There are few books in which authoritarianism in Macedonia during the rule of Nikola Gruevski is systematically and anatomically presented. One of them is "Captive State" by longtime journalist and analyst Mancho Mitevski, published in 2017, in which he details all stages of what he describes as "politically organized crime". Objectively, Macedonia is on the margins of Europe, although it is part of its center. The decade-long dispute with Greece was one of the recognizable milestones for our country (if we exclude the peaceful departure from SFRY and the 2001 conflict), and then found itself on the front pages of many world media and in critical observations of professional magazines with the Disneyland project "Skopje 2014 “. The ridicule of the search for a new national identity deep in antiquity has prompted many foreign political researchers and scholars to look deeper behind the plaster facades and find out what regime decided to apply genetic engineering. And is there basically something else behind the ancient-baroque-neoclassical chase in the center of Skopje: the establishment of a new oligarchy that wants to hold all the reins of financial flows in its hands through political power.

One of the results of this scientific research is Fabio Mathioli's book "Dark Finance: Insolvency and Authoritarianism on the Margins of Europe". Mathioli is a lecturer in social anthropology at the School of Social and Political Science at the University of Melbourne. His interest in the scientific study of the Gruevist years is not only related to this book, he has published fifteen scientific articles on what he calls "authoritarianism in Macedonia" in various journals - from scientific to political. The paper "Dark Finance" (248 pages) is in a way the culmination of all his research on the years of Gruevism. Mathioli's book was published by the prestigious American Stanford University in 2020.

Keith Brown of Arizona State University wrote this for "Dark Finance": "This is one of the most compelling, compelling, and cold-blooded analyzes of Northern Macedonia's place in the global economy and the cynical exploitation of the people by his elected government, which I read in the last decade. "

What a set of decisions are finances

Announcing the book's release, Matioli himself wrote: "My forthcoming book 'Dark Finances' describes how financial expansion affected democracy during the global financial crisis, focusing on the case study of Northern Macedonia."

Stanford University presented Mathioli's book: "Dark Finance" offers one of the first ethnographic accounts of financial expansion and its political implications in Eastern Europe. Following workers, managers and investors in the Macedonian construction sector, Fabio Mathioli shows how funding can strengthen authoritarian regimes - not by making money available to everyone, but by allowing a small group of oligarchs to monopolize access to international credit and to promote a cascade of exploitative relations with domestic debt.

The landscape of failed deals and unfulfilled dreams presented in this book portrays finance not as a single, technical process. Instead, Matioli argues that finances are a set of political and economic relations that entangle citizens, Eurocrats and workers in tense paradoxes. Mathioli traces the origins of illiquidity in the reorganization of the European project and the post-socialist perversion of socialist financial practices - a dangerous mixture that hid the weakness of the Macedonian regime behind the facade of urban renewal and, for a decade, made it ubiquitous and invincible. "Dark finances' describe how, after a bad deal, Macedonia's authoritarian regime was riding a wave of financial expansion that deepened its access to Macedonian society, revealing that its dominance, like all speculative bubbles, was staggering to the brink of collapse." .

How does Fabio Matioli describe the authoritarian regime of Gruevski and how was his network of influence built and how through finances he turned into an liberal democracy?

The book is divided into six chapters: The Magic of Building, Peripheral Financing, Forced Credit and Compensation, Illiquid Times, Speculative Manhood, Finance, and the Pirate State.

Matioli writes that Gruevski's authoritarian system was "directly linked to forms of financial expansion on the periphery of Europe." And that Gruevski was able to meet both the expectations for profit of global financial players and the desire for recognition from Macedonian citizens - at least for some time.

The abundant international liquidity available to the government and the domestic shortage of money enabled businesses to allow the Macedonian government to "monopolize the money supply and impose illiberal policies on businesses and individuals." Then finances became intertwined with politics.

At the center of everything is "Skopje 2014"

Matioli elaborates that the central pillar of Gruevski's illiberal economic architecture was the mega-project "Skopje 2014" and the public procurement network behind it. Although he was publicly intended to flirt with the ancient heritage, building a new identity and a political symbol for development, Matioli writes that the real goal of the project was to connect the oligarchs with Gruevski. For the urban middle class, the buildings in the center of Skopje were unpleasant and offensive, but for the working class it meant new jobs.

The book states that Gruevski's most important ally is Saso Mijalkov and refers to his father's role as a representative abroad of a large company. Jordan Mijalkov is just one of the examples, says Matioli (regardless of the fact that he died early) who with dubious financial procedures of the transition from one system to another managed in the postistalist period to pave the way to later or liberal financial practices. Matioli emphasizes that after the big wave of privatization in the 1990s, Gruevski, as Minister of Finance in the first government of VMRO-DPMNE, began to build an alternative oligarchic network to that of SDSM.

The meeting of European neoliberal finances and Macedonian liberalism is the most direct political context of the VMRO-DPMNE regime. The book says that Gruevski could not have established his liberal network without the support of the international financial community. Matioli says that in 2006 "Gruevski was elected a pro-European neoliberal by rural and workers' nationalist voters."

Citing the deal with Wizz Air, the low-cost Hungarian airline, Mathioli writes that MOL, the big oil company, was supposed to arrive from Hungary and monopolize the market in Macedonia, but that did not happen. But that's why the Hungarian money for the media came. The liberal financial networks of Macedonia and Hungary overlapped, says Matioli.

Before the global financial crisis, international investors showed little interest in Macedonia. However, Gruevski's neoliberal branding campaign eventually caught the attention of international investors under pressure from the crisis. At the same time, private banks remained cautious and unwilling to lend to companies and households, preferring stable government bond yields. As a result, between 2007 and 2015, the public debt of northern Macedonia increased from 20% of GDP to 46%.

Describing Gruevski's government project "Invest in Macedonia" and the international marketing campaign, Matioli explains that he thus identified Macedonia as a destination for cheap labor for foreign investors.

Explaining the role of compensation, Mathioli says that in those years it evolved from a simple liquidity management tool to a means of financial repression, ie forced borrowing. "It was initially used to creatively overcome liquidity problems, but it gradually transformed into a forced loan, which Gruevski's system used to extract additional profits."

Political economist Gabor Schering says Fabio Matioli wrote a book rich in lessons learned, mapping the networks that sustained Nikola Gruevski's power and living experiences of "authoritarian financing", providing new insights into the political economy of Macedonia and Europe. The book combines ethnographic and almost poetic sensibilities, giving a rich description of the economic, urban and social landscapes. In addition to cleverly executed ethnography, "Dark Finance" is an impressive case study of crime, political drama and political thriller. It is recommended not only for those who want to understand Gruevski's system, but also for all those interested in liberal finance.

Taken from Deutsche Welle.

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