Twenty years after the epoch-making change in 1989, which affected the post-Yugoslavian space in a way entirely different from other former “real-socialist” European countries, this study is an effort toward an analytical view on the past two decades of development of civil society in the western Balkans. The development there does not correspond to the theoretical outlines of the democratic transition or transformation. The primary reason lies in the fact that in socialist Yugoslavia, like in other societies of the “real socialism” in the East, the relation between state and society substantially differed from this relation in free capitalist societies. This difference in the relation between state and society, as the author of this study Srđan Dvornik points out, had a decisive impact on the emerging civil societies. The study shows: Without civic engagement, there will be no changes, and the engagement of seemingly marginal actors achieves more than would be expected on the basis of their “systemic” place.

Publication series on democracy, Volume 15:
Actors without Society - The role of civil actors in the postcommunist transformation
A study by Srđan Dvornik
Edited by the Heinrich Böll Foundation
Berlin, Nov. 2009, 156 pages
ISBN 978-3-86928-016-5

Copies can be ordered from:
Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung
Schumannstr. 8
10117 Berlin
Tel. 030-285340
Fax: 030-28534109
E-mail: info@boell.de

About the author:
Srđan Dvornik, born in 1953, is freelance researcher, consultant and translator from Zagreb, Croatia. He took active part in various civic organisations, taught in high schools and at the Zagreb University, and worked as editor in social sciences and humanities in the “Naprijed” publishing house. The most recent position was the executive director of the Croatian Helsinki Committee. Dvornik regularly publishes political commentaries and analyses for the Novi list newspaper, the Identitet magazine and the ZaMirZine.net and the Pescanik.net e-news portals.