Dritan Abazović

Dritan Abazović was born on December 25, 1985, in Ulcinj, a coastal town in Montenegro. At his birth, Montenegro was one of the republics of socialist Yugoslavia; it became an independent state in 2006. He comes from an Albanian family and completed his primary and secondary schooling in his hometown. His subsequent career developed in national civic parties rather than exclusively within a party representing the Albanian minority. Before entering parliament, he pursued an education that took him from Montenegro to other parts of the former Yugoslav region and beyond.^[1][2]

He enrolled in political science at the University of Sarajevo in 2004. According to his official biography, he completed the undergraduate programme ahead of its normal schedule and received university distinctions for his academic performance. He then pursued postgraduate study in international relations at the University of Montenegro, completing a master's degree in 2008. These studies preceded his election to parliament. They also provided the subjects to which he would return in his later academic writing: international politics, ethics and relations beyond national borders.^[1][2]

Abazović continued his education while active in politics. In 2019, he completed a doctorate at Sarajevo with a dissertation examining the ethical aspects of globalization. His official biography also records participation in peace research studies at the University of Oslo and international professional programmes. During his school years, he had helped establish a youth group associated with the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights, working on reconciliation among young people from the former Yugoslavia. His engagement with international affairs therefore included both formal university study and organized youth activities before he assumed national office.^[1]

Abazović entered Montenegro's parliament in 2012 and served as a legislator until his appointment to the executive in 2020. His early parliamentary career was associated with Positive Montenegro, a civic opposition party. He subsequently became part of the United Reform Action movement, generally known by its abbreviation, URA. His career did not begin with leadership of the party through which he later became internationally known. It developed through several years of opposition politics before he acquired a decisive role in forming governments.^[1][2]

On April 9, 2017, URA elected him its president at a party convention in Podgorica. The movement offered a civic and reform-oriented platform in a political system where arguments about national identity frequently shaped alliances. Under Abazović, URA was a relatively small parliamentary force, not a party capable of governing alone. Its influence therefore depended partly on cooperation with other groups. Party leadership gave him a platform for advocating institutional reform and European integration, but it also required negotiations with partners whose priorities were not identical to his own.^[3][4][9]

The parliamentary election of August 2020 changed those possibilities. Three opposition blocs together secured 41 seats in the 81-member legislature, enough to form a government and remove the Democratic Party of Socialists from executive power. URA participated in the election through the Black on White coalition. The resulting majority joined political forces with different positions on relations with Serbia, religion and national identity. Abazović's movement was part of that alliance, and its participation helped make the transfer of power possible. The result ended approximately three decades of government dominated by the Democratic Party of Socialists and its predecessor.^[3]

On December 4, 2020, parliament approved a government headed by Zdravko Krivokapić. Abazović became deputy prime minister, moving from opposition work into executive responsibility. The administration rested on the narrow majority assembled after the election, while the Democratic Party of Socialists moved into opposition. Milo Đukanović, the party's longstanding leading figure, remained president of Montenegro. The change therefore concerned the parliamentary government, not the simultaneous replacement of every major officeholder in the state.^[1][3]

The new cabinet had to work with parties that had cooperated to defeat the former governing party but disagreed on significant policies. Some coalition members emphasized stronger ties with Serbia, while others stressed Montenegro's civic identity and existing international commitments. Abazović's position placed him within this mixed administration rather than outside its disagreements. His rise to the deputy premiership brought a politician from a small party into the senior leadership of government. Yet the administration's limited parliamentary margin left little room for sustained conflict among its supporters, and disagreements persisted after the transfer of power.^[3][4]

Krivokapić's government lost a confidence vote in February 2022. Abazović then worked toward a different governing arrangement: a minority cabinet supported by parties extending beyond the previous coalition. This involved a substantial change in parliamentary cooperation. The Democratic Party of Socialists, which his allies had displaced in 2020, agreed to support the proposed government without taking cabinet posts. That arrangement explains how Abazović could become prime minister without his own party winning a national election outright. His accession resulted from parliamentary negotiations and a new majority supporting his cabinet, not a direct popular election for prime minister.^[4]

Parliament elected Abazović's government on April 28, 2022, with 45 deputies voting in favour. At 36, he became Montenegro's prime minister and headed its 43rd government. The cabinet brought together URA, the Socialist People's Party, the Social Democratic Party and representatives of minority communities. It was a minority government because the parties holding ministerial office did not themselves command a parliamentary majority. Support from outside the cabinet was therefore essential, even though the investiture vote had secured more than half the seats in parliament.^[4][5]

Abazović presented faster progress toward European Union membership as a central objective. The announced programme included strengthening the rule of law, fighting corruption, supporting economic development and encouraging sustainable investment. Environmental protection and changes affecting electoral and security institutions also appeared among the priorities. These were commitments of the incoming administration, rather than reforms already accomplished when it took office. Its programme linked the domestic work of improving institutions with the international objective of advancing Montenegro's accession to the European Union.^[4][5]

The administration's composition reflected its need to bring several political constituencies into the same cabinet. Its senior offices were distributed among coalition partners, and its survival depended on retaining support beyond URA's own legislators. Abazović had succeeded in forming and leading a government after the collapse of its predecessor, despite his party's modest parliamentary representation. The new arrangement gave Montenegro an administration explicitly organized around a renewed European integration agenda. It did not, however, remove the disagreements over identity and religious institutions that had divided the previous majority. Those disagreements soon became central to the new government's survival.^[4][6]

In August 2022, Abazović signed an agreement with the Serbian Orthodox Church concerning its legal position and related rights in Montenegro. Relations between the state and the church had been a major political issue before his premiership. He presented the agreement as a way to settle a longstanding dispute, but it divided the parties whose support sustained his government. Disagreement over the agreement helped bring about the withdrawal of parliamentary confidence. The cabinet's supporters had found enough common ground to approve its formation in April, but they did not maintain that cooperation through the dispute over church relations.^[6]

Shortly after midnight on August 20, parliament passed a motion of no confidence by 50 votes to one. The cabinet had been elected less than four months earlier. Abazović nevertheless remained prime minister in a caretaker capacity while political leaders sought a replacement government. August 2022 marked the loss of his government's parliamentary mandate, not his immediate departure from office. His premiership continued into the following year because agreement on a successor did not follow directly from the confidence vote. The country thus retained its existing executive while efforts to assemble another administration continued.^[6][7]

President Đukanović dissolved parliament on March 16, 2023, after efforts to form another government had failed. A parliamentary election followed on June 11. The Europe Now movement emerged as the largest force, but negotiations over a governing coalition continued for several months. On October 31, parliament approved a cabinet led by Milojko Spajić, ending Abazović's tenure. He had thus spent most of his time as prime minister leading a caretaker administration. The transition to Spajić established the endpoint of his executive service, even though the confidence vote that precipitated the transition had occurred more than a year earlier.^[7][8]

Alongside his political work, Abazović has written about political philosophy and international relations. His official biography lists books whose English titles are given as Cosmopolitan Culture and Global Justice and A Critique of Global Ethics, as well as scholarly articles. His writing extends beyond accounts of everyday party politics to questions about justice and ethical responsibility in international affairs. Together with his doctoral research, these publications document an academic interest that continued alongside his parliamentary and executive career.^[1]

His place in Montenegro's recent history rests on several identifiable developments. He participated in the 2020 transfer of power, served as deputy prime minister in the government that followed, and then assembled a different coalition to become prime minister himself. An ethnic Albanian leading a national civic movement, he reached the head of government through cooperation across party and community lines. The same record also contains clear limits: the minority cabinet lost confidence within months, and European Union membership remained an objective rather than an achievement completed during his premiership.^{[1][3][4][6][8]}

The contrast between forming a government and sustaining one is particularly visible in Abazović's career. In April 2022, he obtained the votes needed to take office; by August, the coalition supporting him had broken apart. His continued caretaker service then extended his premiership well beyond the period in which his cabinet enjoyed parliamentary confidence. Both phases belong to his record. He helped replace a long-established governing party and subsequently led the country, but his administration also experienced the coalition instability that marked Montenegro's politics after 2020. These events define his premiership without turning the unfinished career of a living politician into a final historical verdict.^[3][4][6][8]