Abstract

Although former Yugoslavia constituted what was widely held to be the most "promising" communist country in terms of potentials for economic reform and political democratization, Serbia remained the only East European country in which the former communist elite managed to defeat its opponents in a series of elections and preserve important elements of institutional and ideological continuity with the old system. Moreover, its regime played a conspicuous role in Yugoslavia's violent collapse. In the specialist literature, the "Serbian exceptionalism" thesis has been elaborated in a number of forms. These are critically reviewed in the first part of the paper, classifying the paradigms according to whether they emphasize: 1) Serbian traditionalist, authoritarian, and collectivist political culture, 2) the affinity between traditional Serbian national populism, Russophile anti-Westernism, and communism, 3) the exclusivist and assimilating character of Serbian nationalism, or 4) the appeals of the contemporary Serbian political elite led by S. Milosevic. In the second part of the paper an alternative explanation is presented that seeks to be both interpretively adequate and causally plausible. It rests on five basic factors: 1) historical legacy ; 2) institutional analysis ; 3) ideology ; 4) leadership and social base ; and 5) the role of the Diaspora.. Iako se pre 1990. smatralo da bivsa Jugoslavija medju svim komunistickim zemljama ima najbolje potencijale za ekonomsku reformu i politicku demokratizaciju, Srbija je ostala jedina istocnoevropska zemlja u kojoj je nekadasnjoj komunistickoj eliti poslo za rukom da porazi svoje protivnike u nekoliko uzastopnih izbornih nadmetanja i da ocuva znacajne elemente institucionalnog i ideoloskog kontinuiteta sa starim sistemom. Stavise, taj je rezim igrao krupnu ulogu u nasilnom raspadu SFRJ. U specijalistickoj literaturi, teza o "srpskoj izuzetnosti" razvijana je u razlicitim formama, cijem kritickom razmatranju je posvecen prvi deo rada. Identifikovano je nekoliko paradigmi, u zavisnosti od toga da li osnovni naglasak stavljaju na: 1) tradicionalisticku, autoritarnu i kolektivisticku politicku kulturu Srba, 2) afinitet izmedju tradicionalnog srpskog nacionalnog populizma, rusofilskog antizapadnjastva i komunizma, 3) ekskluzivisticku i asimilacionisticku prirodu srpskog nacionalizma, ili pak 4) odlike savremene srpske politicke elite na celu sa S. Milosevicem. U drugom delu rada izlozio je alternativno objasnjenje, ciji su glavni oslonci: 1) istorijsko nasledje, 2) institucionalna analiza, 3) ideologija, 4) osobine vodja i drustvena baza i 5) uloga dijaspore..