Jessica Hendrick welcomes Luka Filipović and Igor Bandović to discuss Serbia’s student-led protests and the limits of democracy promotion in the Western Balkans.
This week on The Neighborhood, Jessica Hendrick is joined by Luka Filipović, research associate at the Institute for Contemporary History in Belgrade and co-author of the Re-Engage paper on Serbia, and Igor Bandović, director of the Belgrade Centre for Security Policy. Together they unpack how a deadly infrastructure collapse in Novi Sad ignited the country’s largest protest movement in decades, why horizontal trust in society is rising while vertical trust in institutions has collapsed, and what Serbia’s experience reveals about hybrid governance, geopolitical balancing, and Europe’s approach to enlargement.
How has the gap between informal social solidarity and institutional legitimacy sustained Serbia’s hybrid regime? Why might the student movement’s leaderless strength ultimately limit its ability to deliver institutional change? What does “geopolitical shopping” tell us about Belgrade’s dealings with Brussels, Moscow, Beijing and Washington? And as debate intensifies over possible snap elections, what would it take for the ballot box to become a genuine pathway out of crisis rather than another episode within it?
","author_name":"ECFR"}