At a time when some EU member states are attracting attention for the rise to power of illiberal, anti-democratic political movements, this book’s analytical focus on ideas and identities helps explain why institutional progress is not necessarily reflected in the formation of liberal, democratic publics. Starting from the premise that citizens can only uphold the institutions of liberal democracy when they understand and identify with the principles enshrined in them, the author applies normative public sphere theory to the analysis of political discourse and everyday discussion in Serbia and Bulgaria. From this perspective, the Serbian public sphere is observed to be more contested, pluralist and, at the margins, liberal than that of Bulgaria. Considering that Bulgaria has been a full EU member since 2007 while Serbia remains stuck in the waiting room, it is argued that democratic cultures are not shaped by elite-led drives to meet institutional criteria but rather by the spread of ideas through politics, the media and the discussions of citizens. Moving beyond the narrow focus on institutions that currently prevails in studies of democratization, this book demonstrates the value of a more ethnographic and society-oriented approach.

Exploring the concepts of collaboration, resistance, and postwar retribution and focusing on the Chetnik movement, this book analyses the politics of memory. Since the overthrow of Slobodan Milosevic in 2000, memory politics in Serbia has undergone drastic changes in the way in which the Second World War and its aftermath is understood and interpreted. The glorification and romanticisation of the Yugoslav Army in the Homeland, more commonly referred to as the Chetnik movement, has become the central theme of Serbia's memory politics during this period. The book traces their construction as a national antifascist movement equal to the communist-led Partisans and as victims of communism, showing the parallel justification and denial of their wartime activities of collaboration and mass atrocities. The multifaceted approach of this book combines a diachronic perspective that illuminates the continuities and ruptures of narratives, actors and practices, with in-depth analysis of contemporary Serbia, rooted in ethnographic fieldwork and exploring multiple levels of memory work and their interactions. It will appeal to students and academics working on contemporary history of the region, memory studies, sociology, public history, transitional justice, human rights and Southeast and East European Studies.

"The Road to War in Serbia is the first serious attempt by scholars from the former Yugoslavia to systematically explore the roots of the conflict and the ideology and propaganda that incited Serbian people to war. Based on years of research, the authors-all eminent scholars of their respective fields, who have lived through these social conflicts-highlight key issues which have date remained unknown or which have been previously neglected." "The issues dealt with include the institutional frameworks of ethnicity and nationalism; the input of the church, science, literature and sports; specific catalysts of the conflict, and the role of the political actors, students, the ruling party and the media." "The Road to War in Serbia will help to understand why and how the violent option of settling disputes and conflicts on the territory of Yugoslavia is being accepted."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

"The wars in Bosnia-Herzegovina and in neighboring Croatia and Kosovo grabbed the attention of the western world not only because of their ferocity and their geographic location, but also because of their timing. This violence erupted at the exact moment when the cold war confrontation was drawing to a close, when westerners were claiming their liberal values as triumphant, in a country that had only a few years earlier been seen as very well placed to join the west. In trying to account for this outburst, most western journalists, academics, and policymakers have resorted to the language of the premodern: tribalism, ethnic hatreds, cultural inadequacy, irrationality; in short, the Balkans as the antithesis of the modern west. Yet one of the most striking aspects of the wars in Yugoslavia is the extent to which the images purveyed in the western press and in much of the academic literature are so at odds with evidence from on the ground."—from The Myth of Ethnic War V. P. Gagnon Jr. believes that the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s were reactionary moves designed to thwart populations that were threatening the existing structures of political and economic power. He begins with facts at odds with the essentialist view of ethnic identity, such as high intermarriage rates and the very high percentage of draft-resisters. These statistics do not comport comfortably with the notion that these wars were the result of ancient blood hatreds or of nationalist leaders using ethnicity to mobilize people into conflict. Yugoslavia in the late 1980s was, in Gagnon's view, on the verge of large-scale sociopolitical and economic change. He shows that political and economic elites in Belgrade and Zagreb first created and then manipulated violent conflict along ethnic lines as a way to short-circuit the dynamics of political change. This strategy of violence was thus a means for these threatened elites to demobilize the population. Gagnon's noteworthy and rather controversial argument provides us with a substantially new way of understanding the politics of ethnicity.

At a time when some EU member states are attracting attention for the rise to power of illiberal, anti-democratic political movements, this book’s analytical focus on ideas and identities helps explain why institutional progress is not necessarily reflected in the formation of liberal, democratic publics. Starting from the premise that citizens can only uphold the institutions of liberal democracy when they understand and identify with the principles enshrined in them, the author applies normative public sphere theory to the analysis of political discourse and everyday discussion in Serbia and Bulgaria. From this perspective, the Serbian public sphere is observed to be more contested, pluralist and, at the margins, liberal than that of Bulgaria. Considering that Bulgaria has been a full EU member since 2007 while Serbia remains stuck in the waiting room, it is argued that democratic cultures are not shaped by elite-led drives to meet institutional criteria but rather by the spread of ideas through politics, the media and the discussions of citizens. Moving beyond the narrow focus on institutions that currently prevails in studies of democratization, this book demonstrates the value of a more ethnographic and society-oriented approach.

During their thirteen years in power, Slobodan Milosevic and his cohorts plunged Yugoslavia into wars of ethnic cleansing, leading to the murder of thousands of civilians. The Milosevic regime also subverted the nation's culture, twisted the political mainstream into a virulent nationalist mold, sapped the economy through war and the criminalization of a free market, returned to gender relations of a bygone era, and left the state so dysfunctional that its peripheries--Kosovo, Vojvodina, and Montenegro--have been struggling to maximize their distance from Belgrade, through far-reaching autonomy or through outright independence. In this valuable collection of essays, Vjeran Pavlakovic, Reneo Lukic, and Obrad Kesic examine elements of continuity and discontinuity from the Milosevic era to the twenty-first century, the struggle at the center of power, and relations between Serbia and Montenegro. Contributions by Sabrina Ramet, James Gow, and Milena Michalski explore the role of Serbian wartime propaganda and the impact of the war on Serbian society. Essays by Eric Gordy, Maja Miljovic, Marko Hoare, and Kari Osland look at the legacy of Serbia's recent wars-issues of guilt and responsibility, the economy, and the trial of Slobodan Milosevic in The Hague. Sabrina Ramet and Biljana Bijelic address the themes of culture and values. Frances Trix, Emil Kerenji, and Dennis Reinhartz explore the peripheries in the politics of Kosovo/a, Vojvodina, and Serbia's Roma. Serbia Since 1989 reveals a Serbia that is still traumatized from Milosevic's rule and groping toward redefining its place in the world.