The Influence of Primordial Social Forms on Contemporary Interpretations of Democracy in the Western Balkans

Abstract

The author examines the democratic potential of primordial social forms - as forms of resistance from postcolonial and subaltern studies - to understand contemporary political life in the post-Yugoslav region. The premise of the research is that the representative democratic system is not a universally acceptable model, and that it is a form of Western (political and epistemological) domination of the center over the periphery. Following this premise, the author asks whether, and to what extent is the standard Western model of representative democracy transferable to Western Balkan societies with their own specific political traditions and, consequently, to what extent these political traditions affect the "imported" Western democratic model. The main thesis of the article is that the historical forms of social practices and relationships that are authentic to this area represent the possibility of reinterpretation of the democratic model, including the opportunity of epistemological emancipation. For this purpose, the (historical) parish, the community of natural faith in Slovenia and the Bosnian church are analysed as primordial forms in the Western Balkans.