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.

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...