Capture Me If You Can: The Road to the Political Colonisation of Business in Post-Milošević Serbia

This article analyses the nature and the evolution of state capture in Serbia. I approach this process from a micro-level perspective, utilising interview data and rich case studies, focusing on the interaction between political parties and business. In the context of high political uncertainty and underdeveloped institutions in the period 2000–2012, oligarchs benefited from the privatisation process and resource extraction, while political parties were after short-term extraction. After 2012, amid low political uncertainty, a top-down political colonisation by the ruling party can be observed, manifesting through the involvement of businesses directly owned by political officeholders or their families in the state-capture dynamic.