From Shallow Democratization to Mobilization: The Cases of the “Bosnian Spring” and the “Citizens for Macedonia”
From Shallow Democratization to Mobilization: The Cases of the “Bosnian Spring” and the “Citizens for Macedonia”

Summary/Abstract: Recent anti-governmental social movements in countries of former Yugoslavia have awakened the spirit of contention which had been dormant for almost two decades. The overwhelming economic deprivation, accompanied by the massive violations of basic human rights of the citizens, urged the challengers to take the streets. This paper explores the processes of democratization in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Macedonia as background triggering factors for the initiation of the “Citizens for Macedonia” movement in the Republic of Macedonia, and the “Bosnian Spring” movement in Bosnia and Herzegovina. I argue that both societies have been only formally democratized, substantially lacking democratic values and principles. Departing from these reflections, I differentiate in this study between deep and shallow democracy, as defined by Meighan (2001, p. 297). The introduction of the text outlines the basic characteristics of both transitional societies, as well as the main characteristics of the two analyzed social movements. Furthermore, the theoretical framework tries to bridge two strands of literature – the literature on social movements and the one on democratization, mostly following theoretical recommendations by della Porta (2014). The third part of the text underlines the data collection process and the methodological approach. The central part of this work analyzes the collected data, based dominantly on in-depth interviews in Macedonia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. The brief conclusion to the text aims at highlighting three key issues: the possible influence of the “democratization from above”, the role of the shallow democratization as a triggering factor for the two social movements, as well as possibilities for further mobilization.

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