Sociološki Pregled (Jan 2004)

Consolidating democracy and (or) tireless institutional experimentation

  • Komšić Jovan N.

DOI
https://doi.org/10.5937/socpreg0402153K
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 38, no. 1-2
pp. 153 – 175

Abstract

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Post-communistic transition of political-economic institutions and cultural models is facing with numerous aspects of a classical problem of interaction of culture and political structure. Possibility of opting for one out of several strategies of liberalization and institutional "solving" of the so called national and governmental issues represents a special challenge for "nation building" and for integrative politics in "plural societies" (Ekstein). Exactly this aspect of changes is put in the focus of analytical consideration in this work. While confronting findings of new theoretical research on presumptions of stabilization of liberal democracy in plural (heterogeneous) societies in transition with empirical documentation about the population’s orientation in the system of values in Serbia, as well as with key political projects of governmental structure, author concludes that the society in Serbia is still burdened with numerous, unresolved problems and ambivalences of an early transition. Namely, this means that the nature of socio-economical, historically-ethnic, culture-value and ideological-political splits continues to keep Serbia in the zone of the so called "societies difficult for democracy" (Sartori). Whatever the case may be, on the road to the consolidation of democracy and modernization of Serbia, we are going to come across, probably for a long time, with objective and subjective reasons for tireless institutional innovations and experiments in the process of resolving the key issue - civil "arrangement of primordial discontentment" (C. Geerz) and establishing sustainable balance of conflicts and a consensus in Serbia.

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