Serbia’s present future

The student protests in Serbia have persisted for seven months, yielding widespread and diverse effects. All state universities are still blocked and primary and secondary school teachers ceased work from January to April 2025. Lawyers went on strike throughout the whole of February, while farmers and university professors have also voiced their support. Roads have been blocked and students have organized marches not only across many parts of the country but also to EU institutions in Brussels and Strasbourg. Notably, national minorities reported feeling equal to Serbian citizens for the first time.

However, the most significant outcome of the student protests has been the substantial delegitimization of Aleksandar Vučić’s populist Serbian Progressive Party (SPP) government. After half a year of struggles, it has become clear that the government’s legitimacy is not only questionable but non-existent.

Yet the SPP remains in power and appears to be growing more repressive. The government has illegally cut the salaries of university professors who support the students. Without evidence, it has accused and imprisoned six opposition activists, including students. At the largest peaceful protest held in Belgrade on 15 March, the government used a non-lethal weapon, the ‘sound cannon’, against them.

Oppression is known to increase proportionally with declining legitimacy, but the question of what it means to govern without legitimacy remains unaddressed. The problem that this question raises is the reality of power without legitimacy – the violence under which all institutions of democratic society and political communities as we know them are currently being dismantled.

University of Belgrade Faculty of Philosophy. Image: Александр Сигачёв / Wikimedia Commons

This is unimaginable from a civic perspective, since power without legitimacy cannot truly be power. It can only be met with legal-metaphorical insults such as ‘criminal government’, ‘captured state’ or ‘mafia state’, in the hope that these terms will mobilize resistance to the new state of affairs.

Disjunctive synthesis

In addition to mass protests, one of the regular actions taken by the rebellious students and citizens continues to be the honouring of the deceased with a sixteen-minute silence (representing the 16 victims of the canopy collapse) in public places, accompanied by road blockades. Symbolically, this action illustrates one of the protest’s slogans: ‘Everything must stop.’ Everything must stop until responsibility for the deaths is determined, or, as the students’ initial demands stated, until institutions start doing their job. This primarily referred to the public prosecutor’s office, from which an independent investigation into the canopy collapse was demanded.

It is widely known that the public prosecutor in Serbia cannot be independent because of the undermining of institutions that has been ongoing since the SPP came to power. If we add the fact that the canopy collapse occurred at the recently reconstructed railway station, part of a broader public and state project to renovate the railway network, we have a situation where the students’ demands are impossible to fulfil, since the government would have to arrest itself.

From the beginning, the paradoxical nature of the student demands was viewed as a tactic – a call for people working within institutions to join the students and citizens in protests and to liberate the prosecutor’s office as a ‘captured institution’. But despite the massiveness of the protests, the mobilization of employees didn’t happen. Students therefore came forward with a new demand: the calling of snap parliamentary elections. This government must be overthrown if we want free and independent institutions.

It is widely accepted that the tragedy was not an accident. While ‘corruption kills’ was a prominent protest slogan, these protests aren’t solely about eradicating corruption from institutions; from the outset, they also put forward an affirmative proposal for institutions. It’s no secret that the Serbian government’s criminal nature stems from widespread individual corruption and mass clientelism, which the ruling party uses to control public servants. This corruption is a key reason why students’ calls for a general strike have not been effective.

Moreover, the anti-corruption narrative is more characteristic of the political opposition than of the students, whose statements are consistently filled with demands for justice, solidarity, security and the rule of law. While the opposition often highlights its role in initiating the initial protests and the act of commemorating the dead, the sheer scale of the tragedy was the primary driver of the protests’ widespread participation.

Our impression is that the metaphorical nature of death has galvanized and mobilized people. This phenomenon occurred for the second time within in a short historical and political interval. Two years before, a massacre at a Belgrade elementary school resulted in one student killing ten students and one adult. The very next day, another mass murder occurred in two towns close to Belgrade.

Death and accidents can be considered actants for social and political events. The commemorative aspect of Serbian protests is their defining characteristic. Although initially triggered by violence against students, the student blockades concurrently served as a solemn tribute to the deceased.

It would be impossible to analyse this situation without acknowledging the role of death and suffering, as it also reveals a global phenomenon: irresponsible governance and the complete absence of the legal security, which has vanished with widespread deregulation and the ‘criminalization’ of political power. In essence, while death and tragedies indeed prompted a massive turnout, the organizational impetus for these political events stems from the student-led blockades of universities.

Unlike the usual and structural practice of the political opposition, the students initially did not call for a change of regime, but rather a change of the system. Now, however, they are indeed demanding regime change, also stipulating that the opposition should not participate in the list they would support.

Consequently, both protest movement and political opposition are seeking the same thing, but are not doing so collaboratively. How did such a mutual ‘miss’ come about, given the widespread impression that these protests forged a broad alliance among various social and political actors? One dimension of this problem is the government’s long-standing discrediting of the opposition, leading to citizens’ reluctance to accept it for fear of being defamed themselves. It was safer to claim that civic activism had nothing to do with politics – a stance that, even before these protests, was a prerequisite for massive protests.

However, this has led to the problem of depoliticization. One can still hear the statement, ‘this is not politics’, a phrase first used by students’ parents in numerous civil protests. But it has also led to the problem of ‘omnipoliticization’, claiming ‘everything is politics’. The latter stance undermines the organizational capacity and scope for political negotiation necessary for forging alliances for government change. This was the primary reason for students to distance themselves from any other organization, be it opposition parties, civil society organizations or activist groups.

Today we have a more politically articulated response from students regarding their distance from opposition parties. Specifically, students are insisting on an electoral list that excludes prominent opposition politicians. They claim that the opposition has failed to agree upon and unite behind a single list capable of overthrowing the current government, in a way that inspires confidence across the nation.

In addition to reflecting the global trend of political party crises, this also speaks to the students’ subjectivization. The opposition failed in what the students consider their greatest success: their unity. For them, the principal thing is being together, making decisions transparently through discussions at the plenums of their blockades. As an artist and professor noted, the students steadfastly adhere to the social contract they established for themselves. This has surprised everyone and shattered stereotypes about a self-referential, self-contained digital generation.

Despite being the first generation born with digital technologies, personal relationships are paramount to the students.1 They strongly value solidarity with diverse social groups and the absence of hierarchy, which explains the lack of leaders or internal competition: they respect everyone’s individuality and authenticity. The research concludes that their interaction with older generations will be crucial in the future.

In a sense, this is precisely what is unfolding in Serbia today. Through their actions and an almost obstinate persistence in their demands, they have elicited forms of solidarity and support that no one could have anticipated. At one point, the students called upon citizens to organize themselves into assemblies, mirroring the plenum model, thereby ensuring everyone’s involvement in decision-making on state and national issues. Since that moment, assemblies have been accompanied by blockades and protests, which intensify the pressure on the current government.

However, it’s important to note that support and solidarity manifest much more on an emotional (affective) plane than on a political organizing and decision-making plane. Citizens react very emotionally to students, embracing them and weeping, perceiving them as their children and liberators, and themselves as parents rather than as active citizens.

While the emotional plane is significant and has its affirmative effects, it also presents drawbacks, particularly when it comes to building alliances. Beyond declarative support and commemorative gatherings, employees in public institutions have not organized themselves. The impression is that emotional involvement – a protective concern for students as young people, as children – prevails over active participation in a common struggle. In other words, parents are not taking more decisive steps, and it sometimes appears as if they are hiding behind their children.

It is widely believed that broader political organizing must involve negotiations with opposition parties, and many hope that some form of cooperation will be achieved. However, despite supporting students, the opposition is still not taking steps to establish political cooperation with them. Even the students’ demand for snap parliamentary elections has not prompted the opposition to be more decisive and join the pressure on the government by leaving parliament.

In early June 2025, regular elections took place in two smaller Serbian cities. In one of them, the entire opposition, at the invitation of students, united on a single electoral list. This unparalleled unity, backed by student support, led many to anticipate their victory. However, the SPP government retained power by a narrow margin, through under hand tactics including blackmail of public servants, ‘capillary mobilization’ (party members must ensure support among their families), vote buying and offering gifts to pensioners and the poor, along with irregularities in voter lists. Despite this, many within the protest movement view the election as a success and a test for the snap parliamentary elections they are demanding for.

It is certain that the student blockades and protests have already caused the government to lose the support it previously enjoyed. Specifically, processes of emotional and symbolic support for students have led to a loss of government legitimacy. From the perspective of political organizing, this is a novelty. The term ‘disjunctive synthesis’, which implies fragmentation and the production of a multitude of differences, with the aim of reconnecting divided components into new combinations and understandings in novel ways, captures this feature of the protest accurately.

These protests represent a movement of and support for the youth, symbolizing a generational shift and national renewal. For the first time in many years, people in Serbia are seeing a future for themselves and their children within it. Given the global context of increasing threats to democracy from illiberal regimes and wars, what is particularly interesting is that this future is still envisioned as democratic. However, this vision is not immune to global shifts, in which that democratic values are now perceived as national. This is a new form of sovereignty but also of isolationism, and one that deviates from the previous understanding of democratic values as universal.

Struggle on a symbolic plane

During their protests and arduous long marches, covering hundreds of kilometres across nearly all of Serbia – to such an extent that at one point their cities of origin became unclear – the students raised state flags, sang the national anthem, and carried copies of the constitution with them.

The students embraced national symbols, reclaiming them for themselves and effectively wresting them from the government. It was they and not the current regime who organized the true celebration of Statehood Day with a protest in Kragujevac, Serbia’s first capital. In this context, the government’s demagoguery – which portrays itself as the defender of Serbian, state and national interests – remains ineffective. By taking over these symbols, the students are, in a sense, appropriating the very state they aim to save from its corrupt government.

The student protests in Serbia also garnered support from many across the republics of the former Yugoslavia, who believed that these protests could foster a different Serbia – one that is non-hegemonic and peaceful. Interestingly, none of them refers to Yugoslavia, the emancipatory socialist project that ended with bloody wars largely led and encouraged by Serbia. Therefore, it is almost unbelievable that today, while supporting the students, Croats refer to them as ‘our Serbs’, while Bosniaks living in Serbia – who were among the greatest victims in the wars – are, for the first time, being regarded as equal citizens.

A recent scene disarmed us all. A blockade of the state television was organized during the Easter holidays. To maintain the blockade while allowing students of the majority Orthodox faith to celebrate Easter with their families, they were replaced by Bosniak students from Novi Pazar. And that wasn’t all: on that occasion, a Serbian military veteran from the 1990s war greeted the blockade assembly with the words ‘Salam alaikum’, assuring the parents of the Bosniak students that they would protect them because all the students were ‘their children’.

Certainly, something is shifting regarding nationalism, a force perpetuated by all current post-Yugoslav regimes. It appears that the citizens of these countries feel less and less threatened, even when students in Serbia, during their marches, carry not only state flags but also Orthodox icons, crosses and other symbols under which Serbia fought wars in the 1990s.

Nevertheless, citizens who were active in anti-war and peace-building policies, still express concern. This symbolism, they fear, suggests that the guiding principle of ‘truth, responsibility and reconciliation’ may never truly take root. Indeed, the students feel that confronting the wartime past is too great burden for them, considering they were not even born during the 1990s. Evidently, their primary concern is the present. Thus, when they assert their respect for the constitution, they also affirm their respect for its preamble, which claims that Kosovo is an inalienable part of Serbia.

These are all questions and problems for which solutions will have to be sought – with more confidence than the trauma-laden past was able to muster. The war in Kosovo, the mass casualties and committed crimes, and especially the Albanian struggle for self-determination and independence are profound political issues of the present future. It is to be hoped that the students will opt for policies that will not divide them until they achieve their goal. This stance is supported by the conservative-nationalist opposition public opinion, which asserts that Vučić betrayed Kosovo and capitulated to its independence – a sentiment these young people must now contend with.

It was surprising that, amidst an atmosphere of profound mistrust toward the international order, students organized a bicycle tour to Strasbourg, followed by a marathon to Brussels, to present their perspective on the situation in Serbia to EU institutions. The prevailing thinking among Serbian citizens is that the EU is uninterested in their struggles against the regime, as well as in the corruption in the country. This sense of disappointment is further reinforced by the recent insistence of leading EU member states’ agreement with the current regime over the exploitation of rare raw materials in Serbia, primarily lithium. This issue had, in previous years, already triggered numerous citizen protests.

Political articulation

The crisis of representation, characterized by widespread mistrust in political parties, manifested in Serbia as demand for a systemic change. However, it often become a polemical stance and an argument that sowed discord among supporters of the opposition. Given that opposition to the regime extends beyond merely party-organized citizens, and that civil society organizations are more than just GONGO and PANGO,2 it is imperative to reconsider the notion of political articulation.

Neither the criminalization of the government nor the political articulation solely by parties offers an adequate solution to the crisis and the prevailing situation, which is still largely dictated by those holding a monopoly on violence and employment. The students’ decision to demand snap parliamentary elections, coupled with their intention to form their own electoral list, is burdened by a form of academic intellectualism. It seems it cannot adequately respond to the demands of ‘political veridiction’ – that is, discerning the political truth of our current situation.

In this sense, the intention to form ‘their own list’ appears to be more a symptom than a conscious political decision or form of political articulation, because they seem unaware of the political function and role of university autonomy. This itself is a political decision, fundamentally defined by politics. Trust in this autonomy has, once again, rallied the community on a scale (both symbolic and moral) that the regime can no longer dream of achieving.

A political articulation that embraces political intellectuality, in which the university does not necessarily participate in party formation, would offer a way out of the trap they fell into – a trap created by the crisis of representation and distrust in the representative ‘system’ of politics. An awareness of the underlying problem should replace the unconscious manifestation of symptoms that merely grazed the surface of the issue. It should highlight the desire for change and the vision of a new political community – one that is ‘truly’ based on democracy and the rule of law.

This ‘truthfulness’ or authenticity represents not merely a new attempt, but a renewed effort to form a political community. It is a form of political articulation that is already underway; it simply requires a bit more courage to resist entrenched habits of thought, which are most easily imposed when the subject is polite and obedient.