Ideology, Legitimacy and the New State: Yugoslavia, Serbia and Croatia

This is a comparative analysis of the dominant ideologies and modes of legitimization in communist Yugoslavia and post-Communist Serbia and Croatia. The aim of the book is to identify and explain dominant normative and operative ideologies and principal modes of legitimization in these three case studies. The book is based on the content analysis of manifestos of the ruling parties in post World War II Yugoslavia (League of Communists), post-Cold War Serbia (Socialist Party of Serbia) and Croatia (Croatian Democratic Union), as well as on the content analysis of the school textbooks and editorial of government-controlled newspapers published in the same period. By analyzing the way state apparatuses work, the author aims to demonstrate the crucial role that ideology plays in the underpinning of the identity transformation in these three societies. At the same time, an attempt is made to develop an adequate theoretical model of ideology and political legitimization that would not only help explain theextraordinary situation of these three cases but would also contribute to the general theory of ideology and legitimization.

Sinisa Malesevic is a lecturer in the Department of Political Science and Sociology at National University of Ireland, Galway