Neoinstitutional Analysis of the Processes of Regionalisation and Decentralisation in Serbia – the Case of Vojvodina

The aim of the paper is to analyze the impact of institutional legacy on the strategies of political and non-political actors (at the state and regional level) involved in a process of regionalization and decentralization in Serbia. The main focus is on the province of Vojvodina and the debate on its status which has started along with the democratization process in 2000. I will try to reconstruct the role of different institutional settings that are characteristic for given regimes (totalitarianism, authoritarianism, democracy) in shaping of regional identity in Vojvodina. Moreover, I examine the phenomena of unintended consequences related to the functioning of state and local institutions in Serbia. In order to explain the strategies of main actors and their connection to the institutional ambiguity that occurred during the communist era and was further strengthened by the collapse of Yugoslavia, Milosevic’s rule and democratization process, the neoinstitutional approach is applied together with the theory of gradual institutional change (Thelen/Mahoney 2009).