Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.20901/pp.15.1.01
At the crossroads of nation and market: Serbia's postcommunist transition in a comparative and historical perspective
Marko Žilović
orcid.org/0000-0003-1464-4109
; University of Belgrade - Faculty of Political Science
*
* Corresponding author.
Abstract
In the article post-communist economic and political transition of Serbia is analyzed within and in interaction with the transition trajectories of the wider postcommunist region. The article provides a focused overview of the recent literature on the characteristics and variations of capitalism in post-communist Europe, followed by an application of this theoretical and comparative framework to the case study of Serbia. The main thesis is that the trajectory and outcome of Serbia’s transition were largely determined by the country falling behind in the regional race to attract foreign capital in the 1990s. Limiting the country’s long-term attractiveness for foreign investment, the first transitional decade shaped the economic and political choices available to subsequent Serbian governments. By making it impossible to find answers to the problem of mass unemployment, the modest inflow of foreign capital made it difficult to consolidate democracy in the first decade of the 2000s. Only in the last decade, in partially changed international circumstances, Serbia found a way to attract more foreign capital through specialization in labor-intensive, export-oriented industries with low added value. This model of development, although suboptimal in the long term, solved the problem of mass unemployment, thus helping legitimize authoritarian rule of Aleksandar Vučić.
Keywords
capitalism; FDI; unemployment; democracy; authoritarianism
Hrčak ID:
332988
URI
Publication date:
30.6.2025.
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