Defending Democracy Through Large Scale Institutional Work – From an Illustration to a Research Agenda

Since late 2024, numerous protests, sit-ins and blockades have been happening all throughout Serbia, triggered by 16 people dying after a concrete canopy of a recently renovated train station collapsed on them on 1 November 2024 in Novi Sad (2nd largest city in Serbia). Led by students, the movement has both shaken the regime of the current president Aleksandar Vučić and mobilised society to an unexpected and thus far unprecedented level. While such phenomena have been studied from a micro level perspective, focusing on the dynamics of social movements, their sustainability and impact, in this paper, I argue that these activities can also be seen through a meso level lens. Specifically, I will explain how they can be seen as institutional work of creating, maintaining or disrupting institutions, albeit on a large scale, involving hundreds of thousands of people, happening at multiple locations (across Serbia and abroad), and unfolding over an extended period of time. I will provide examples of how the movement works on (1) creating new institutions (e.g. through student and citizen “plenums”), (2) maintaining the democratic institutions in existence (e.g. by demanding that the de jure separation of powers becomes a de facto one), and (3) in various ways disrupting work of institutions deemed corrupt (e.g. blocking offices of the public prosecutor offices), in particular focusing on regulative, normative and cultural cognitive aspects of these institutions. The Serbian case will provide an illustration of how an institutionalist perspective can be utilized for understanding ongoing processes of democratization or democratic backsliding around the world.