This thesis focuses on ombudsman institutions in order to explore public accountability in post-transition Serbia. Despite the revived interest of academics and policy-makers in the acknowledgement and assumption of responsibility by state authorities in new democracies, accountability remains a vague concept as a consequence of the prevalence of normativism and determinism in the relevant literature and a general lack of empirical research. Public accountability is therefore operationalised in this research project as a process of successive phases in which accounting actors such as ombudsman institutions undertake the role of resolvers of disputes between citizens and state authorities. This thesis examines the involvement of ombudsman institutions in the above process by looking at two interrelated factors that impact upon their effectiveness as accounting actors: institutional design and networking. Based on document analysis of annual reports and interviews with various stakeholders in Serbia my research shows that accounting agencies such as ombudsman institutions compensate for their institutional deficiencies by using resources which they exchange while interacting with other state and social actors. In particular, their noninstitutionalised interactions with civil society organisations and the media arguably have the potential to improve the efficiency of triadic dispute resolution through informality. In short, this thesis looks at the institutional design of eleven ombudsman offices in Serbia at the national, regional and local levels and employs network theory in order to examine the intensity and content of their interactions with state and social accounting actors. By exploring the dynamics of these interactions, this thesis illuminates the context in which state authorities and public officials under scrutiny account for their decisions or actions.

One of the essential characteristics of post-MiloSevic public space in Serbia is that the main actors are rethinking political identities and negotiating their meanings. The existing literature shows that representations of Serbian identity within the political discourses of 'First' and 'Other' Serbia are marked by extensive and frequent contestation. In these early years of consolidation of Serbian democracy there is no political, social and cultural consensus on key questions such as the post-Yugoslav conflicts and war crimes, relations with the European Union and the role of the Serbian Orthodox Church in politics. This research draws support from IR constructivist literature on the role of difference in identity formation. It follows Hansen's approach in using the techniques of discourse analysis to denaturalise categories such as 'Us' and 'Them' by exposing them as the products of particular discourses. This research therefore examines the evolution of 'First' and 'Other' Serbia as political and societal discourses and explores how discursive strategies of Othering and Self-referencing are framed in the public sphere, paying special attention to the construction of representations of 'Europe' and 'Kosovo'. I argue that the European Other is an essential part of the construction of the Serbian Self. This work, then, aims to identify the main issues which are raised in construction of the difference from the European Other and show how the alternative to Europe is constructed. More specifically, it explores the way in which images of othering are framed within the ongoing 'Missionary Intelligentsia' debate which was initiated in 2003 in Vreme, a weekly magazine, and how this discussion contributed to further political polarisation in Serbia. The questions this thesis specifically addresses are: what it means to be a 'Serb' and/or 'European', or to be labelled as' anti-Serbian'; and how the concepts of 'traitor' and 'patriot' are constructed within the 'First' and 'Other' Serbia discourses on identity.

This thesis examines a set of intentional transformations of the government of society and individuals in the globalising (‘Europeanising’) and neoliberalising Serbia in 2010–11. It asks two closely related kinds of question about these ‘reforms’ – first, what reform is really there, of what depth, and second, whose reform is it, in and against whose interests? This inquiry strives to identify some of the dominant transformational tendencies and resistances to these, and to relate these governmental projects and their actual achievements to the conflicted interests and identities in Serbian society that undergoes profound restructuring in the context of a prolonged economic decline and political crisis. Based on ethnographic engagements with various kinds of nongovernmental organisations, social movements and public institutions, the reforms are traced at the interface of the ‘state’ and ‘civil society’ so as to examine how their mutual relations are being reimagined and boundaries redrawn. Civil society is conceptualised, building on anthropological and Gramscian approaches, as a set of ideas and practices that continually reconstitute and mediate the relationships of ‘state,’ ‘society’ and ‘economy,’ and which reproduce as well as challenge domination by consent – cultural and ideological hegemony. While a particular liberal understanding of civil society has become hegemonic in Serbia, in social reality there is a plurality of ‘civil societies’ – scenes of associational practice that articulate diverse visions of a legitimate social order and perceive each other as antagonists rather than parts of a single harmonious civil society. The discourses and practices of three such scenes – liberal, nationalist and post-Yugoslav – and their relationships to the perspectives and interests of various social groups are examined in order to identify some of the key moments of social antagonism about reform in contemporary Serbia.