Hrvatska Druga republika i njezine državotvorne kušnje
Croatia's second Republic and its state-building Trials

Summary/Abstract: The Croatian Second Republic (1990-2000) was a venue for a contradictory process of the emergence of the Croatian sovereign state. Although the Constitution of the Second Republic represented the liberal-democratic normative grounds for the Croatian political system, the sovereignty project faced many challenges. These trials stemmed from the dual character of HDZ’s political program and operation and the actions of its leader. HDZ was at the same time building the Croatian state on a national program of legal/political sovereignty, and dismantling it on the nationalist program of national (ethnic) sovereignty. Thus, during that period, Croatia was constituted as a predominantly authoritarian state, with rudimentary democratic and markedly totalitarian features. The author concludes that the Second Republic managed to resist the onslaught of the totalitarian project thanks to the Constitution, the united political opposition (“to the defense of the Republic”), and the democratic public opinion. However, the new ruling party coalition (since 3 January 2000), in the circumstances of the polarised pluralism, altered the Constitution without having given it sufficient thought and thus paved the way for a precarious era that might be termed the Third Republic.

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