It shows that despite public trappings of democracy, secretly, the Tudjman regime utilized the intelligence services to maintain the power base of the ruling Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) as opposed to the Republic of Croatia. Such manipulation was similar to the previous role of internal security services under the communist regime of Marshal Tito than a western-style transparent democracy. This analysis also illuminates the internal struggles within the HDZ to balance hard-liners from the extreme nationalist right-wing of the party and the liberal-wing of the HDZ that would ultimately decide the future direction of democracy within Croatia. Tudjman pit both sides against one another by attempting to balance their power within the intelligence services. Ultimately this policy failed and resulted in a politicized intelligence community that has yet to recover.