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The article ponders the potential of a territorial-exchange agreement to improve the relationship between Serbia and Kosovo. Topics discussed include the proposal to merge four Serbian-dominated municipalities with Serbia and two Albanian-majority municipalities with Kosovo, opposition of political parties, religious institutions and nationalist groups to the proposal, and importance of resolving domestic political obstacles to the success of a possible exchange.

Croatia and Serbia are two countries that started their paths toward the EU with similar conditions. Nevertheless, in 2018, the end of this study's period, the two countries are characterized by different outcomes regarding European integration. This paper puts forward one key determinant for the more successful Europeanization process of Croatia—resolved statehood problem—and claims that the unresolved statehood problem in Serbia led to higher adoption costs of EU rules. Therefore, this article seeks to improve the theorization of the relationship between Europeanization and the statehood problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the signing of the historic 'Brussels Agreement' on 19 April 2013 on the normalization of relations between Kosovo and Serbia, Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić and the Progressive Party have oscillated between competing tensions emanating from seeking membership in the European Union and those stemming from the retention of Kosovo, including the party's uncompromising position on non-recognition. Following two-level game theory, this paper offers a comparative analysis of the Progressive Party's multi-level game strategy vis-à-vis Kosovo and the EU, arguing that while the initial success of the Brussels Agreement can predominantly be attributed to the rise in popular support for EU accession, Serbian policy towards Kosovo appears to be far less clear and often contradictory and therefore, Serbian government strategy cannot have been influenced by public opinion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This article gives an overview of the current position of minority self-governance within the Serbian legal order and its multilevel governance structure, with a particular focus on issues deriving from the missing legal determination of national minority councils. Although Serbia's 2009 Law on National Minority Councils was welcomed by the international community, both national minority councils and public agencies have from the very beginning of its operation expressed serious concerns relating inter alia to the unspecified legal status of the councils. This has resulted in frequent misunderstandings in practice and, rather than being real self-governments of national minorities under public law, the councils are usually treated as nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) or organizations under the influence of political parties. Instead of presenting (international) political and social scientific approaches to the legal character of non-territorial autonomy in general, the article focuses on concrete legislative solutions and Constitutional Court practice regarding issues relevant to the de jure status of national minority councils in Serbia, such as election rules, competences, and funding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intra-Serbian dialogue is as necessary for normalisation as is resumed dialogue between Belgrade and Pristina. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of European Review of Public Law is the property of European Public Law Organization and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This special issue of Nationalities Papers presents an attempt to provide a fresh perspective on Serbia's and Yugoslavia's "antibureaucratic revolution" of 1988 and 1989. The 30th anniversary of this turbulent episode provides an opportunity to rethink our interpretation and offer a new appraisal of the event as well as open several new avenues of potentially productive research. This special issue builds on older research (Vladisavljević 2004, 2008; Vujačić 1996, 2003) and is part of a series of more recent as well upcoming contributions (Musić 2016; Musić forthcoming; Archer et al. 2016; Grdešić 2016; Grdešić forthcoming; Vujačić 2017; Archer and Musić 2017). Given the complexity of the event, the contributions collected here cannot exhaust all of the antibureaucratic revolution's many facets. We do, however, hope that these contributions cover some of the main lacunae in the scholarship published so far. We also hope that this special issue will spark researchers to turn to this immensely interesting and deeply important event. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most studies of the antibureaucratic revolution have focused on political elites and activists in Serbia, Montenegro, and the autonomous provinces of Vojvodina and Kosovo. Recent scholarship has focused on individual participants, often workers, and takes their agency seriously. Building upon such research, this article explores the antibureaucratic revolution as a particular manifestation of a larger sociocultural process, constitutive of long-term structural changes across the whole of Yugoslavia. An analysis of workplace documents and local newspapers in northwest Croatia demonstrates that antibureaucratic sentiment was not the prerogative of Serbian and Montenegrins but of Yugoslav citizens more generally. Yugoslavs were conditioned by the party-state to be critical of bureaucracy. Workers began to admonish the expansion of administrative positions, which they blamed for their falling living standards. Despite decentralizing and autarkic tendencies in political and economic life in late socialist Yugoslavia, working class discontents (and representations of it) remained remarkably similar across republican boundaries. In Rijeka and its environs, a shift does not occur until in mid-1988. Condemnations of nationalism become more urgent and a skepticism toward the mass protests occurring in Serbia is palpable from this point onward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most scholarship on Serbia's antibureaucratic revolution of the late 1980s has emphasized elite actors while ignoring the motivations of ordinary participants. How do ordinary people describe their involvement? Moreover, given the antibureaucratic revolution's dark side—such as exclusionary nationalism and political authoritarianism—it is important to investigate whether participants are willing to critically engage their personal political histories. What do they now say about their roles in this episode? In order to provide answers to this question, six focus groups with a total of 34 participants were organized in the town of Novi Sad, the location of one of the best-known rallies of the antibureaucratic revolution, the so-called yogurt revolution. Most people see their involvement in a rather negative way and regret taking part. However, two blind spots also appear that lessen their sense of personal responsibility: conspiracy theories and notions of urban superiority. The former shifts blame onto secret forces and the latter onto nonurban outsiders. Overall, the long-term legacies of the antibureaucratic revolution are negative: they are associated with cynicism and apathy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Moving the focus away from the epicenters of the antibureaucratic revolution, this article looks at the echoes of this movement in the provincial, multinational, working-class community of Priboj, Serbia. A microstudy of Fabrika automobila Priboj, the town's largest employer, and its surrounding community through records of self-management and party meetings and through the local press reveals some of the less-researched aspects of the social mobilizations in Serbia in the late 1980s. Without downplaying the spread of national grievances, this study highlights parallel phenomena taking place on the ground, such as labor solidarity, growing socioeconomic grievances, and the participation of non-Serb (in this case, Muslim) populations. The argument is that the presence of a large factory with a multinational workforce in the center of the municipality as the organizational core of the mobilizations and their focus on local problems helped Priboj's antibureaucratic bevolution resemble the proletarian, pro-Yugoslav image that the leadership of the Serbian party often hoped to project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years the phenomenon of populism has inspired many debates and many doubts. Despite the growing scholarly interest, it still means different things to different researchers. In the first part of the article the author briefly presents the issues related to the phenomenon of populism itself and its relationship with democracy, and examines the creation of parties that researchers label populist. The second part is a case study that analyses the sources of populism, its manifestations and its importance in Serbia and Croatia over the last century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the perspective of its inherent promises, difficulties, elusiveness, and relative discontinuity, the pursuit of integration in planning could be compared to the Quest for the Holy Grail. The aim of this paper is to identify the main commitments and impediments to pursued integration in the former Yugoslavia's planning from the late 1950s until the late 1980s, drawing on the theoretical discourse, legislative, and institutional framework and the case study of the spatial plan preparation in the Socialist Republic of Serbia. During the chosen period, different aspects of integrated approach to spatial and urban planning were pursued in a context of creating and failing to deliver a unique Yugoslav version of the welfare state -- the selfmanagement socialism. In this light, the intended integration is contrasted to poor outcomes, which led to the loss of legitimacy and the final dissolution of the state, its ideology, governance, and socio-economic planning. The conclusion reflects on the main merits and pitfalls of the former Yugoslavia's experiment to illuminate some general risks associated with the integrated approach in planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Members of the Serbian diaspora, especially those vocal in representing their home country's views, have previously been regarded as leaning towards nationalistic stances. The results of recent elections, however, indicate that today a rather different situation might be present. This study confirms this indication. The analysis sheds light on the political views of Serbian citizens abroad, discussing the results of two surveys conducted around the 2017 Serbian presidential elections. Three main sets of findings concerning the attitudes of the 'active diaspora' (diaspora members who took part, or wanted to take part, in the voting process) are outlined. First, there is a decisive rejection of the course the country has taken. Second, it is shown that concerns about governance top by far geopolitical issues. Finally, respondents have highlighted a wide-ranging set of issues concerning the voting procedure, which have hindered their ability to participate in the vote. Here they are used as a basis to formulate recommendations for a better electoral process for the diaspora. The overall findings indicate that Serbia's active diaspora might have the potential to participate more vigorously in the political life of the country and that, if emboldened, its weight in future elections could be much higher. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper the authors deal with the crucial question of the ability of the Serbian institutions and society to apply adequate scrutiny with respect to the enactment of tax legislation. After providing a description of the current Serbian law-making and public consultations framework, and analyzing the relevance of the transitional nature of the Serbian political environment on the approach to the business of legislating, the authors choose three case studies which lead to the conclusion that it is the lack of even basic knowledge regarding taxation, at the level of the members of parliament and the media, combined with the silence and inertness of Serbian professional circles to participate in public debates on tax policy, that is enabling many questionable norms to enter Serbian legislation without any notable opposition or deliberation. Finally, the authors propose certain measures that could improve the public consultations process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the global rise of the right wing and an increase of authoritarian and semi-authoritarian governance, political satire has flourished in the recent years. During the last several years, political comedy has gained a foothold in the Western Balkans as well, including Serbia, with the creation and development of the Njuz.net website and the 24 Minuta weekly political satire show. This article explores Njuz.net and 24 Minuta (the latter so far not tackled by scholarship) via audience research conducted by a mixed method (mostly qualitative) survey of 475 people who follow the website and the show. The research shows that contemporary political satire in Serbia serves as a critical hub for political participation, as well as the opposition to the government in Serbia; Doona's recent 2016 volume on political comedy has been taken as a significant foundation for a theoretical background. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the aim of exploring in detail Serbia's modern nation-building, this paper reveals and examines three stages in the relationship between the state and the Church. Their interaction was first observed in the late-1980s, when the Church leadership began to interfere in the state affairs, offering religious solutions to a wide range of national issues. Following the collapse of Serbian society during the 1990s, the Church has become an ideology supplement to the state-driven national project. As such, the Church was embraced by the state authorities, and after the fall of Milošević in 2000, nationalism continued to exponentially increase in Serbia. Following the assassination of the Prime Minister Zoran Ðinđić in 2003, the Church emerged as the key factor of nation building, thus substituting the disoriented state structures. A significant part of our conclusions are based on primary quantitative sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article highlights the strategy of the Serbian government during the COVID-19 pandemic. Topics include the implementation of authoritarian populism in the country to control the virus infection; that the government banned people above sixty five from leaving their homes; and that people who have been tested positive has been put into public quarantines.

The relationship between Serbia and Hungary during the 12th century can be characterized as allied and peaceful. However, at the end of the 12th century, Hungary attacked the Serbian territory. The paper analyzes the letter sent by the emperor Isaac II to Pope Celestine III regarding the Hungarian attack on Serbia. We learn from it that the Byzantine Empire protected Serbia in such circumstances, with the claim that Serbia has been "under Romania from ancient times". Also, since the letter was not dated, by internal analysis of the text we can conclude that it was composed in 1193, so the Hungarian attack could be dated from the end of 1192 until the middle of 1193. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors analyze the position and competencies of local ombudsmen in the Republic of Serbia, which exist in 22 cities and municipalities. They argue that the basic problem for the slow expansion of this institution can be found in its non-mandatory character and unwillingness of local political elites to be subjected to independent oversight in their work. This problem can be overcome by adopting a separate Law on Local Ombudsmen, which would systemically regulate their mandatory status, the procedure they conduct, as well as ensure further guarantees of their independence, in particular those of financial nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the mechanism for judicial rehabilitation in Serbia as a tool and as a reflection of state-sanctioned memory politics of the Second World War and Yugoslav state socialism. The mechanism of rehabilitation seeks to accommodate victims of unfair trials by revising them or declaratively and collectively rehabilitating victims of political persecution. In the case of Serbia, the legislation enables rehabilitation of persons responsible for collaboration and crimes during the Second World War as long as it can be argued that political and ideological grounds were also involved in their judicial or extrajudicial persecution. Acknowledging that individuals were unjustly persecuted in the postwar period, the article is primarily concerned with prominent military and political actors of the Second World War. Discussing rehabilitation in the context of the relation of history, memory and law, the article represents a perspective of history and memory studies rather than a purely legal-dogmatic analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that the Constitutional Court of Serbia has only marginal role in political and legal life of the Serbian society and, consequently, very modest impact on the process of democratic transition and consolidation. This conclusion is drawn on the basis of the analysis of the Court’s institutional design, substantive constitutional framework and selected cases that involved thorny constitutional and political issues, as well as issues of the country’s compliance with European standards of parliamentary democracy and human rights protection. The article demonstrates how the Court’s deference to the political majority in power and, in particular, the delaying and avoiding strategies it employs, make it irrelevant in the process of democratic consolidation. Yet, the Court plays a more relevant role in the field of the protection of human rights (constitutional complaints competence). However, these are cases which usually do not involve major political interests, so the Court can rule without constraints, relying on the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights, although not always consistently and aptly. Finally, the article demonstrates that the Court’s legitimacy is weak. In respect to the input legitimacy this is due to the non-transparent process of selection of justices and disregard for the selection criteria. Perceptions of the Court by the general and expert public also reveal that it lacks both sociological and normative legitimacy. Moreover, the output legitimacy is poor, since the effect of the Court’s decisions in the articulation of the dominant political values in Serbian society is close to insignificant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyses how important is the influence of the procedure type and a number of received bids on the duration of the public procedure process. Efficiency and speed of public procurement process diminish inventory turnaround times, direct and indirect costs of procurement, hastens and improves manageability of core processes in the organizations obliged to the public procurement process. Our study focuses on the quantitative analysis of the influence of the procedural public procurement framework mostly determined by the central government and describes potential other factors of efficiency which can be influenced at the local level. Dataset was obtained from the Public Procurement Office of Serbia, and it included 42,850 cases of public procurement after the correction of missing and "dirty" data. Using statistical methods we have presented two linear models, where the type of procedure and number of received bids account for roughly 23% of the variability in the dependent variable. This paper provides suggestions for improvement of efficiency of public procurement, as well as for data that needs to be tracked to develop more comprehensive, accurate and reliable prediction model of the duration of the public procurement process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we use the hierarchy-of-influences model as a framework for examining the ways in which media owners, managers and journalists perceive the influence exerted on their work during 12-year democratic transition in Serbia. We aim to explain how factors perceived as influential at the highest system level gradually transfer and relate to the factors on the subsumed levels. Using the concepts such as corruption and the culture of corruption to interpret hierarchy between different levels of influence on transitional journalism, we argue that coupling extra-media actors at the system level can be considered corruption – understood as abuse of power for personal gain or benefit of the aligned group – which translates to all other levels of influence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we will try to analyze factors of (in)capabilities of national states in the context of their national security policies. The main focus in our observation will be pointed at two key elements of national power. The first one is the influence of national elites that should define, organize and be responsible for the control and the implementation of measures and activities aimed at the protection of the vital interest of nation and state. The second one is the geopolitical context that largely defines estimations, decisions and activities of national security policies of Balkan states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Christianity as a religion is not anti-political, but as in other segments of its existence, it overcomes politics and human organizations, for the Lord tells us that 'My Empire is not of this world' (Jn 18:36). Morals, which are so important for Christ's faith, invite people to accept authority and comply with civil obedience. Everything can be misused, or misunderstood, however, the general moral significance of the State is needed to limit evil and to maintain good for everyone when it comes to social relations between people.1 The State, as a system of legal regulations that manages interpersonal relations in one community, exists in various forms, almost as many as mankind. Unfortunately, Christianity wasn't well understood from its very beginning in the country where it appeared -- the Roman Empire, because of suspicion that it's anti-state and anarchist, even thought that is far from the truth. It took some time until the State realized the meaning of St. Paul's words: "Let everyone put himself under the authority of the higher powers, because there is no power which is not of God, and all powers are ordered by God" (Rom 13:1), these words imply that Christians can be good citizens only if a common language is found. However, at certain times even after gaining its freedom the Church has borne a wreath of martyrdom because of State persecution. History shows us that the systems that fought against the Church, actually fought against God, and the one who fights against God is always defeated in the end. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Serbia, a developing country, energy consumption per capita is higher than in most other countries in the region. Implementation of energy management practices is therefore necessary to cut energy consumption and CO 2 emissions. This paper gives an insight into how energy management is implemented in Serbian manufacturing (focusing on food processing and manufacturing of non-metallic mineral products, defined as priority industrial sectors). No similar study for Serbian manufacturing has been published. The study was carried out using an on-line questionnaire based on the ISO 50001 requirements. Questions were grouped into 16 categories and presented according to the PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act) cycle. The proposed methodology has not been used by other researchers for similar problems. The survey was conducted in 52 organizations and lasted from May to December 2015. We found that the average level of requirements fulfillment in priority industrial sectors in Serbia is 59.05%. Full implementation was found in only 5.8% of participating organizations. Average implementation of the PLAN phase (establishing basics for energy management) is 61.87%, implementation of the DO phase (realization of energy management processes) is 59.98%, implementation of the CHECK phase (monitoring and measurement of energy performance) is 59.61%, and finally, implementation of the ACT phase (review and improvement of energy management) is only 35.34%. The study results offer scientific data for improving national policy and education on energy management in Serbia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in a school in a village in Vojvodina, Serbia, where teaching in Croatian has been introduced, this article analyses relationships maintained between Croatian minority activists, the teaching staff at the school, and representatives from Croatian state institutions who visited. This minority context is especially sensitive as, following the wars that accompanied the break-up of the Socialist Yugoslav state into primarily nationally defined states, Serbo-Croatian split into two mutually intelligible standards, Serbian and Croatian. The article examines the contexts of such visits, with a focus on what was at stake in the encounters and how different participants in minority politics manage various connections (veze) with Croatian state institutions. In particular, it describes how a hegemonic register consisting of tropes, or ideologemes, relating to domoljublje (patriotism) and caring for/preserving Croatian national identity featured in these interactions. This article makes the ethnographic argument that some activists primarily used this patriotic register non-referentially, its use indexing the pursuit of connections with Croatian state institutions, whilst other activists used the patriotic register referentially. Nevertheless, it is argued that when disputes occurred, “pro-national” activists used the enregistered tropes referentially, in so doing disrupting the networks of activists who used them in a primarily non-referential sense. Finally, the consequences and wider implications of this are explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the current article the author aims to answer four specific questions. (1) What would have happened if Austria and Serbia had not gone to war in July 1914, which implies an exercise in counterfactual history, and the study of the probable outcome if events had taken a different course? (2) What exactly was Austria’s war aim? (3) What precisely was Britain’s war aim? (4) What would have happened if Britain had stayed out of the continental war? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an analytical overview on the work of Dr. Archibald Reiss, PhD, "Hear the Serbs" in terms of pathology of state authorities between the two world wars. Dr. Reiss in this work indicates pathologies in organs of the Serbian state authorities: parliament, government and administrative bodies. He particularly remarks the appearance of politicization and participation of civil servants, careerism, and corruption at all levels of government and the appearance of alienation from citizens, criminal activities of civil servants and their incompetence to perform official duties. These pathological phenomena in power are now present in Serbia and other Balkan countries in spaces of the former Yugoslavia. Therefore, the indication of pathological phenomena in the government and Dr. Archibald Reiss messages, presented in the work "Hear the Serbs", are actual now, eighty-seven years after his death. The authors conclude that the government infected pathologies can not successfully fight crime in society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this piece, we develop a more complex picture of the East-West divisions that have characterized much analysis of the region since the crisis began. By examining how differently positioned actors have responded, the migration flows become a heuristic for other important but less visible processes in post-socialist state formation and Euro-integration. We use the complexity of Serbia’s reception as an empirical ground to create a new analytic framework that moves beyond over-simplified dichotomies. Doing this allows us to bring seemingly unrelated kinds of political action into the same frame to reveal an emerging trend in citizen and noncitizen political engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contributes to debates about the break-up of Yugoslavia by focusing on Serbia’s ‘anti-bureaucratic revolution’, a large protest wave that occurred in 1988. Unlike most discussions which focus on elite involvement, this article emphasises the wider cultural resonance of anti-bureaucratic populism. More generally, this article shows that populism can be strengthened if it is coupled with producerism, that is, a discourse that divides society into productive and parasitic groups. Around 800 political cartoons from three Serbian newspapers are analysed. The common theme that emerges is the opposition of the blue-collar worker to the parasitic political functionary. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the wake of the 2010 Belgrade Pride Parade, right-wing extremists portrayed the event as a threat to public morals, while liberals framed homophobia as a threat to democracy. While these moves managed to polarize and mobilize the public, the government didn’t heed their calls to adopt extraordinary measures. The Parade took place on 10 October and the extremists organized unchecked violent counter-demonstrations. By drawing on Securitization Theory, we triangulate content and discourse analysis to understand why these securitizing moves had a low success. Our analysis shows that although both moves followed the grammar of security, they were only partially embedded into the wider discursive context and were not enunciated by securitizing actors with strong positional power. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]