From Citizen Activists to Representatives: Shifting Roles of Political Actors in Partly Free Serbia

Bottom-up citizens' mobilizations in the Western Balkans in the past couple of years vary but all of them were both mobilizations against post-democratic condition and against non-democratic regression of these new democracies and, ultimately, against normalization of authoritarianism. This paper addresses the interconnectedness of several processes that are taking place in Serbia in the last couple of years. Firstly, there is unquestionable democratic delegitimization of the elections - in the period of transition to liberal democracy fetishized as the core element of democracy - as especially since 2012 elections have been gradually subverted into a technique abused by the ruling party and its leader in order to shrink effective political pluralism. Secondly, there has been continuous process of delegitimization of the political parties as unsuccessful mediators between various social classes, economic interests and political conflicts, on one hand, and the state on the other. Instead, political party, when in government, is perceived as either a national employment agency or a protection racket. The third and most interesting process that this paper will highlight concerns intensification of the role of an activist citizen as the unelected representative in the making as well as the rising role of social movements as new political actors that guide democratization efforts. Through a consideration and a comparison of the three largest protests movements that emerged recently - “Let's not drown Belgrade/We won’t give Belgrade away” (Ne Da(vi)mo Beograd - 2016), “Against Dictatorship” (2017), and ongoing “One of the 5 million” (2018/2019) - all of them erupting as a reaction to the non-democratic character of elections and authoritarian decision-making processes as well as mistrust in the political elites and the degenerated representative system, it will be questioned to what extent a new understanding of political representation is emerging among activists of civic initiatives and social movements. The notion of representation with constitutive function as theorized by Ernesto Laclau will be juxtaposed to the activists' self-representation, processes of articulation of social demands and understanding of the role of political representation. Since Ne Da(vi)mo Beograd activists participated at the elections for the Belgrade City Assembly in 2018 - although unsuccessfully as they failed to meet the census needed to win seats at the assembly - and are currently in the process of building of an alliance with various local civic groups throughout Serbia, the paper will be focusing mostly on the transitional nature of their citizen engagement.