Can there be a Transition from Social Chaos
Can there be a Transition from Social Chaos

Author(s): Srećko Mihailović
Subject(s): Politics / Political Sciences, Political behavior, Politics and society, Transformation Period (1990 - 2010), Post-Communist Transformation
Published by: CEDET Centar za demokratsku tranziciju
Keywords: nationalism; democracy; anti-European orientation; modernity; passivity; political culture
Summary/Abstract: Political parties in Serbia generate, integrate and channel, to a great extent, the value and ideological potentials of the subjects/citizens of Serbia. Political parties colonize the political culture. The weak civil society is unable to confront such colonization. The limits of this kind of engagement of political parties are only the deepest layers of the value habitus. Nationalism and ideological orientations such as non-democratic, traditionalistic and anti-European views, are the key dimensions of an amorphous, and in reality social-national ideological syndrome, where nationalism and state socialism are the energizing potential. In politics, the Serbian Radical Party (SRS) and the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS), primarily generate, carry forward and strive to fulfill this syndrome. National openness, democratic orientation, European orientation, political and social activity and directed activism, are the key dimensions of the syndrome of modernity, which gathers, integrates and directs values and actions with such a background. In politics, the Democratic Party (DS), the G17 Plus political party and the Liberal-Democratic Party (LDP), with occasional participation from the Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS), support, carry and strive to realize this ideological concept, sometimes cooperating. Political players from both options lure their supporters and satisfy them: the former by promising a socio-national state, and the latter with the charms of Europe and the omnipotent market. The common feature of both sides is the tendency towards creating and maintaining passive supporters - subjects - active only when their vote is required. In this context, parties promote their ideological baits as global (national, state) interests. However, the question is whether it is at all possible to perceive global interests in a different way, if citizens and the public exist (more or less) only at the level of a theoretical construct.

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