By Aleksandar Ivanov
We often hear claims in public debate that some invisible “UDBA” mechanism controls political, economic, and institutional processes. Such explanations easily turn into conspiracy theories, in which everything we cannot immediately understand is attributed to a single secret centre of power. But what if the fundamental problem today is not the existence of an all-powerful security service? What if it is something deeper and more enduring: a culture of governance that has outlived the system in which it was created?
By “UDBA culture”, I do not mean that the former UDBA (the State Security Administration of socialist Yugoslavia) still formally runs the state, or that every former member of the security structures belongs to an active network. I mean an inherited pattern: closed circles, unconditional loyalty to the centre of power, the selection of “trusted people”, control of information, mutual protection, and the neutralisation of anyone who might disturb the established order.
It is a culture in which people are judged primarily not by their knowledge and professional integrity, but by one humiliatingly simple question: whose person are they?
From empire to the state of fear
To understand this pattern, we must look further back than socialist Yugoslavia. Ottoman Turkey’s failure to transform itself led to its collapse, while the Young Turk Revolution came at least a century too late. In the interwar Kingdom, governance in this region amounted to a state of emergency, marked by constant repression, administrative pressure, and the arbitrary distribution of “spoils” in the form of land and capital. This was reinforced by systematic, meticulously planned colonisation through the settlement of teaching staff, military personnel, and police.
Such conditions do not produce free citizens. The population was systematically and continuously subjected to intense pressure, inevitably creating a culture of fear and of looking the other way. What emerges is a subject who quickly learns to recognise who holds power, even accepting the collective social pathology of respecting whoever rules, however harmful that rule may be to everyone.
In my column “The Balkans in Ukraine’s Shadow: Between History and a Hybrid Future”, I introduced the theme of the Balkans as a space where forces intersect and collide. In another text, “The Tragedy of the Balkan Peoples: From National Pride to Cassandra Syndrome”, I develop this argument through the psychology of the region: chronic insecurity, competition over victimhood, and the feeling that every community is constantly under threat.
It is precisely in such an environment that closed apparatuses of power can easily acquire legitimacy. When a nation is constantly persuaded that it is surrounded, the security apparatus ceases to be an instrument of the state and begins to present itself as its hidden guardian. Criticism is declared treason, dissent is treated as suspicious, and loyalty becomes more important than competence.
OZNA, UDBA, and the transformation of fear into a system
The ideological upheaval of the Second World War gave rise to OZNA, the Department for the Protection of the People: a department that served, in effect, as the brutal fist and sword intended to instil fear of the new authorities, enable the plunder of gold and usable currency, and facilitate the confiscation of private property and collectivisation. This structure later gave rise to the civilian UDBA, tasked with protecting the political order from “internal” and “external” enemies, and to KOS, the military counterintelligence service.
Analytical honesty is necessary here. Socialist Macedonia cannot be reduced to repression alone, because this was also the period in which the state’s intellectual infrastructure was built: universities, institutes, and an academy. Yet, alongside this, the principle that political acceptability could matter more than professional autonomy was also embedded. We inherited institutions, but we also inherited the habit of allowing closed circles to control them.
From “The Anatomy of Forgetting” to UDBA culture
In “The Anatomy of Forgetting: How Did We Erase Institutional Memory?”, I wrote about how each new government resets the system, suppresses previous experience, and replaces professionals with its own people. The explanation for this phenomenon lies precisely in this culture: institutional memory is dangerous to any government that seeks to rule through personal loyalty.
UDBA culture does not suppress memory by accident. It does so because institutional memory places limits on arbitrary power.
In “Negative Selection as the Logic of Governance”, I analysed the “our kid” model. This is the point at which party connections or proximity within patronage networks become more important than a professional record. The system selects an individual not because they meet publicly stated criteria, but because they are “ours”.
The budget as spoils, public office as a reward
No such network can survive in the long term without accumulating and growing capital. This is why control over budgets, funds, tenders, and governing boards is too often treated as an entitlement acquired through electoral victory.
Let us be direct: imagine a ruling elite that sees the budget as a pool of money passing through its hands, from which it is entitled to a certain percentage. Suppose the health insurance fund’s budget exceeds €800 million. Just 5 per cent of that amounts to €40 million.
How else can you explain the assumption that a party loyalist must, as a rule, be appointed to lead such a fund? Why should it not be an employee of the fund who understands its complex procedures, responsibilities, grounds for payment, and accumulated systemic problems, someone who could readily assign tasks at the very first meeting? But no: loyalty and the network of trusted people matter more than the public interest.
When the professions remain silent
UDBA culture could not survive through politicians alone; it also endures because of the silence of the professions. In our country, when it comes to becoming a mayor or prime minister, the less you know about the constitutional system, the philosophy of rights, and the independence of the branches of government, the better.
How else can you explain why every other leading doctor in the country wants to become a mayor? After working with patients and making an enormous effort to acquire medical knowledge, they want to move on to dealing with drainage, water supplies, and signing building permits.
Unfortunately, this culture is also present in higher education, which the authorities regard as “part of the spoils” to be divided after elections. Criteria such as research output, impact factors, and knowledge of foreign languages are invoked only when the authorities want to confront the academic community and display their power. They are watered down when it is time to select “one of ours”.
This would not be possible if colleagues stood by their professional integrity and did not bargain for vice-rector positions or membership of committees that pay fixed monthly allowances.
Two years ago, I made an observation that I still consider symptomatic: in 1995, a professor from my faculty wanted to become director of the then State Security Service; some twenty years later, a director of the service wanted to become a professor. This reversal shows what happens when the boundaries between academic, political, and security power become blurred.
From coercion to a self-sustaining system
If UDBA culture was born under the threat of coercion and fear, today it has become self-sustaining through deeply interconnected financial networks and networks of influence peddling. The system no longer needs to send the police to your door. It is enough to control an appointment, a grant, a tender, a promotion, or access to media coverage.
In this way, fear gradually turns into self-interest. The networks become self-sustaining because their participants depend on one another. They may publicly oppose one another politically, but they quickly unite whenever the rules from which they all profit come under threat.
The way out is not another hunt for “UDBA operatives”, which would merely reproduce the culture of labelling and settling scores. The way out lies in changing the rules: transparent appointments with publicly stated reasons, verifiable criteria, genuine autonomy for professional communities, and accountability for public money.
When professional bodies (doctors, professors, judges) fail to stand firmly together and say a clear “no” in defence of the shared public sphere, there is no hope of progress. Without that, “our kid” will always matter more than the capable kid. And a state that consistently chooses its own people over the best people eventually ends up with neither its own nor the best.
Prof. Dr. Aleksandar Ivanov is a full professor at the Faculty of Security in Skopje, specialising in environmental security, international relations, and the translation of security science into operational practice.
Originally published in Macedonian by Civil Media on 28 September 2026, this column is part of the author’s broader body of public analysis examining institutional memory, negative selection, and the historical traumas that continue to shape political culture across the Balkans.
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