Original scientific paper
RESEARCH INTO POLITICAL BEHAVIOUR AND SOCIAL CHANGES – COULD THE EVENTS OF 1990 HAVE BEEN PREDICTED?
Ivan Šiber
; Faculty of Political Science, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
Did the social changes of 1989/90, both on the territory of the former Yugoslavia and the entire Eastern Europe, surprise political analysts? Or did the research in social sciences, particularly political science, sociology, and psychology, perhaps supply enough material pointing to the possible changes as well as to the course they were going to take? In this work, the author gives a critical review of his studies conducted and published between 1980 and 1990 and, by hindsight, shows their relevance for understanding the recent radical and dramatic changes. Inevitably, the conclusion is that the author’s research had pointed to the existence of all psychological conditions necessary for the events that followed. The long crisis, first economic and later political, gave rise to social unrest which soon turned into general agitation. The powerful presence of the authoritarian structure of personality in these territories, the enduring xenophobia which, in combination with the appropriate ideological manipulation, easily leads to open inter-ethnic conflicts, the lack of both an adequate political culture and the democratic mechanisms of overcoming conflicts, within the context of decrepitude of an ideological project in a multiethnic community rife with historical conflicts, inevitably led into open conflicts.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
27487
URI
Publication date:
23.5.2000.
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