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Against the backdrop of the recent conflicts in the Ukraine and Syria the article examines Russia’s geopolitical strategy in the context of a “new world order”. Starting with the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the beginning of capitalist reforms in the early 1990s the focus lies on the negotiation process of a new hegemonic consensus among the Russian elites represented by Vladimir Putin. Special attention is drawn to the role of the state and its key role stabilizing both social and power relations. Furthermore, the article analyses the expansionist strategies of Russian capital and its geopolitical interests, especially in the post-soviet space. The current financial and economic crisis has lead to conflicts among the elites on the resource-extractive mode of development and its one-sided dependency on natural resources. Therefore, the article highlights both the plans on import substitution and new integration process in the postsoviet space (Eurasian Union) asking whether these developments might contribute to a reconfiguration of Russia’s geopolitical role.

The article examines the recent protest movements in Bosnia (especially in spring 2014) and Croatia („For the family“) and tries to draw conclusions on societal development in the Balkans since the dissolution of Yugoslavia. Whereas in Bosnia the protesters were committed to democratic principles and represented an alternative to the official political system, in Croatia direct democratic means are more frequently used by right forces in order to discriminate minorities (such as homosexuals or the ethnic Serbs). Furthermore the article describes how these different types of protest in the given countries could emerge and asks for the limits and possibilities of the protest movements.