Actors without Society: The role of civil actors in the postcommunist transformation
Publication Series Democracy, Volume 15
Actors without Society
Twenty years after the epoch-making change in 1989, which affected the post-Yugoslavian space in a way entirely different from other former “real-socialist” European countries, this study is an effort toward an analytical view on the past two decades of development of civil society in the western Balkans. The development there does not correspond to the theoretical outlines of the democratic transition or transformation. The primary reason lies in the fact that in socialist Yugoslavia, like in other societies of the “real socialism” in the East, the relation between state and society substantially differed from this relation in free capitalist societies. This difference in the relation between state and society, as the author of this study Srđan Dvornik points out, had a decisive impact on the emerging civil societies. The study shows: Without civic engagement, there will be no changes, and the engagement of seemingly marginal actors achieves more than would be expected on the basis of their “systemic” place.
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Table of contents
7 Preface
11 Introductory note
13 Postcommunist “revolutions”: making their own foundation
14 What was the change about?
25 We have democracy, we (still) don’t have society
43 Projections and reality
63 The new communities
64 The subaltern, politically passive society
76 Post-Yugoslav states and nationalist revolutions
99 Civil society and the self-established actors
100 Civic/civil society – from autonomy to political activism
119 The space for civil attitude in the post-Yugoslav countries
133 Actors without society
143 Instead of a conclusion
144 Literature