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The "Uljanik" shipyard in Pula (Croatia) is one of the few resilient large-scale industrial enterprises in Southeastern Europe. It withstood all political storms since its foundation in 1856 and, today, is still building ships, even at a profit. Its long existence makes it an excellent case study for the historical exploration of business and of labour relations in Southeastern Europe in a longue durée perspective. Thanks to its importance, the shipyard provides a fruitful lens into the transformation of social relations on the local level and how these interacted with wider developments (on the national and supra-national level). This article compares two periods, in which the shipyard faced the challenge to adapt to radically changing political conditions: the first post-war decade, when Istria became Yugoslav and a socialist economy was built; and the 1990s, when Croatia became independent and transformed its economy into a market-based, capitalist one. The main argument of this article is that in both periods, the enterprise pursued a successful strategy of globalisation. For that, specific coalitions between workers, managers and the state had to be formed. It appears that during socialism, keeping the Communist Party at bay was one of the reasons of success, while during the post-socialist transformation the enterprise's fate also depended on its ability to solicit support from the government. Hence, post-socialism did not mean the disappearance of the state from the economy, while socialist-time self-management had strengthened the hand of the management vis-à-vis an interventionist communist party. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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State weakness is one of the main obstacles for democratic stability. Yet under certain circumstances even a mere electoral democracy may gain stable support from the citizenry. Mere electoral democracy is best understood as a regime of elite governance endowed by a certain support from the citizens but without any ambition of the ruling elite to increase the quality of democratic rule. This article explores the historical reasons of this specific type of political regime in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, and Serbia. Departing from the empirical examples from the Western Balkans, the article comes to some rather general conclusions about the concept and sequence of democratization: Conducting elections too early may produce serious challenges to sustainable democratization. The general population’s primary interest mostly lies in the stabilization of state apparatus and its ability to produce common goods rather than in the fast establishment of electoral democracy and formal democratic institutions. For a better understanding of the real level of specific course and paths of democratic “consolidation,” the democracy rankings like Nations in Transit and Bertelsmann should focus on in-depth analyses of the main actors’ political and economic practices. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the difference between totalitarianism and the authoritarian version of dictatorship in the Eastern and Central Europe. The author states that the fundamental feature of totalitarianism is its ability to limit any autonomous activity in any sphere of the society, while the dictatorial nature of democratic centralism shows that there are limitations in democracy and the suspension of certain freedoms. He describes the nature of the political system in Croatia to further explain the topic and suggests that it is the opposite of the old totalitarianism. He cites that democratic centralism was used by Croatia to provide instant legitimacy and to reduce democracy.