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Several watershed events preceded the dissolution of Yugoslavia. One of these was the toppling of the Vojvodina autonomist leadership in October 1988. This was preceded by a series of rallies throughout Vojvodina in the summer of 1988, which may have seemed like a spontaneous affair and the work of "ordinary citizens." It was called "the antibureaucratic revolution." However, these rallies, including a standing group of demonstrators, continually and always referring to the grievances of Kosovo Serbs, turned out to be supported by the Serbian political elite centered in Belgrade. The elite, still headed by the Serbian Communist Chief Slobodan Milošević, gave thrust and coordination to efforts to organize the rallies. The Vojvodina leadership was toppled for their alleged "failing to understand the plight of Kosovo Serbs." The overthrow was, further, with a view to achieve the Serbian elite's pet project, the "united Serbia"—that is, doing away with Vojvodina's and Kosovo's autonomy. Written sources (including recollections by Yugoslav leaders of the time) and written sources are considered in research on the events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is widely accepted that Tito's Yugoslavia was institutionally founded at AVNOJ, namely the Second Session of the Anti-Fascist Council of National Liberation of Yugoslavia, held on November 29, 1943 in Bosnian woods. At the assembly, a Decree concerning the federal organization was to be adopted. The Decree contained principles of Yugoslavia's future organization (six republics, along with the parity of republics and nationalities). Neither scholars nor politicians, in the former country and abroad, have questioned the veracity of the assertion that the Decree was adopted at this Session. The Decree was instrumental in the communist drive to impose a federation and communism, when confronted with pre-war politicians in the Transitional and Constitutional Assemblies, in 1945 and 1946. The communists were able to claim that federalism had already been instituted. Later, the Decree was widely invoked during Tito's Yugoslavia, both by those who advocated greater ''states' rights'' and by those claiming that Yugoslavia was already too decentralized. On closer inspection, it is more than questionable whether such constitutional Decree could have been adopted in such a situation. Many issues the decree governs were matters of contention and final decision making within AVNOJ after the Second Session (and in 1945). Technicalities also point to the Decree not being adopted at that moment, but in an informal situation by the communist leaders at a later date, however, not later than February 1945. Nevertheless, the Decree widely functioned as a source of legitimacy and an instrument for setting certain limits in the political life of the former state.

Cultural capital, originally a general sociological concept, has been transformed into a construct that is often applied in predicting scholastic attainment. Intellectual ability (IQ) has also been proven to be a strong, although basically psychological, predictor of educational attainment. However, these strands of research have hardly been contrasted in terms of their predictive power and in terms of their potential interaction. In the current study of Slovenian secondary school students, the results indicated that both constructs had statistically significant predictive power, both as to attainment and as to transition into type of secondary education. Results also indicated that: both constructs were fairly robust, as their predictive power remained statistically significant even after control variables were entered into the model; and they operated independently as results indicated no interaction between these constructs. The "return" on cultural capital was greater for students whose parents had lower educational status. (Contains 4 tables.)

Since attaining independence, Latin pattern (Martin, 1978) disputes and conflicts have characterized the Slovenian political scene, particularly as to relations between the state and religious communities. Slovenia adopted a law on the issue only in 2006, availing itself of the law from the 1970s. The 2007 Religious Freedom Act contained many privileges for the dominant Roman Catholic Church, including those of a symbolic nature and those of an economic one. The Constitutional Court declared the Act unconstitutional and void, departing from the European Convention of Human Rights and the case law of the European Court of Human Rights. Thus, it set other beliefs at the same level with religious ones, did away with many privileges and obstacles 81 in recognition and registration of new religious communities. However, this decision has legislatively been implemented only in a small portion, remaining to be fully implemented. However, the absence of substantive agreements with the Holy See and the absence of religious instruction in public schools indicate a predominance of liberalism on the public scene.

The study examines the relationship between social inequalities (stratificational, gender and other disparities) and schooling, including academic attainment, longitudinally, in Slovenia. The issue is indicated most clearly at the tertiary education level. The basic finding is the parallel between educational expansion and the diminution of social inequalities as measured by standard parameters. This was particularly evident in the 1990s. Inequalities are measured in terms of gender, parental education and occupation. The impact of parental education proves to be an indicative, observable and longitudinally comparative measure. Parental occupational status is also clearly linked to their children's scholastic attainment, although there are difficulties in the formation of occupational strata. Further considered is the impact of school reforms over a lengthier period of time; there was not, however, any detectable impact. School and welfare policies, even financing, have little significance. There are clear indications that social disparities at school are continually regenerated, despite the decline established by standard measures. New forms of social disparities appear, through which the privileged ensure the continuation of privilege.

Religious life is studied by way suggested by the rational choice theory and the religious capital theory. The basic contentions of the theory on the nature of religious life having to do with an exchange upon a religious market, by firms offering compensators and rewards, and consumers, is considered. In the empirical analysis, it was validated that the independent (religious capital) and dependent (religious rewards of two types) were empirically separate constructs. Cross-sectional analysis of survey data indicated a very strong association between religious capital and institutional and ritual experience rewards within religious life, at a cross-cultural analysis, including Bosnian Muslims, Serbian Orthodox, Slovenian Catholics and US Protestants. The association was confirmed as robust at regression inspection with religious socialization. This extends further support for the empirical validity these novel theories of religious life and extensions of economic analysis into religious life.

The concept of civil religion has caught major attention among scholars studying the junction of religion and politics (J.-J. Rousseau, E. Durkheim, R. Bellah). The notion focuses on the phenomenon of cultural contents sacralizing and ritualizing the ruling political institutions of a society, extending support to the integration of the political and social system at a cultural level. The notion of civil religion has recently been operationalized crossculturally, but light has not been shed upon its predictors. In this paper authoritarianism is tested as a predictor of civil religion cross-culturally. Four student samples of Bosnian, Serbian, Slovenian and US students were analyzed. Very strong, significant associations between authoritarianism, as operationalized by a modified Lane scale, and civil religion were found in all cases. Moreover, upon introducing femininity, anxiety and gender into the analysis, a strong, dominant and significant impact on the part of authoritarianism was still found when civil religion was observed crossculturally. When the same predictors were applied to explaining general religiosity, authoritarianism fell short of being a significant predictor in most of the environments observed. Such results suggest an especially close link between civil religion and authoritarianism.

Serbian Orthodoxy was studied empirically by using different measures of religiousness. After an initial placement of Serbian religiousness in the context of WVS data, a sample of south Serbian university students was compared to student samples from three other religions: Bosnian Muslims, and Slovenian Catholics. When using World Values Survey (WVS) measures, results indicated that the Serbian Orthodox proved to be more religious than irreleligious; when using our own survey data and more complex measures, the Serbian Orthodox proved to be more religious than Slovenian Catholics, but less religious than Bosnian Muslims, although Serbian Orthodox affiliates did surpass the normative means on certain items. Mysticism, religious experience and civil religion were not outstanding, in contrast to what might have been expected from the literature (Mitrovic 1995; Vrcan 1995; Tomka 2006). The Serbian Orthodox exhibited a high level of extrinsic psychological religiousness and of guilt religiousness, both of which show a significant positive correlation with trait anxiety.

Four religious cultural settings, a Slovenian Catholic one, a Bosnian Muslim one, a Serbian Orthodox one and an American Protestant one, are compared on the basis of a variety of measures of religiosity, resulting from a survey carried out on large student samples in 2005. Certain cultural peculiarities of the groups emerge: e.g., the particular Muslim stress on the concept of God as austere judge. These peculiarities, indicative of a more pronouncedly rigid and authentic religiosity do not add up to a qualitatively different religiosity among the Muslims. Nevertheless, clear differences appeared in the structure of religiosity, which are of particular relevance to the two more intensively religious groups: the American Protestants and the Bosnian Muslims. The former group's religiosity is more dependent on social pressure, and its religious practice is more frequent, whereas the latter group's religiosity seems better linked to their personality set-up and integrated in personality. The American Protestants are slightly more inclined to sacrifice their life both for religious purposes and for their country.

In the paper, the author deals with the relationship between gender and frequency of (ir)religiosity. Bearing in mind that the finding of more frequent religiosity of women is almost universal within Christianity, various psychological and sociological explanations are presented and dealt with. In the latter part of the paper, the author presents empirical survey data from Slovenia. The longitudinal analysis of correlation of gender and religiosity does not indicate any trend, though fluctuations are detected. A two step cross tabulation of education, gender and religiosity points to a minimal possibility of explanation by lower education among females. Regression analysis indicates that social variables remain robust, when gender is introduced into the model. It is concluded that factors of a sociological nature cannot explain the full difference in religiosity among males and females and that psychological factors immanent to gender should be taken into account.

To authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-5906.2009.01435_3.x Byline: Sergej Flere (1), Andrej Kirbis (1) Author Affiliation: (1)Department of Sociology University of Maribor

To authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-5906.2009.01435_1.x Byline: Sergej Flere (1), Andrej Kirbis (1) Author Affiliation: (1)(1)Department of Sociology Maribor University Article note: Correspondence should be addressed to Sergej Flere, Department of Sociology, University of Maribor, Koroska 160, SI-2000 Maribor, Slovenia. E-mail: sergej.flere@uni-mb.si

The concept of civil religion in President Tito's Communist Yugoslavia (1945-1991) that influenced its culture and society is discussed. The civil religion was of an authoritarian type, both politically and psychologically, which disappeared with Tito's exit.

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