Using Gene Sharp’s guidelines for nonviolent action and Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way’s four arenas of contestation (electoral, legislative, judiciary, and the media) that allow opposition forces to challenge, weaken, or defeat competitive authoritarian regimes, this study provides a functionalist analysis of Serbia’s Otpor movement. Serbia under Milošević was a particular type of hybrid regime called competitive authoritarianism, a regime where the rules of a fully democratically integrated government are violated so often and to such extent that competitive authoritarian incumbents fall short of the bare minimum standards of conventional democracy, bordering the line of authoritarian dictators. Combining Sharp, Levitsky, and Way’s functionalist perspective on social movements with those of sociologists Charles Tilly and Lesley Wood and Charles Stewart’s functional approach to the rhetoric of social movements, this study outlines Otpor’s strategies and analyzes them in hopes of outlining a blueprint for future social movements with similar political opportunities available.

Using Gene Sharp’s guidelines for nonviolent action and Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way’s four arenas of contestation (electoral, legislative, judiciary, and the media) that allow opposition forces to challenge, weaken, or defeat competitive authoritarian regimes, this study provides a functionalist analysis of Serbia’s Otpor movement. Serbia under Milošević was a particular type of hybrid regime called competitive authoritarianism, a regime where the rules of a fully democratically integrated government are violated so often and to such extent that competitive authoritarian incumbents fall short of the bare minimum standards of conventional democracy, bordering the line of authoritarian dictators. Combining Sharp, Levitsky, and Way’s functionalist perspective on social movements with those of sociologists Charles Tilly and Lesley Wood and Charles Stewart’s functional approach to the rhetoric of social movements, this study outlines Otpor’s strategies and analyzes them in hopes of outlining a blueprint for future social movements with similar political opportunities available.

In the spring of 1999 NATO started the air campaign Operation Allied Force against the Serb president Slobodan Milošević’s dictatorship. Operation Allied Force unfolded during a 78-day long campaign in former Yugoslavia. The aim of the operation was to stop the ethnic cleansing of Kosovar Albanians in the Serb province Kosovo. The operation, that initially was supposed to be over in a week, continued for almost three months. Why did the campaign take such a long time compared to what was predicted? The aim of this study was to analyze Operation Allied Force from a time perspective to be able to tell why the operation became so protracted. The analyze was made by consuming two of the best well-known air power theories written by Robert A. Pape and John A. Warden. The result showed that there were several different factors that contributed to the protracted process. Too strict rules of engagement, few targets, lack of resources and the lack of a unified strategy inside NATO are believed to be the main factors that caused the lengthy process.

This diploma thesis deals with the comparison of the political regimes of Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia and Franjo Tudjman in Croatia in the years 1991 - 1997 from the point of view of the theory of authoritarian regimes. The subject of the research was to determine the similarities and differences that the regimes showed in a given period. In the beginning of the work, the author approaches the theoretical core of the concepts of authoritarian regimes by Juan J. Linz and the competitive authoritarianism of Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way. The analytical part of the work consists of a synchronous dual-case study of Serbia and Croatia focused on the main aspects of authoritarian regimes and their subsequent comparison. The output of the thesis consists in a critical analysis of the features of both examined regimes at the level of limited political pluralism, the relationship between mentality and ideology and depoliticization versus mobilization and application of theories of authoritarian regimes to Serbia and Croatia in a given period. An important finding was that although the countries showed many similar features, the main differences were in the character of Slobodan Milosevic and Franjo Tudjman. The work concludes that Serbia and Croatia can be included in hybrid semi-competitive...

The diploma thesis will analyse the activities of the Radical Party of Serbia (SRS) in the period following the fall of Slobodan Milosević on October 5, 2000 as a result of mass protests till the parliamentary elections in 2003, when the party won the most seats in the Serbian parliament. The victory of the SRS did not become an isolated incident, but, as it turned out later, represented the beginning of a new trend in Serbian politics: the consolidation, reformatting and return of nationalist forces, which later adopted pro-European rhetoric. The aim of the thesis is, first of all, to determine the reasons and premises of the return, secondly to describe the communication strategy of the SRS in the years 2000-2003, which allowed the party to elaborate an effective electoral message under severely unfavourable conditions. To achieve these aims, the following questions will be examined in particular: 1. Whether the renaissance of the Serbian Radical Party's influence does not reflect the fact that the fall of Milosević's administration did not mean a major turning point in Serbia's political development 2. How broad was the support of the nationalist program in Serbian society during the rule of Milosević and after his fall. 3. To what extent was the SRS ready to take on the role of leader of the...

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