Federal State Budgetary Educational Institution of Higher Education

Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), North-West Institute of Management

Field of study / specialization 41.03.04 Political Science

Educational programme / track: Political Ideas and Institutions

BACHELOR'S GRADUATION QUALIFICATION THESIS

Socio-political determinants of sustained protest activity in Serbia

Student of group PL-3-22-03, full-time form of study

Alisa A. Cheprasova

Advisor: Assoc. Prof. Olga A. Shapiro, PhD (Philosophy)

Saint Petersburg, 2026

In November 2024, in Serbia, a country with low indicators of electoral democracy, a large-scale wave of protests began, triggered by a tragic incident: the collapse of a concrete canopy at a recently renovated railway station in Novi Sad. Fifteen people died on the spot, and a sixteenth died in March of the following year. This event became the starting point for the largest peaceful civic movement in contemporary Europe: on 15 March around 350,000 protesters gathered on the streets of Belgrade, the protest movement spread to more than 400 localities, and it has not ceased for more than five hundred days now¹.

Protest activity can be regarded as an indicator of democratic institutions; however, protracted protest campaigns have a destructive effect on state institutions and on state mechanisms and significantly worsen the economic situation in the country. According to the Vienna Institute, because of the 2024-2026 protests GDP growth in Serbia fell from 3.9% to 2%, returning to the level of 2022². Foreign direct investment fell by 53%, and the Rio Tinto "Jadar" project has been frozen, at a cost of almost 3 billion euros³⁴.

The negative impact spread to the domestic market: the volume of construction fell by 70%. Retail businesses report a drop in turnover of 10%-40%. In the first five days of the blockades alone, companies lost 292 million euros⁵.

Table 1. Economic losses in the first weeks of the protest.

The experience of the protests demonstrates the dilemma facing the authorities: whether or not to make a compromise. A radical stance and the use of violence create new motivation for participation, more demands appear among the protesters, along with new heroes and martyrs; on the other hand, a compromise would become proof that the "student blockade" is as weighty an organization as the government as a whole.

The focus of my research interest is the question: why is this protest sustained? Understanding the causes appears to be a necessary condition of this sustainability and is a necessary condition for forming an effective strategy for the authorities that could lead to a resolution of the conflict.

The aim of the present study is to determine which socio-political factors sustain the durability of the protests in Serbia from 2024 to 2026.

Achieving this aim entails the completion of a number of tasks:

1. To identify the normative-legal discrepancies between the demands of the movement's participants and the state measures that were adopted.
2. To reconstruct the main contradictions in the public discussion around the Serbian protest movement of 2024-2026,
3. To reveal the value-based and discursive contradictions between the protesters and the authorities,
4. To uncover the motivational structure of the movement's participants on the basis of their own interpretations,
5. To establish whether the Serbian case fits the pattern of protracted protests in hybrid regimes or is exceptional.
6. To identify the socio-political and institutional factors that determine the sustainability of the protest.

The object of the study is protest activity in Serbia; the subject is the socio-political determinants of the movement's sustainability.

In the course of the study the following hypotheses were tested:

1. The protest arose as a reaction to the tragedy in Novi Sad,
2. Horizontal organization and ritual practices reduce the costs of participation and support mobilization,
3. The duration of the protest depends on the structure of the executive and judicial branches of power.

The theoretical basis of the study is constituted by the works of Charles Tilly ("From Mobilization to Revolution"), Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe ("The theory of discourse and hegemony"), Yu. Korotchenko ("Valuative modeling of collective consciousness"), and Srđa Popović ("Nonviolent Resistance").

The main research methods are: the discourse analysis of Laclau and Mouffe, comparison with other countries (the V-Dem corruption index, V-Dem, V-Dem free expression, BTI indices), qualitative coding and analysis of interviews, the study of documents, and valuative modeling on the basis of discursive analysis.

The empirical base of the study consists of media texts described in Appendix No. 3.

1. Mass Rallies, Marches and Roadblocks Dominate Serbia's Streets in 2025 // Balkan Insight. 2025. 22 Dec. URL: https://balkaninsight.com/2025/12/22/mass-rallies-marches-and-roadblocks-dominate-serbias-streets-in-2025/ (дата обращения: 12.06.2026)
2. Vienna Institute: Student Protests and Trade War Have Slowed Down Serbian Economy // Serbian Monitor. 2025. URL: https://www.serbianmonitor.com/en/vienna-institutestudent-protests-and-trade-war-have-slowed-down-serbian-economy/ (дата обращения: 12.06.2026).
3. Serbia's Net FDI Falls 53% in January-October 2025 // Intellinews. 2025. URL: https://www.intellinews.com/serbia-s-net-fdi-falls-53-in-january-october-2025-417588/ (дата обращения: 12.06.2026).
4. Serbia signs deal to resume stalled Rio Tinto lithium mine // Reuters. 2025. 21 Jan. URL: https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/serbia-signs-deal-resume-stalled-rio-tinto-lithium-mine-2025-01-21/ (дата обращения: 16.06.2026)
5. Serbian Monitor. PKS: Decline in Business Across All Economic Sectors // Serbian Monitor. 2025. URL: https://www.serbianmonitor.com/en/pks-decline-in-business-across-all-economic-sectors/ (дата обращения: 12.06.2026)

1.1 Justification of the composite research design

Within this study a multi-level methodological design was implemented, in which each theory solved a specific task in answering the question of the sustainability of the protest. The combination of approaches was conditioned by the complexity of the object, which cannot be described within the framework of a single paradigm.

The theory of resource mobilization (C. Tilly) was applied to the analysis of the infrastructural level. It made it possible to reveal how ready-made social networks ("catnets") in the form of universities ensured the rapid accumulation of resources and reduced the costs of participation. This method explained how the movement is organized technically.

The analysis of normative-legal acts was aimed at identifying the "institutional gaps" between state decisions and the demands of the protesters.

Discourse theory (E. Laclau and C. Mouffe) was used to describe symbolic sustainability. With its help it was possible to capture the mechanism of uniting heterogeneous groups through the "empty signifier" and "chains of equivalence", which explained the preservation of the movement's unity in the absence of a single leader.

Valuative modeling (Yu. Korotchenko) supplemented the discourse analysis, answering the question of deep motivation. A value bifurcation was revealed - a shift in collective consciousness in which the values of physical safety and truth came to dominate over the value of state stability.

Comparative analysis and the V-Dem indices made it possible to define the macro-political framework. Analysis of the indices (libdem, corruption) helped to qualify the situation in Serbia as an "institutional deadlock" of a hybrid regime, in which the authorities are unable to suppress the protest while the institutions are unable to channel it. The analysis of interviews juxtaposed the statistical data with the real accounts of eyewitnesses. The personal interpretations of the respondents helped to establish that the sustainability of the protest was fueled not only by the tragedy in Novi Sad but also by accumulated experience.

This made it possible to reveal the determinants of the sustainability of protest activity at the intersection of the discursive, structural, and comparative levels of analysis.

Analysis of Legal and Regulatory Acts

The analysis of legal and regulatory acts was necessary in order to examine the final conclusions on the tragedy that occurred, to identify the main demands of the participants, and to compare them with the legal and regulatory acts adopted by the authorities and the president over 2024 and 2025, with the aim of revealing contradictions.

The first thing to turn to in this analysis is the documents. Documents play an important role in a protest. Their publication is a demand of the protesters, the release of material is a potential threat, and the subsequent measures taken form the basis for analyzing the strategies of the authorities.

A brief description of the documents (see Appendix No. 5 for details):

• The protesters' demands (Appendix No. 5) - a list of demands posted on the protesters' website;
• Documents related to the education budget - an official document on the government's page stating the allocation of a budget for materials amounting to 12.01 billion dinars.
• Documents on the Novi Sad tragedy - a register of 161+ technical documents, divided into 6 sections: PROJEKAT (project documentation), NADSTRESNICA (the canopy), monthly and weekly reports, technical acceptance, connections. From this list, the following were used in the analysis: document 70 - the fire safety conclusion dated 25.10.2024, document 72 - an email on technical acceptance dated 01.11.2024 (the day of the collapse), document 73 - closure of the site on 02.11.2024 (the day after).
• Counter-documents - two reports by Transparency Serbia*. The first: "The published documents are incomplete". The second document: "Key financial data are unavailable". These documents were published on the resources of an organization recognized as undesirable in the Russian Federation. However, in the absence of any alternative and of publicly available documents from the Serbian authorities, the listed documents constitute important empirical material for qualitative analysis.
• A report on (general) budgets on srbija.gov.rs. This is a document on the Budget of the Republic of Serbia for 2025.
• Statements by the president, published in journals and at video conferences.
• European Parliament Resolution 2025/2917(RSP), consisting of 32 operative paragraphs + a preamble (points A-W). The document records 1,028+ arrests, 340+ incidents of violence, the use of an acoustic weapon (3,400 affected). 10,700+ protests in 630+ localities. It calls for targeted sanctions, a review of EXPO 2027, and the protection of academic freedoms.

Discourse Analysis

Discourse is a system of meanings that organizes the understanding of social reality. It is assumed that the social order is constant in its inconstancy: all fixations are temporary and politically charged. Discourse, according to Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, presupposes that conflict is always inevitable, and the sides struggle for the victory of their justification of reality. Hegemonic discourse is the core part of a side's victory¹.

Discourse theory examines how symbolic mechanisms can bind people together, but discourse theory has a substantial shortcoming. Discourse theory cannot reliably explain why a shift of values occurs. Why, in 2024, does "justice" suddenly become more important than the familiar "stability"? (see Appendix No. 6 for details).

For the discourse analysis according to Laclau and Mouffe, the study assembled a corpus of Serbian media, both independent (N1, Nova S) and pro-government (Informer, Pink TV); the corpus was supplemented with international outlets (Al Jazeera, BBC, Reuters, CNN), analytical journals and statistics (Journal of Democracy, ECPR, Progressive International), and official statements by politicians (for example, Vučić's addresses in the media and on social networks).

The main categories of analysis: empty signifiers, floating signifiers, nodal points, chains of equivalence, the logic of equivalence and the logic of difference, antagonism, dislocation².

Nodal points are privileged signs that draw the discursive field together. Example: "Korupcija ubija" (corruption kills) is a nodal point of the protest discourse.

Empty signifiers are signs that have lost their concrete content and become a "container" for various meanings. They are "empty" not because they are meaningless, but because they hold too much: each group invests its own meaning. The central empty signifier of the Serbian protest is "otgovornost" (responsibility): through it, different demands (a just verdict, transparency, education reform, freedom of the media) are interwoven into a single discourse³.

A chain of equivalence is a connection between different demands united by a common antagonism. Each link retains its specificity, but all line up against a common enemy.

The logic of equivalence is a strategy of unification: different demands are linked into a single chain, differences are suppressed, and the similarity (the common enemy) comes to the fore. The protest consists of: students, workers, farmers, and veterans. All of this is "the people" against "the system".

The logic of difference is a strategy of division, in which each demand is handled in isolation. The authorities use this logic. Vučić repeatedly divided the protesters into "ordinary citizens" and "hooligans/provocateurs, extremists, or 'students too lazy to study'"⁴.

Dislocation is an event in which the ordinary discourse collides with something it cannot explain. The structure of meanings cracks, and a space opens up for a new articulation.

The collapse of the canopy is precisely a dislocation. The pro-government discourse (advocating "stability", "development") was unable to integrate the death of 16 people due to corruption⁵.

Antagonism is a boundary that divides the discursive field into "us" and "them". It is not a clash of already existing identities, but a discourse-boundary that itself creates these identities⁶.

In the Serbian case, for example, the antagonist is not a specific person (Vučić), but "the system", "the cartel", "the mafia". The abstraction of the antagonist makes it possible to hold the coalition together, since everyone invests it with their own meaning.

Floating signifiers are signs over the fixation of whose meaning competing discourses (students and the authorities) struggle. Three key ones in the Serbian case: "stability" (authorities: preservation of order; protest: the safety of citizens), "democracy" (authorities: the existing institutions; protest: accountability; the EU: reforms), "sovereignty".

Hegemony is the temporary fixing of one discourse as "natural". It is always incomplete and vulnerable to dislocation⁷.

The logic of difference is also described. This mechanism is disclosed through the distinction introduced by Ernesto Laclau between democratic demands, which exist in isolation and can be absorbed by the system one by one, and popular demands, linked in a chain of equivalence and forming a single front⁸. When the system satisfies one specific demand, it drops out of the chain. Laclau describes institutional absorption, in which the authorities break one large wave of protest into a huge number of separate grievances. This is done deliberately, in order to turn a powerful collective challenge into several weak irritations that are much easier to fragment. Vučević's resignation was an attempt at institutional absorption in Laclau's sense: the satisfaction of a particular demand with the aim of breaking the chain of equivalence. However, the empty signifier "otgovornost" ensured the stability of the chain, uniting heterogeneous demands into a single discourse.

Valuative Modeling

Collective consciousness is always built around a hierarchy of values, and it can change abruptly under the influence of crises. When the gap between what the authorities promise ("stability", "development") and how people actually live (corruption, poverty, violence) becomes simply enormous, what Yu. Korotchenko calls a value bifurcation begins. This is a sharp break in the hierarchy of values of collective consciousness, in which latent (suppressed) values displace the former dominants. A bifurcation occurs when the gap between the values declared by the authorities and the everyday experience of citizens reaches a critical threshold⁹.

Examples of value shifts include the protests against the COVID regime in 2020, the wave of mass shootings in school buildings in 2023, and the lithium protests: each of these upheavals gradually overturned the order of importance of values. The collapse in Novi Sad became a dislocation event that laid bare the gap between the values declared by the authorities and the everyday experience of citizens.

Valuative analysis is a methodological instrument for investigating collective consciousness, whose aim is to study values and to interpret them by means of a matrix of evaluative interpretation, the valuative (matrix)¹⁰. With the help of the valuative, one can build a model of the holistic semantic collective consciousness and determine not only values. The components of valuative modeling are:

• Personifiers: heroes and martyrs, specific persons or images through which the collective subject defines "its own" and "the alien"¹¹.
• Norms: rules of conduct that define what is permitted, forbidden, and obligatory within the given valuative¹².
• Values: reference points that form the hierarchy of what is significant for the given collective;
• Forms of representation: language, artistic creativity, ideology. The ways in which the valuative matrix manifests itself in public space¹³.

The method of valuative modeling makes it possible to reveal how values function in synthesis. In a stable period, latent values occupy a subordinate position. At the moment of crisis they are activated and enter into competition with the former dominants. When the divergence between the declared values and reality reaches a maximum, a sharp change occurs: the former dominant disappears, and the latent value takes its place.

Comparative Analysis

The comparative analysis is aimed at identifying cases similar to the protests in Serbia in 2024-2026. Using the MSSD (Most Similar Systems Design) method, cases with similar parameters (hybrid regimes, civic protests, a student core) but different outcomes were selected.

To carry out the analysis and create an information base, the open neural network Claude opus 4.6 was used. The prompt is described in more detail in Appendix No. 1.

Interviewing

An additional method is structured interviews with 11 participants of the movement: students of the University of Belgrade (mainly the faculties of philology, political science, biology, and journalism) and eyewitnesses of the events as indirect participants. The interviews were conducted in person, in English, with open-ended questions. A single interview lasted from 40 minutes to an hour and a half, and all interviews are anonymous. The opportunity to obtain interviews offline arose thanks to the academic exchange between Saint Petersburg and Belgrade for the spring 2025 semester. Conducting the interviews was an important part of cross-checking the conclusions of the discourse analysis and the comparative study against qualitative data. A limitation of this method was the restricted access to students of other faculties (access was limited to the Faculty of Political Sciences), and a pass regime was introduced. For this reason, part of the interviews were gathered through spontaneous circumstances: acquaintances made on the street and in the shared faculty building. Also significant was the language barrier, which was compensated for by the closeness of the Serbian and Russian languages.

* the organization's activity has been recognized as extremist and is banned in the territory of the Russian Federation

1. Laclau E., Mouffe Ch. Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. London : Verso, 1985. P. 98.
2. Howarth D., Stavrakakis Y. Introducing Discourse Theory and Political Analysis // Discourse Theory and Political Analysis / ed. by D. Howarth, A. Norval, Y. Stavrakakis. Manchester : Manchester University Press, 2000. P. 3–14.
3. Laclau E. Emancipation(s). London : Verso, 1996. P. 36–46.
4. Laclau E., Mouffe Ch. Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. P. 127–134.
5. Laclau E. New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time. London : Verso, 1990. P. 39–41.
6. Laclau E., Mouffe Ch. Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. P. 122–127.
7. Laclau E. On Populist Reason. London : Verso, 2005. P. 77–83.
8. Там же.
9. Коротченко Ю. М. Валюативный анализ в методологическом арсенале социальной философии // Учёные записки Крымского федерального университета им. В. И. Вернадского. Философия. Культурология. Политология. 2024. Т. 10. Спец. выпуск. С. 186–187.
10. Коротченко Ю. М. Валюативный анализ в методологическом арсенале социальной философии // Учёные записки Крымского федерального университета им. В. И. Вернадского. Философия. Культурология. Политология. 2024. Т. 10. Спец. выпуск. С. 186.
11. Там же, с. 188.
12. Там же, с. 189.
13. Коротченко Ю. М. Указ. соч. С. 188. / Там же. С. 189.

To examine mass protests, it is most convenient to draw on Charles Tilly's theory of resource mobilization, whose central thesis locates the cause not in the grievances of protesters but in why their discontent turns into collective action and why it takes on a particular form. For this reason, this approach has been adopted as the primary one in the present study. It makes it possible to trace how groups move from grievance to sustained collective action.

Tilly identifies several important concepts:

Table No. 2. The conceptual apparatus of resource mobilization theory

Tilly notes that the link between repression and mobilization is nonlinear. He distinguishes the following categories:

• Weak repression: the movement continues, with no particular changes.
• Moderate and noticeable repression: mobilization intensifies, because people consider the repression unjust, and new demands appear.
• Total repression: the state destroys mobilization completely.

The Serbian protest belongs to the second variant, since alongside the tragedy an additional impetus came after the attack on a student on 22 November 2024, which became the catalyst of mass outrage⁶.

In this case a dilemma of action arises: the side of the authorities is forced to choose between the appearance of weakness and the appearance of brutality.

Speaking of the categories of protest, Tilly distinguishes two types of collective action:

• Reactive action: the group defends existing rights, preserving the status quo.
• Proactive action: the group does not merely defend but demands a new system or new rules.

The very process of transition from reactive to proactive action is a sign of the institutionalization of the movement and its consolidation within the political system.

The Serbian protest was initially reactive: it arose as a reaction to the tragedy and demanded a just court ruling in the case of the collapse of the canopy at the railway station⁷. But the proactive phase emerged in March 2025 after the demands for early elections, structural reform, and the introduction of benefits and discounts on education⁸.

The protests went beyond the restoration of the previous order and came to be aimed at the formation of new normative and institutional expectations.

1. Тилли Ч. От мобилизации к революции / пер. с англ. Д. Карасёва ; под науч. ред. С. Моисеева. М. : Изд. дом Высшей школы экономики, 2019. С. 7–8.
2. Там же. С. 62–64
3. Там же. С. 98–106.
4. Там же. С. 7.
5. Там же. С. 151–159.
6. Napad na studente i profesore ispred Fakulteta dramskih umetnosti // N1 Srbija. 2024. 22 Nov. URL: https://n1info.rs/vesti/blog-godisnjica-napada-na-studente-fdu-okupljanje-u-1130h-i-protestna-setnja/ (дата обращения: 12.06.2026).
7. Napad na studente Fakulteta dramskih umetnosti (FDU) 22.11.2024 // Beogradske Vesti. 2024. Nov. URL: https://beogradskevesti.info/napad-na-studente-i-profesore-fakulteta-dramskih-umetnosti-fdu-22-11-2024/ (дата обращения: 12.06.2026).
8. Student demands / Zahteva // Blokade fakulteta. 2025. URL: https://blokade.org/en/zahtevi/ (дата обращения: 12.06.2026).

The student protest (Students blokada, "student blockade") is a movement organized by students, within the framework of which protest actions are organized in order to fulfill the demands of citizens. As mentioned earlier, the movement arose spontaneously after 1 November 2024, subsequently creating the movement's official social media accounts, protest maps, organizing commemorative actions for those killed in the collapse, and setting up daily blockades of streets, schools, and universities. Periodically the movement announced large protests that blocked the entire city center. The number of protesters at the protests reached up to two hundred thousand participants, and at smaller actions from a hundred to several thousand¹.

The protests have continued for a year and more, and the total number of temporary and event-based participants is difficult to count, but since the start of the research there have been about 3 large actions, from which it can be inferred that the number of participants reached, in total, more than half a million people. The protests took place not only in Belgrade and in Novi Sad, which was involved in the tragedy, but also in smaller cities: Niš, Subotica, Kragujevac, Kruševac. There too the protests were organized by university and school students.

1. Mass Rallies, Marches and Roadblocks Dominate Serbia's Streets in 2025 // Balkan Insight. 2025. 22 Dec. URL: https://balkaninsight.com/2025/12/22/mass-rallies-marches-and-roadblocks-dominate-serbias-streets-in-2025/ (дата обращения: 12.06.2026).

The movement has a horizontal structure with elected positions. Every day, for 3 to 8 hours, the students of a given faculty gather in the faculty building in a common lecture hall. Teachers moderate the meeting: one of the teachers announces the agenda for the day, the problems in organization, the upcoming tasks. Then, by a raised hand, each student speaks.

Every week, at the meetings, two student representatives for the week are chosen by absolute randomness. There are several roles: coordination of the movements (radar), security, medical assistance. Such a system ensures the absence of leaders or of a privileged group within the movement, as well as the contribution of every participant. In addition to the internal structure of the faculty assemblies, the movement developed a diverse repertoire of street actions.

The students in Belgrade developed a set of protest practices suited to the city: daily blockades of the main roads, moments of silence at 11:52, whistles, and plenums. The protesters' strategy was built on a cycle alternating routine actions and large-scale mobilization events. The daily short-term blockades of the main roads, accompanied by sonic aggression and a subsequent moment of silence, performed a dual function: they disorganize the work of the city's infrastructure and at the same time create an ethical resonance, appealing to collective memory. This creates a strong channel of involvement.

The evolution of the protest manifests itself in the professionalization of resource management: the creation of digital platforms and interactive maps for logistics tells us of the group's high degree of organization. Mass rallies in key political locations.

Even spontaneous displays of activity, such as the blocking of tram tracks, fit into the general logic of the protest repertoire: through noise and the use of instruments (from whistles to loudspeakers), participants voice their demands, turning random bystanders into involuntary participants in a political interaction.

The described repertoire of actions would not have been possible without a certain organizational logic. To analyze it, let us turn to Charles Tilly.

To analyze the organizational logic of the movement I use Charles Tilly's formula: the capacity to be a group plus the presence of a network of ties together form an organization. The organizational logic of the movement confirms Charles Tilly's thesis that the effectiveness of collective action depends on the depth of the group's integration. The combination of a broad social spectrum of participants and the presence of horizontal ties within the student body and professional groups allowed the movement to accumulate resources for mobilization quickly.

The movement demonstrated a high degree of autonomy: a conscious refusal to integrate with the systemic opposition made it possible to preserve the identity of the protest as an independent collective subject. The use of a system of micro-donations instead of external sponsorship testifies to a high degree of internal solidarity.

Consequently, the absence of a rigid hierarchical structure does not mean the absence of organization; on the contrary, the decentralized network of ties proved to be an effective instrument for realizing the modern repertoire of protest.

The resilience of this structure is tested not only by everyday coordination but also by the movement's ability to transform its own demands as events develop.

From the standpoint of the classification of collective action, the protests display a distinct dynamic of transition from a reactive to a proactive form. At the initial stage they were predominantly reactive in character, acting as a direct response to the catastrophe - the collapse of the canopy at the railway station in Novi Sad. The key demands became the conduct of an investigation, the punishment of those responsible, and the publication of the official documents described on the official website of the student protest (Appendix No. 5). These demands can be interpreted as an attempt to restore the basic norms of justice and accountability of the authorities, which, in the citizens' view, had been violated. In other words, the aim was to reassert recognized demands.

However, the further evolution of the protests led to their proactivization. New demands, previously unarticulated or not institutionalized, were added to the initial agenda:

1. Publication of all documentation related to the reconstruction of the Novi Sad railway station, which is currently unavailable to the public.
2. A 20% increase in the higher-education budget.
3. Ensuring accountability and the protection of patients' rights.
4. Payouts to the families of the victims.

In its radicalized form this was expressed in demands for the resignation of senior officials, as well as for the holding of early elections. Thus the protests went beyond the restoration of the former order and came to be directed at the formation of new normative and institutional expectations, which allows them to be classified as a proactive form of collective action.

At the present moment one can observe the movement's transition from attempts to restore justice toward the articulation of new demands, first systematically stated as early as March 2025 and oriented toward deeper, structural changes to the state system:

The demand for confirmation by the competent authorities of the identity of all persons reasonably suspected of physically attacking students and teachers, as well as the initiation of criminal prosecution against them. Should it be established that these persons are civil servants, their dismissal¹.

The evolution of the demands was accompanied by a transformation of the movement's communication channels as well.

Digital platforms played a central role in disseminating information and coordinating action. The initial stage of the protests was accompanied by a sharp surge of activity on social media: "On the day the protests sort of began, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and everything else literally 'exploded' with messages that the students had occupied the faculties" [Interview 1]. At the same time, Instagram* gradually became the main channel of information: "Instagram is the main source of information about the blockades, you can see the whole picture there" [Interview 1].

Clips filmed at the actions are used, along with sound effects; every statement by Vučić is discussed; prominent figures are covered&

It is worth noting the role of urban space: posters on the faculty buildings, on the shopping squares, graffiti of blood-stained hands almost everywhere - on houses, on bridges, on roads and roadsides. Such actions create emotional involvement.

The mobilization of the protest movement occurred within a compressed time frame, which is largely explained by the presence of already existing networks of interaction. For the students, such networks were the university and faculty structures, whereas for the other participants they were local urban communities, above all in Belgrade and Novi Sad. The students were already integrated through universities and local communities. This substantially reduced the costs of coordination and made it possible to organize collective action quickly.

At the same time, the movement's further development runs into institutional and identity-related constraints. It requires either the strengthening of an induced collective identity - conventionally, "the recognition of all participants as members of one community" - or the formation of authoritative internal decision-making institutions. Both scenarios depend to a considerable extent on external factors: the support of the protests by opposition elites and/or the presence of stable external ties capable of lending the network greater structuration and political subjectivity.

Tilly defines collective action as the result of the interaction of interests, organization, and mobilization². The student protest in Serbia is an ideal case for testing this model. The catastrophe in Novi Sad not only created an emotional backdrop but also formed a powerful interest shared by all groups. This was not an abstract political slogan about a change of power, but a concrete demand for justice and the punishment of those responsible. Interviewees and the protagonists of media stories repeatedly mentioned that the movement's main demand was to grant access to the full documentation. This interest turned out to be reactive - a defense against injustice. According to Tilly, this demand is the strongest catalyst for uniting people who in ordinary times are far removed from politics.

Interest is only the occasion; the decisive factor was a ready-made organization. Tilly defines organization as a "catnet" - the intersection of the category of "awareness of oneself as a group" and "real social ties"³. The Serbian students possessed both. The students had ready-made, decentralized networks: faculties, universities, dormitories. These structures, created for study, instantly switched over to coordinating the protest at the moment of crisis. As Tilly notes, the effectiveness of collective action depends on the depth of the group's integration, and the students used their everyday integration with the utmost effectiveness.

The presence of interest and organization made it possible to move to the third stage - mobilization, that is, the transfer of resources under collective control. The students controlled key resources: time, digital skills, access to lecture halls and, most importantly, moral authority. They deliberately renounced traditional hierarchy and leadership, which made the movement invulnerable to repression. From the standpoint of Tilly's theory, this allowed them to avoid the classic dilemma in which a leader can be "isolated and destroyed"⁴. Instead, a horizontal network emerged in which "each of us is a leader", which radically reduced the risks for participants and increased the resilience of the whole structure while, on the other hand, creating temporal constraints.

Rapid mobilization became possible thanks to a unique confluence of circumstances that fit perfectly into the Tillian model: an existential, reactive interest and justice activated ready-made social networks (universities), which in turn made it possible to mobilize resources instantly (time, skills, moral capital). Serbian society, which for decades had been considered atomized and apolitical, demonstrated that at a moment of crisis latent structures of solidarity can turn into a most powerful force of collective action.

S. Popović, the leader of the "Otpor!" movement that played a key role in the overthrow of S. Milošević's authoritarian regime, systematized the practices of nonviolent resistance in the work "Nonviolent Struggle: 50 Crucial Points" (Popović, 2016). The central thesis is that nonviolent methods of protest demonstrate higher effectiveness compared with violent ones in both democratic and hybrid regimes. A number of the tactics described by Popović, in particular the continuous use of unregulated pedestrian crossings, are reproduced by participants of the Serbian movement of 2024-2026 as an element of the protest repertoire⁵.

Tilly's model and the approaches complementing it explain the structural conditions of sustained mobilization - organization, resources, opportunities, emotional triggers. However, an open question remains: how does an ideological coalition acquire symbolic unity without a common ideology and without a formal leader? To answer this question it is necessary to turn to the discourse theory of E. Laclau and C. Mouffe.

1. Student demands / Zahteva // Blokade fakulteta. 2025. URL: https://blokade.org/en/zahtevi/
2. Тилли Ч. Указ. соч. С. 7–10.
3. Тилли Ч. Указ. соч. С. 62–64.
4. Там же. С. 100–102.
5. Попович С. Ненасильственная борьба: 50 важнейших пунктов. М. : Альпина Паблишер, 2016. С. 16.

Instagram belongs to Meta Platforms Inc., a corporation whose activity has been recognized as extremist and banned in the territory of the Russian Federation.

Chapter II. Results of the Empirical Analysis

Contradictions were identified in the documents, in particular in the technical ones. Document 72 states the acceptance of the reconstruction on 1 November 2024, and on that same day the tragedy occurred. accepting the facility without inspection of the elements in operation contradicts GOST norms.

It is also worth paying attention to the documents related to the budgets allocated for the reconstruction. It was stated that 16 million euros had been spent on the reconstruction of the station, however the CIP transport institute estimated the budget at only 3 million euros. This is the only publicly available independent estimate of the cost. This estimate is based on an approximate costing (the design estimate cost), and not on an independent assessment¹. This estimate is fairly accurate, since these prices can be found in open access and verified independently, while no responding statements from the president or other persons followed.

The third contradiction lies in the education budget. One of the protesters' demands states: "A 20% increase in the higher-education budget. Growth of funding by ~102.8 million euros to approach the standards of the CEE countries (~1.71% of GDP)".

In response to the protesters' demand, the state allocated 12.01 billion, but only for "material expenses", and not for the entire budget. 12.01 billion dinars is 102.3 million euros. The real increase in the overall higher-education budget is about 4%, not 20%.

The fourth contradiction concerns the transparency of publications. In total, 169 documents have been published so far. The majority of them concern technical matters, acceptance dates, fire-safety inspections, and so on. There are no documents concerning the contracts with CRIC+CCCC, price annexes, tender documentation².

According to the anti-corruption non-profit organization Transparency Serbia*, a total of 857 documents were handed over to the prosecutor's office, but only 195 (22.8%) were published.

It is also worth noting the resolution of the European Parliament. First and foremost, the resolution states that the Russian FSB was invited within the framework of the investigation.

This contradicts the government's narrative of full transparency and undermines confidence in the independence of the investigation. The involvement of a foreign state's special service in the investigation of a construction accident has no procedural justification in any of the published documents. Looking ahead, the protesters believe that Europe, the USA, and Russia are interested in Vučić's stable position as president [Interview 9, 12]. Therefore such an initiative is perceived especially sensitively. Speaking of discourse, in his statements Vučić calls the movement a color revolution³. However, the European Parliament assesses the protests as "unprecedented nationwide protests" and the "largest wave of protests in Serbian history", and in the resolution it calls for the protection of citizens' rights.

In conclusion, it is worth noting that a contradictory tactic is already discernible. Firstly, on the part of the authorities there is no specific source for publishing responses to the protesters, for example an official website. There is no single platform on which the president's demands toward the crowd would be posted. For instance, statements are often quoted in the magazine Weekly Blitz. In the course of verifying the sources, it turned out that this magazine is registered in Bangladesh and has no relation whatsoever to Serbia. Yet pro-government sources often cite it⁴. Because of this a rupture occurs. The side of the authorities cannot create a channel of communication, which motivates participants to create pretexts for escalating the conflict.

1. CIP Institut za transport. Projekat rekonstrukcije železničke stanice Novi Sad: procena vrednosti radova. 2021. Apr. Цит. по: New evidence of corruption in the reconstruction of the Novi Sad railway station // Serbian Monitor. 2025. URL: https://www.serbianmonitor.com/en/new-evidence-of-corruption-in-the-reconstruction-of-the-novi-sad-railway-station/ (дата обращения: 16.06.2026).
2. China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC); China Communication Construction Company (CCCC) – данные из реестра документов на сайте blokade.org/en/zahtevi/
3. Vučić: Ovo je pokušaj obojene revolucije // N1 Srbija. 2025. 26 Feb. URL: https://n1info.rs/vesti/vucic-ovo-je-pokusaj-obojene-revolucije/ (дата обращения: 16.06.2026).
4. Informer, ряд публикаций 2025 г.; Pink TV, эфиры 2025 г.) – провластные сербские СМИ, цитирующие Weekly Blitz

*Recognized as an undesirable organization in the Russian Federation.

A more detailed diagram of the chains and the role of dislocation is provided in the smart diagram (Appendix No. 6); the main conclusions are presented below.

The dislocation was the tragedy in Novi Sad. It was precisely this event that exposed the theme of corruption, which ceases to be merely an abstract concept and becomes entirely literal. Corruption killed innocent residents.

The tragedy also brings to the surface other grievances: the extraction of lithium raw material, the state's disregard of school shootings, discontent over the protests during COVID, the "borderline" position in foreign policy, and dependence on other countries.

All the demands are articulated around the tragedy and are amplified after a second incident: the attack on students and professors at protest actions. Among those identified and suspected are the head of the municipality of Sremski Karlovci, the head of the public order department of the Belgrade police, and members of city assemblies¹.

The action is joined not only by students and ordinary citizens, but also by veterans of the Yugoslav wars, groups of motorbikers, and later by trading companies as well. And the protest becomes not merely an act of discontent, but an entire protest movement that acquires its own resources, audience, principles, and space.

Within the framework of the discourse analysis, a frequency analysis was used, identifying frequently used words and contexts. A more detailed list of the words can be seen below.

These words then underwent thematic coding, and the result was roughly as follows:

Table No. 3. Results of the frequency analysis

"Agency" occurred most frequently, because the protest is described first and foremost through action: blockades, marches, traffic stoppages. This is natural: the discourse of resistance is built around a collective act.

"System, corruption" is one of the stable discursive nodes: the collapse of the canopy in Novi Sad is interpreted not as a technical accident, but as a symptom of a corrupt system of state contracts awarded without tenders.

"Humor/symbols" also has a high share, which confirms the role of irony and memes as an instrument of protest mobilization: pikachu (an ironic symbol of the protests, brought over from Turkey, at the 2025 protests), bloody "hand" (the bloody hand, the official symbol of the protest, the bloody hands of corruption, corruption kills), the "minute of silence" (a minute dedicated to those who died in Novi Sad). The symbolism is created out of the context of concrete events, out of the dislocation.

"Youth/student" has a solid share, but not a dominant one. This indicates that the protesters more often speak on behalf of the "people" or "citizens" rather than on behalf of a particular social group.

The construction of the "us versus them" opposition is expressed moderately. The protest discourse is aimed rather at the system as a whole than at a specific personal antagonist.

"Moral categories" (dignity, justice, responsibility) perform a mobilizing function; these are empty signifiers in Laclau's sense, uniting heterogeneous groups.

"Media": the theme of media control and the blocking of information is present, but it occupies a peripheral position in the protest discourse.

"Temporality" refers to temporal markers ("the future", "never again", references to past protests) which occupy a small but stable share. The theme of Solidarity accounts for about 2%; it does not dominate, but it is present.

"National code" appears as the lowest share. The protest positions itself as civic rather than national: national symbolism is practically not used.

The word "corruption" appears most frequently in the protest discourse (9 mentions out of 15), which confirms the status of "Korupcija ubija" (corruption kills) as a nodal point specific to the protest discourse. In the discourse of those in power, the word "corruption" is not mentioned even once: the authorities deliberately avoid this signifier.

"Color revolution", by contrast, is dispersed: 8 mentions in the pro-government discourse, 10 in the zone of floating signifiers, 4 in the global one. This confirms its status as a floating signifier over which a struggle between discourses is being waged. In one case, "color revolution" speaks of the interference of "others" in Serbia's internal affairs; in another, of a "post-color revolution".

"Stability": 5 of the 6 mentions fall into the floating signifiers, 1 into the pro-government discourse. The protest discourse does not use this word directly at all; it contests it ("what stability, if the canopies are falling?").

"Democracy": the maximum is in the zone of floating signifiers (7), then the international discourse (3) and the protest one (2). Its floating status is confirmed: each discourse invests it with its own meaning. From the protest side, democracy is the true decision of citizens, the possibility of direct participation. From the side of the authorities, democracy is the tyranny of the crowd, protests of that same kind for the sake of stability.

"Terrorism": exclusively in the pro-government discourse (2 mentions, both quotations from Vučić). No other discourse uses this term, which confirms its function as a discrediting label rather than a generally accepted category.

On the basis of frequent mentions, the top 5 words for each discourse were identified.

In the protest discourse, the most frequent words turned out to be: "novi" (Novi Sad) at 1.9%, "students" at 1.5%, "of silence" at 0.9%, "corruption" at 0.9%, and "plenums" at 0.9%.

In the pro-government discourse, the dominant words are: "Vučić" at 4.9%, "arrests" at 1.6%, "tear gas" at 1.6%, "color" at 1.1%, and "revolution" at 1.1%.

And already here, despite the fact that the frequencies are raw, a divergence is visible: the pro-government ones are more personalized and appeal to external interference, whereas the protest discourse is built around places, subjects, and practices.

The analysis also revealed overlaps and differences.

Overlap 1: in both corpora the "agency/action" code dominates; slogans and media texts equally register the mobilizational nature of the discourse.

Overlap 2: the "system/corruption" code is stable (~9-10% in both corpora), which confirms the durability of the nodal point "Korupcija ubija" (corruption kills) as a central structural element of the protest discourse.

Overlap 3: the minimal share of party and national markers in the slogans, alongside their elevated share in the media texts (10.7%), is explained by the fact that in the media "Serbia" is used as a contextual marker rather than as an ideological symbol. The protesters deliberately avoid national symbolism on placards, for example inscriptions connected with the anthem or the word Serbia, which confirms a strategy of depoliticization. At the same time, at the protests themselves the flag of Serbia is very often present, but it signifies only the absence of belonging to any particular party.

There is divergence in two aspects: humor and responsibility. Humor in this case is an instrument of the slogan as a genre, not a conclusion or a feature of an analytical text. It follows from this that humor carries a purely discursive function rather than an attempt to inform.

Responsibility is an empty signifier and a word around which each side tries to build its own chain.

In the protest discourse, "odgovornost" (responsibility) is articulated as systemic accountability. For the families of the dead, it means the criminal prosecution of those specifically responsible for the collapse. For the students, it means transparency of public procurement: of the 857 documents concerning the reconstruction of the railway station, only 195 have been made public, and the movement demands the publication of the rest². For the workers, it means an end to corruption in the system of state contracts, where contracts are awarded to firms connected with the ruling party. For farmers and small businesses, it means an end to the economic pressure on those who are not loyal to the authorities. It is worth noting a particular feature: "odgovornost" is directed at the system, not at a person; the antagonist is not Vučić but a corruption formation. This is confirmed by ECPR researchers, who describe the movement as a confrontation with the phenomenon of "state and societal capture" (захват государства и общества)³. The slogan "Korupcija ubija" literalizes this connection: corruption is not an abstraction, it killed 16 people⁴.

In the pro-government discourse, responsibility acquires an entirely different meaning. Vučić repeatedly asserts that he is responsible before the citizens for the stability of the country, which the protesters are destroying⁵.

In his address to the nation he declared: "Ми поштујемо бол породица, али нећемо дозволити насиље и хаос на улицы" ("We respect the pain of the families of the dead, but we will not allow violence and chaos in the streets"). Here the "responsibility" of the authorities is defined as the protection of order, not as accountability to citizens⁶. The pro-government media (Informer, Alo, Srpski telegraf) shift "responsibility" onto external actors: to blame are USAID, NED, and Western intelligence services, not the system of public procurement, in the words "Their color revolution has failed. Inform USAID, NED, and EED. Let them all know - it's over"⁷. And so it turns out that those responsible are not those who built, but those who are violating order now.

In the international discourse, however, "responsibility" means making decisions that are consistent with democratic values.

The European Parliament, in its resolution of 7 May 2025 (419 votes in favor, 113 against), recognized the protests as legitimate and called for a "transparent investigation of the tragedy", that is, it defined "responsibility" as an institutional procedure, a condition of European integration⁸. The UN OHCHR demanded that Serbia "halt the suppression of the student movement" and "ensure academic freedom"; here "responsibility" equals compliance with international human rights obligations⁹. In this discourse "responsibility" equals a norm, deviation from which marks the regime as authoritarian and hybrid.

Returning to the dislocation, this is where the point of no return was reached: the protest was not suppressed, and corruption began to accrue other demands. In addition to the publication of documents and the investigations into Novi Sad, demands appeared for an investigation into the attack on students, and later an investigation into the "sound grenade" would be added as well. The protest chain is built up through demands and arrives at responsibility, that is, publication. The demands are gradual and well formulated. They are published on the website, placards hang all over the city, the citizens are informed.

The pro-government chain tries to break all the demands at once. But it does not succeed. The reasons are described in more detail below.

The President of Serbia does not hold meetings, does not communicate with the crowd of protesters, and has no independent resource by means of which the responding demands could be identified and examined. More often, such platforms are provided by television channels, which the main audience of the protest, the youth, watches only rarely.

Another means of communication is the "camp of students who want to study". This is a tent camp set up near the Government building, a counter-protest of students who are against the student protest. However, the project is a failure: the media have repeatedly reported insider information about the bribing of these students, as well as personal exposures: many of them have no relation to the students of Belgrade or other universities. In addition, the students who want to study cannot, after all, replace the president of the country and respond on his behalf to the demands. The protests are often ignored, and participants have repeatedly emphasized the president's cold attitude toward what is happening. For example, at a video conference with Orbán, the latter supported Vučić¹⁰. The demands are often positioned as an attempt to destabilize the state by Western intelligence services; the criticism often appeals to the importance of uniting in the face of an external enemy, while at the same time the side of the authorities tries to make concessions, releasing detained students and attempting to "technically" fulfill the demand connected with increasing the education budget. The question of payments to the affected families receives little coverage in the media. At the same time, non-government media often cover the story of how, within the framework of the government protest, homeless and very poor people were invited and came to the protest in order to eat sandwiches¹¹. The filming is done unprofessionally, and in close-up it becomes noticeable who comes out to support the government. As a result, instead of a coordinated strategy, there emerges an aggregate of median decisions rather than a single coordinated strategy.

The chains of equivalence can be seen in Appendix No. 6.

On the basis of the analysis carried out, the protest chain remains at a greater advantage. First of all, this happens because the authorities' chain of the "color revolution" failed at the international level, since the European Parliament in its resolution directly rejected the narrative of Western interference and qualified it as Russian disinformation. Moreover, by inviting the FSB to investigate the incident with the sound weapon, the authorities themselves confirmed exactly what they had accused the protesters of: dependence on an external actor, only not a Western one but a Russian one¹².

The arrest of the former ministers Momirović and Vesić on charges of causing 115 million dollars in damage to the budget effectively confirmed the protesters' thesis of systemic corruption: the authorities themselves admitted what they had previously denied.

It is worth drawing attention to the scale of the actions. 10,700 actions in 630 localities, 1,200 local community assemblies, the largest demonstration in the history of Serbia on 15 March. The pro-government rally of 11-12 April, organized with civil servants brought in by bus, failed to seize the initiative.

But a strong discursive position does not mean a political victory either. The president remains the same, institutional change is not taking place. The discursive hegemony has not been converted into a political result. Since the protest movements continue to this day, there is as yet no answer to the question of whether the chain of equivalences is capable of taking root in new institutions or will remain a protest mobilization without an institutional outcome.

1. Student demands / Zahteva // Blokade fakulteta, 2025. URL: https://blokade.org/en/zahtevi/
2. The Student demands / Zahteva // Blokade fakulteta. 2025. URL: https://blokade.org/en/zahtevi/ (дата обращения: 16.06.2026).
3. The Student Movement Challenging State and Societal Capture in Serbia // The Loop (ECPR). 2025. URL: https://theloop.ecpr.eu/the-student-movement-challenging-state-and-societal-capture-in-serbia/ (дата обращения: 16.06.2026).
4. Studenti iz Beograda peške stigli u Novi Sad, odali poštu nastradalima // Danas. 2025. 31 Jan. URL: https://www.danas.rs/vesti/drustvo/studenti-idu-peske-za-novi-sad/ (дата обращения: 16.06.2026).
5. Obraćanje predsednika Vučića naciji povodom tragedije u Novom Sadu // N1 Srbija. 2024. 25 Nov. URL: https://n1info.rs/vesti/obracanje-predsednika-vucica/ (дата обращения: 16.06.2026).
6. Там же.
7. Christian Science Monitor, 26.02.2025, https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2025/0226/serbia-vucic-student-protest-novi-sad
8. European Parliamentary Research Service. Anti-government Protests in Serbia: At a Glance // European Parliament. 2025. PE 775.906. URL: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/ATAG/2025/775906/EPRS_ATA(2025)775906_EN.pdf (дата обращения: 12.06.2026). European Parliamentary Research Service, 2025)
9. UN OHCHR. Serbia Must Halt Crackdown on Student Movement, Uphold Human Rights and Academic Freedom: UN Experts // Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. 2025. 4 August. URL: https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/08/serbia-must-halt-crackdown-student-movement-uphold-human-rights-and-academic
10. Vučić Declares Color Revolution Is Over // Eurointegration. 2025. 15 Apr. URL: https://eurointegration.com.ua/news/2025/04/15/7205050/ (дата обращения: 16.06.2026).
11. „Sendvič protesti" u Beogradu // Južne Vesti. 2025. 24 Feb. URL: https://www.juznevesti.com/drustvo/sendvic-protesti-u-beogradu/ (дата обращения: 16.06.2026).; Европейский парламент, Резолюция 2025/2917(RSP), п. о мобилизации
12. European Parliament. Resolution 2025/2917(RSP) of 22 October 2025 on the polarisation and increased repression in Serbia, one year after the Novi Sad tragedy. URL https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/TA-10-2025-0248_EN.pdf

Martyrs

In the pro-government discourse, the main "victim" is positioned as statehood itself and its symbols, which are allegedly under attack. The governing side quotes: "We will not permit the destruction of state institutions". The role of those "harmed by external interference" is assigned to supporters of the regime and to Serbia itself as a sovereign state that has become the target of a "color revolution". This leads to a characteristic feature of the pro-government discourse: the devaluation of human casualties for the sake of preserving the structure. Prime Minister Miloš Vučević stated directly: "You cannot destroy the state because of 15 dead, nor 155, nor 1555"¹. Within this logic the death of people is subordinated to the priority of preserving state institutions.

In the case of the protest discourse, the martyrs become the victims of corruption and state violence. This category serves to expand the "chain of equivalence", linking the tragedy to political demands. The central dislocation event was the death of 16 people in the collapse of the canopy at the railway station in Novi Sad. For the protesters these people are not accidental victims but martyrs of a system in which "corruption kills". Students emphasize personal involvement: "Any of us could have been under that roof". A separate category is made up of social martyrs. These are people who lost their jobs for publicly expressing solidarity, such as the playwright Momir Pejatović, the chef Branko Kišić, or the teacher Predrag Mijatović. Their dismissals move the conflict out of the academic milieu into the space of the struggle for labor rights. Victims of direct violence numbered 3,400 injured in the course of clashes, students beaten with bats or hurt when cars drove into them, as well as citizens who suffered hearing damage from the use of the acoustic weapon. In the protest discourse these people embody the "terror" of the regime against its own people.

Heroes

In the competing discourses the category of "heroes" is formed on the basis of a specific matrix: the statement "X is a hero" is recognized as true if the object conforms to the rules of label attribution within the given system.

The pro-government matrix constructs the image of the hero through vertical loyalty and the defense of institutions from the "external threat". Political leaders act as the main defenders of the system. Heroization is reinforced by external support from "Hungarian patriots" (Viktor Orbán) and the leaders of Republika Srpska (Milorad Dodik).

The "loyalists" are a formalized network of 17,000 SNS activists mobilized for counter-protests and for the "defense of the state by all means". Those recognized as heroes are the ones who demonstrate unconditional devotion to the president and readiness to counter the "color revolution".

To fight for the main signifier "student", the authorities created their own category of "heroes", an organization of young people who "want to study" rather than protest, "Students 2.0" (ćaci). This group is supported by "JSO veterans" who set up tents to protect them in the parks.

The hero is the "strong and responsible state" itself, which saves the country from destabilization and chaos.

In the protest matrix, heroization is directed at subjects who display civic courage, professional solidarity, and physical endurance. The central figures are the students who initiate the blockades of the faculties. Heroization here is horizontal in character: at the plenums, where decisions are made collectively, "the hero" becomes anyone who is ready to lead the protest. Ordinary citizens perceive the students as "saviors". Professional communities also play a role. Included in the chain of equivalence of "heroes" are the 4,000 professors who signed the petition, the lawyers who declared a strike, and the IT specialists who created a network of financial solidarity for the teachers.

Recognized as heroes are the participants in symbolically charged practices:

Participants in the 90 km walking marches from Belgrade to Novi Sad².

Bikers who organized a record support motorcade, and farmers who broke through the gendarmerie cordon on tractors on the campus of Novi Sad³.

Student-athletes who made a bicycle ride to Strasbourg and an ultramarathon to Brussels under the slogan "Od mog sela do Brisela" (from my village to Brussels).

Special mention should be made of the spontaneous helpers. Adjacent to the category of heroes are the 120 Belgrade taxi drivers who ferried students for free, and the residents of small towns (Stara Pazova, Sopot) who met the marches with food and support⁴.

The heroes of the protest are legitimized through grassroots support and mass scale (325,000 people at the rally on 15 March). The heroes of the authorities are legitimized through administrative resources (organized busing in of civil servants) and the rhetoric of state sovereignty. The conflict of interpretations leads to the situation where a person recognized as a hero in one discourse (for example, a student on a barricade) is assessed in the other as an "enemy" or "foreign agent", a "disturber of order".

Norms

Norms act as the "rules of the game" that define permissible behavior of subjects within each matrix. If the protest discourse normalizes grassroots participation and solidarity, then the pro-government one normalizes hierarchical discipline and unconditional loyalty.

In the pro-government discourse what matters is that political loyalty is the foundation of norms, discipline. Thus, dismissal for a "violation of labor discipline", which is in fact punishment for a political stance, is considered normal. This is how the playwright Momir Pejatović was dismissed for 15 minutes of silence⁵.

The authorities postulate the right to defend state institutions by any means, including violence. This is enshrined in statements about a "strong state"⁶ and in threats to use weapons against the protesters, which points to the importance of institutional sovereignty⁷.

It is a norm to use administrative resources to organize mass support actions. The forced busing in of civil servants is regarded by the system as an obligatory element of political work⁸.

One of the radical norms is state paternalism. "Children are the property of the state"⁹. Such a formulation justifies control over education and the suppression of student autonomy¹⁰.

The protest movement develops norms aimed at dismantling the vertical of power and creating a space of freedom. The main norm of decision-making becomes the plenum, where every participant has an equal vote. This is contrasted with the usual party hierarchy¹¹. Instead of applause, a norm of a "gesture of approval" (waving the hands) is introduced so as not to interrupt the discussion [Interview 5]. The foundation is academic autonomy. The university is perceived as an inviolable space. The intrusion of police into the faculties in Niš and Novi Sad is interpreted as a gross violation of a fundamental norm of education¹².

It becomes a norm to support colleagues regardless of political views. An example is the IT community's creation of a network of financial assistance for teachers whose salaries were cut for taking part in strikes¹³. Civil disobedience in the form of blockades of roads and bridges is normalized as a lawful form of response to the "institutional deafness" of the authorities¹⁴.

Values

In the political space of Serbia in 2024-2025, values act not merely as abstract concepts but as the foundation of two competing valuative matrices, in which the very same objects receive diametrically opposite assessments.

The pro-government matrix is built around the value of a strong and responsible state, which is positioned as the sole guarantor of the nation's survival in the face of "external threats". The preservation of the institutions of power is declared the highest priority. For its sake casualties can be devalued: thus Prime Minister Miloš Vučević stated that "you cannot destroy the state because of 15 dead", asserting the primacy of the structure over the individual¹⁵. The protests are interpreted exclusively as a "color revolution" coordinated from outside. The authorities broadcast the value of "protection from foreign interference", relying on the support of leaders such as Viktor Orbán and Vladimir Putin.

Unconditional devotion to the state apparatus and to the SNS party is considered the highest virtue of a "patriot". The extreme manifestation of this logic was the statement of deputy Đukanović about children, which underscores the value of total control.

As a result, the extraction of lithium and the realization of large development projects (for example, with the participation of Jared Kushner) are presented as "strategic resources" whose value is higher than the ecological risks.

In the protest discourse the key value is human life and the physical safety of the living environment. This value became dominant after the collapse of the canopy in Novi Sad, which laid bare the link between corruption and the threat to life: students emphasized that "any of us could have been under that roof", turning fear into a political demand for safety.

Among the other fundamental values of the protest are:

Truth and transparency. Protesters in Novi Pazar proclaimed the slogan "Truth is our most important exam", demanding an honest investigation of the causes of the disasters and of the corruption schemes.

Academic autonomy and freedom. The university is perceived as a space free from police dictate. The violation of this norm (for example, the intrusion of police into the Faculty of Medicine in Niš) is interpreted as an encroachment on the highest value of education.

Solidarity and horizontality. The value recognized is grassroots mutual aid, such as the financial support of teachers by the IT community or the free help of taxi drivers to students. The plenums as a form of "horizontal democracy" embody the value of collective participation as opposed to leadership hierarchies.

Labor rights. Through the "chain of equivalence" the student demands became connected with the defense of the rights of workers dismissed for expressing a civic stance.

The main conflict unfolds around the signifier "security". For the protest this is the security of the citizen from the corrupt state. For the authorities this is the security of the state apparatus itself from the protesting citizens, whom Šešelj called to suppress "by all means, including weapons".

This is a complete non-intersection of lexical fields: if the protest discourse speaks of "bloody hands" and "solidarity", then the pro-government one speaks of "stability" and "agents of influence", which makes dialogue between them practically impossible.

Forms of representation

The protest discourse builds its representation through physical presence and horizontal solidarity, while the pro-government discourse relies on institutional mobilization and the creation of counter-structures.

The authorities represent themselves as a "strong state", using administrative resources to demonstrate mass loyalty. Pro-government actions are characterized by the forced busing in of state employees¹⁶. In the protest milieu such actions came to be called "sandwich" actions, because their participants received food and money (about 2,000 dinars) for their presence¹⁷.

For example, the "student camp" in Pionirski Park in Belgrade serves as a representation of the authorities, in the guise of youth who are also fighting for a right¹⁸. Another form of representing the strength of the authorities was the systematic disruption of the protesters' movement: the cancellation of trains and buses, and the diversion of transport for "extraordinary technical inspections" ahead of major actions¹⁹.

The role of the media is important. The use of a controlled media ecosystem (Informer, Pink TV) to propagate narratives that criminalize the protest as a "color revolution"²⁰.

Farmers also became actors at pro-government rallies. There were recorded attempts to pay and recruit tractor drivers to block the entrances into Belgrade in order to hinder the holding of protest marches²¹.

Protest representation strives for maximum openness and internationalization, while state representation is aimed at isolating the protest and creating its "fake" doubles.

External actor

External support for the authorities comes predominantly from leaders who share the narrative of defending sovereignty from external interference ("color revolutions").

Prime Minister Viktor Orbán became a key external ally, personally appearing at a pro-government rally with the words: "Serbian patriots can count on Hungarian patriots"²². His foreign minister Péter Szijjártó directly called the protests an attempt to destabilize the country. Vladimir Putin and Alexander Lukashenko support official Belgrade in the rhetoric of confronting "color revolutions"²³. At the discursive level Moscow and Belgrade are synchronized through statements about a joint struggle against destabilization (the meetings of Vulin and Shoigu). Milorad Dodik of Republika Srpska consistently supports Aleksandar Vučić, stating that the protests inflict enormous damage on Serbia²⁴.

On the American side, special envoy Richard Grenell expressed support for the authorities, stating that the United States does not support those who seize government buildings by force (AP News, Grenell Backs Serbia's Vucic, 2025). The protest movement seeks legitimacy in European institutions, international law, and the support of the diaspora. A key act of legitimation was the European Parliament's Resolution 2025/2917(RSP), which recorded the scale of repression and violence against the students²⁵. The movement is also supported by the Council of Europe, which expressed concern over the use of force against the demonstrators.

External protests in support of the Serbian protest also occupy a strong niche. Solidarity protests in 50+ cities worldwide (from New York to Tokyo) legitimize the movement as both nationwide and global.

The protest is supported as well through regional solidarity. President of Georgia Salome Zourabichvili drew a direct parallel between the struggle for freedom in Georgia and in Serbia²⁶.

Instruments of suppression

On the side of the protest discourse the principal form of attack is the creation of street barricades, permanent pedestrian crossings, and the staging of mourning marches. Such tactics respond to the narratives about the status of the protesters (marginals) and at the same time deny any opportunity to call the protest violent and mad.

Meanwhile, the side of the authorities deploys digital technologies: the tracking of protesters, the monitoring of activity in the groups of movement participants, and it also cancels train service on the days of planned protests in order to reduce the size of the movement.

In conclusion, the protest movement is resilient, because the method made it possible to reveal a value bifurcation: the tragedy in Novi Sad turned latent discontent into a dominant hierarchy of values in which physical safety and truth became more important than the pro-government "stability". The resilience is fueled by the matrix of martyrs: the 16 dead created a "morally invulnerable trigger" that cannot be delegitimized. The study showed that the sides exist in non-intersecting lexical fields (for example, the protest is centered around "corruption", which the authorities do not mention at all), which rules out the possibility of a communicative resolution of the conflict and preserves the confrontation.

Hypothesis 1 is confirmed. The 16 dead are not a trigger but a central dislocation event that shattered the customary rhythm of life in Serbia²⁷.

The category of martyrs shows the indissoluble link between fact (the collapse) and assessment (corruption kills). The slogan "Korupcija ubija" (corruption kills) is a literalization of the metaphor; it is both an evaluative and a factual statement.

The matrix shows the following chain: the collapse (01.11.2024) → the attack on the students of the Faculty of Dramatic Arts (22.11.2024) → each subsequent act of violence expands the chain of equivalence. This confirms the conclusion that the tragedy creates a "morally invulnerable trigger", but also that the tragedy is not a one-off event but generates a matrix from which new martyrs are continuously produced (dismissed workers, journalists, detainees). It is also worth noting the importance of past protests. The Novi Sad tragedy is not isolated. The COVID protests of 2020 and the school shootings of 2023 form a chain: victims of COVID → victims of the shootings → victims of the collapses → victims of systemic corruption. The Novi Sad tragedy became a point of crystallization of accumulated traumas, not an isolated cause.

Hypothesis 2 is confirmed. The horizontal structure itself is a norm, not a principle. Respondents explicitly explain the ban on leadership through the experience of the failures of past protests: "In the past, when protests had leaders, they fell apart" [Interview 6]. "A single leader is always the road to corruption" [Interview 8]. This is not an organizational choice but a value orientation assimilated through historical experience.

The "16 minutes of silence" is not merely a ritual but a structured valuative statement that lowers the threshold of entry, since to participate it is enough simply to stop and stay silent. No ideology, no party affiliation, not even an understanding of the political context is required. In addition, each repetition of the ritual reactivates the valuative structure, preventing the tragedy from becoming "normalized".

As a result, all of this binds the participants together: "We have created family ties with those who come regularly" [Interview 9].

In this case the plenums became not merely a tradition but gradually initiated a process of institutionalization. The plenums are a space where the protest valuative builds its own discursive field with a non-intersecting lexical field. The collective is opposed to personalized power; the martyrs of the movement are able to withstand the narrative of the external threat.

A special role is assigned to irony and humor. 8.87% of the corpus is the code "Humor/symbols". Pikachu, the sandwich, "Whoever doesn't jump is a čađa". Humor neutralizes the criminalizing labels of the authorities. This is a ritual practice that is difficult to notice in a quantitative analysis. Ritual practices are not instruments of mobilization but forms of representation of the valuative, through which the collective consciousness reproduces itself.

Hypothesis 3 is partially confirmed. "Formal compliance" should be noted as an institutional mechanism.

The duration is determined by the impossibility of an institutional "filling" of the empty signifier "odgovornost". "Odgovornost" is the central empty signifier of the protest valuative (in Korotchenko's terms this is the nodal point of the matrix). Its frequency is 0.7% (Zvijer), but the entire chain of equivalence passes through it:

For the families = a criminal investigation.

For the students = the publication of 857 documents.

For the workers = the end of corrupt contracts.

For the farmers = the end of pressure on the disloyal.

For the diaspora = institutional reform.

Each group fills "odgovornost" with its own content. But not one of these fillings can be realized through the existing institutions, since the prosecutor's office received the documents but 77.2% are hidden; the investigation did not lead to the prosecution of the key figures, and all the attackers were pardoned²⁸. The institutions formally exist but are incapable of becoming a channel for the signifier.

As a result the empty signifier remains unfilled; it continues to function as a point of attraction, because no answer from the authorities "closes" it.

In addition, the analysis of the normative legal acts showed a valuative imitation. The government announced a budget of 12.03 billion (approximately the declared 12.01 billion) but published 195 of 857 documents. The authorities produce a statement as "the demand is fulfilled", but in fact this is a case of a "false statement" in Korotchenko's terms, where "the factual side exists, is known to someone, and is deliberately concealed"²⁹.

The protest valuative recognizes the substitution: "the demands are not fulfilled" (blokade.org); CRTA records "convincing support". Formal compliance does not fill the empty signifier but lays bare its emptiness, thereby fueling mobilization.

The protest valuative does not contest the pro-government signifiers; it ignores them, building its own lexical field. The pro-government one does not name "corruption", the word that defines the entire protest valuative is absent from its field.

In Korotchenko's terms, this is a poly-valuative society, where two "we" attach polar assessments to one object. But in the Serbian case the polarization goes further, showing how two valuatives do not simply assess the same objects differently. They exist in non-intersecting lexical spaces. They have different nodal points, different chains of equivalence, even different dictionaries.

Between the two collective consciousnesses there is no communicative channel; the strategies of suppression failed not because they are weak but because they are addressed to a subject that does not hear, its lexical field does not contain the signifiers through which the authorities are trying to act.

The duration of the Serbian protest is determined by three valuative mechanisms. First, the empty signifier "odgovornost" is structurally unfillable through the existing institutions; the court and the prosecutor's office are incapable of producing a true statement, and any attempt is recognized as a false statement with a degenerate factual component. Second, the strategy of formal compliance does not fill the signifier but lays bare its emptiness, reactivating mobilization. Third, the two valuatives exist in non-intersecting lexical fields, "corruption" (9 versus 0) and "color revolution" (0 versus 43), which makes the conflict communicatively unresolvable. The protest lasts as long as there is a gap between the institutional form (the court, the parliament, the prosecutor's office exist) and the institutional function (they are incapable of filling the empty signifier).

1. Students left messages to Prime Minister Vučević regarding his shameful statement // Vreme. 2024. 16 Dec. URL: https://vreme.com/en/vesti/studenti-ostavili-poruke-premijeru-vucevicu-povodom-njegove-sramne-izjave/ (accessed: 12.06.2026).
2. Studenti iz Beograda peške stigli u Novi Sad, odali poštu nastradalima // Danas. 2025. 31 Jan. URL: https://www.danas.rs/vesti/drustvo/studenti-idu-peske-za-novi-sad/ (accessed: 16.06.2026).
3. Farmers with students: Tractors have left for Belgrade // Vreme. 2025. Jan. URL: https://vreme.com/en/vesti/poljoprivrednici-uz-studente-traktori-su-krenuli-za-beograd/ (accessed: 16.06.2026).
4. Trgovište, Ražanj, Gadžin Han na nogama — južnjaci ne odustaju, traže pravdu // Južne Vesti. 2025. Feb. URL: https://www.juznevesti.com/drustvo/trgoviste-razanj-gadzin-han-na-nogama-juznjaci-ne-odustaju-traze-pravdu/ (accessed: 16.06.2026).
5. Momir je dobio otkaz u leskovačkom pozorištu: „Ostao sam bez posla zbog podrške studentima, pretnje krenule kad sam počeo da izlazim na 15 minuta" // Nova.rs. 2025. 23 Feb. URL: https://nova.rs/vesti/drustvo/momir-je-dobio-otkaz-u-pozoristu-jer-je-podrzao-studente/ (accessed: 16.06.2026).
6. Šešelj oštro upozorio pred ilegalni protest: Država se brani svim sredstvima, pa i oružjem! // Informer. 2025. 15 Mar. URL: https://informer.rs/politika/vesti/999482/protest-2025-beograd-nasilje-vojislav-seselj (accessed: 16.06.2026).
7. See note 6.
8. European Parliament. Resolution 2025/2917(RSP) of 22 October 2025 on the Situation in Serbia. URL: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/TA-10-2025-0248_EN.pdf (accessed: 12.06.2026).
9. Poslanik SNS Đukanović: Deca su vlasništvo države // Danas. 2024. 19 Dec. URL: https://www.danas.rs/vesti/politika/poslanik-sns-djukanovic-deca-su-vlasnistvo-drzave/ (accessed: 16.06.2026).
10. Studenti iz Beograda peške stigli u Novi Sad, odali poštu nastradalima // Danas. 2025. 31 Jan. URL: https://www.danas.rs/vesti/drustvo/studenti-idu-peske-za-novi-sad/ (accessed: 16.06.2026).
11. Serbia's Student Plenums: A Blueprint for Renewing Democracy // Balkan Insight. 2025. 14 Apr. URL: https://balkaninsight.com/2025/04/14/serbias-student-plenums-a-blueprint-for-renewing-democracy/ (accessed: 16.06.2026).
12. Studenti blokiraju pet mostova u Nišu u subotu // Južne Vesti. 2025. Apr. URL: https://www.juznevesti.com/drustvo/studenti-blokiraju-pet-mostova-u-nisu-u-subotu/ (accessed: 16.06.2026).
13. IT struka najavljuje pokretanje mreže finansijske solidarnosti: Podrška prosvetarima // 021.rs. 2025. 5 Mar. URL: https://www.021.rs/story/Info/Srbija/402490/IT-struka-najavljuje-pokretanje-mreze-finansijske-solidarnosti-Podrska-prosvetarima.html (accessed: 16.06.2026).
14. See note 4.
15. Vučević (predsednik SNS) o blokadama: Nećemo dozvoliti da parališu državu // 021.rs. 2025. Jan. URL: https://www.021.rs/story/Info/Srbija/414029/Vucevic-predsednik-SNS-o-blokadama-Necemo-dozvoliti-da-paralisu-drzavu.html (accessed: 16.06.2026).
16. See footnote 47.
17. Od jednog čoveka na blokadi do 15.000 ljudi — na jugu Srbije do sada protesti u 27 mesta // Južne Vesti. 2025. Feb. URL: https://www.juznevesti.com/drustvo/od-jednog-coveka-na-blokadi-do-15-000-ljudi-na-jugu-srbije-do-sada-protesti-u-27-mesta/ (accessed: 16.06.2026).
18. Niški studenti najavljuju novu fazu borbe u 2026 // Južne Vesti. 2025. URL: https://www.juznevesti.com/politika/niski-studenti-najavljuju-novu-fazu-borbe-u-2026-imali-smo-proteste-i-budjenje-otpora-sledi-strateski-pristup/ (accessed: 16.06.2026).
19. Detalji o mreži finansijske solidarnosti prosvetarima: IT zajednica poziva građane da doniraju // 021.rs. 2025. Mar. URL: https://www.021.rs/story/Novi-Sad/Vesti/403187/Detalji-o-mrezi-finansijske-solidarnosti-prosvetarima-IT-zajednica-poziva-gradjane-da-doniraju.html (accessed: 16.06.2026).
20. See footnote 47.
21. Poljoprivrednici upozoravaju: Kamioni vuku traktore za Beograd pred protest najavljen za 15. mart // Agroklub. 2025. 10 Mar. URL: https://www.agroklub.rs/poljoprivredne-vesti/poljoprivrednici-upozoravaju-kamioni-vuku-traktore-za-beograd-pred-protest-najavljen-za-15-mart/102559/ (accessed: 16.06.2026).
22. Vučić Declares Color Revolution Is Over // Eurointegration. 2025. 15 Apr. URL: https://eurointegration.com.ua/news/2025/04/15/7205050/ (accessed: 16.06.2026).
23. The authoritarian playbook: How governments in Georgia, Slovakia and Serbia employ same narratives and tactics against protests // Global Voices Advox. 2025. 22 May. URL: https://advox.globalvoices.org/2025/05/22/the-authoritarian-playbook-how-governments-in-georgia-slovakia-and-serbia-employ-same-narratives-and-tactics-against-protests/ (accessed: 16.06.2026).
24. Al Jazeera. 2025. 14 Sep. URL: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/9/14/political-crisis-rumbles-in-serbia-as-duelling-camps-hold-parallel-rallies (accessed: 16.06.2026).
25. See note 9.
26. Governments in Georgia, Slovakia and Serbia deploy same narratives to delegitimise protests // IFEX. 2025. URL: https://ifex.org/governments-in-georgia-slovakia-and-serbia-deploy-same-narratives-to-deligitimise-protests/ (accessed: 16.06.2026).
27. Corruption Kills: Thousands March in Serbia // N1 Srbija. 2024. 1 Nov. URL: https://n1info.rs/vesti/corruption-kills-thousands-march/ (accessed: 16.06.2026).; Studenti iz Beograda peške stigli u Novi Sad, odali poštu nastradalima // Danas. 2025. 31 Jan. URL: https://www.danas.rs/vesti/drustvo/studenti-idu-peske-za-novi-sad/ (accessed: 16.06.2026).
28. European Parliament. Resolution 2025/2917(RSP). paras. 14.
29. Korotchenko Yu. M. Op. cit. P. 192.

The analysis of the interviews made it possible to juxtapose the quantitative data of the discourse analysis and the valuative modeling with the interpretations of the movement's participants themselves. In total, 11 semi-structured interviews were conducted with students of the University of Belgrade and eyewitnesses of the events.

Causes of the protest and the role of the Novi Sad tragedy

When asked what had prompted them to take to the streets, 9 of the 11 respondents indicated that there had been many causes even before the tragedy, and that the collapse in Novi Sad became the immediate occasion for active action. The main goal of the protests was formulated by participants not as the overthrow of the government, but as systemic change:

The main goal of the protests is to change not only the government that came to power in 2012, but also to change the whole cartel, all the mafia corruption, the system of betrayal that has existed in Serbia since 1990 [Interview 10].

At the same time, the importance of publishing the documents was emphasized. The overthrow itself, in the opinion of a number of respondents, is not the goal of the protest [Interview 1, 3].

The figure of Vučić

If corruption forms the structural backdrop of discontent, then its personal embodiment for the movement's participants became the figure of the president. In the interviews he is described as a systemically untrustworthy leader alienated from society:

Vučić is a liar… whatever he says, it will turn out to be the complete opposite of his words [Interview 10].

A strategy of ignoring is separately emphasized:

He left, he ignores the students… he behaves as if nothing is happening in the country [Interview 4].

Respondents acknowledge the president's ability to hold on to power through foreign-policy balancing between the EU and Russia [Interview 5], which reinforces the sense of the political closure of the system. Many participants describe the regime directly as authoritarian:

The president is not an open dictator, but he wants to be one [Interview 1]; The current government is run by a single lying autocrat, and we do not want simply to replace him with another one just like him [Interview 9].

Socio-economic vulnerability

An important background factor of mobilization is the high level of poverty and social vulnerability. According to the Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia, the share of the population at risk of poverty decreased from 22.4% in 2020 to 19.7% in 2024; however, the interviews emphasize the discrepancy between the official statistics and the everyday experience of citizens. Economic instability creates the possibility of instrumentalizing the poorer strata of the population:

They were given 2000 dinars, and they went… these people are so poor that they will do anything for those 2000 dinars [Interview 1].

The "sandwich protests" organized by the authorities are described in a similar way:

People went there not out of conviction, but for the sake of food and money [Interview 4].

The interviews also emphasize the degradation of the social system and the absence of prospects [Interview 3].

Latent causes: preceding waves of mobilization

The politicization of Serbian society grew gradually, over the course of preceding waves of protest activity. The experience of the COVID protests of 2019–2020 is regarded by informants as an important mobilizing precedent, the first experience of a mass confrontation with the state repressive apparatus [Interview 10, 9]. The COVID protests served as a "school of protest" that prepared, in infrastructural terms, the subsequent mobilizations. A substantial mobilizing factor was also the school shootings of 2023, which respondents characterize as a turning point in public consciousness:

It was like 9/11 for Serbia [Interview 1].

The environmental protests against lithium mining ("Jadar") became an additional catalyst, linking environmental issues with questions of economic dependence and the absence of democratic control over strategic resources [Interview 5, 9].

Summary of the interview analysis

On the basis of the interviews it can be asserted that the collapse in Novi Sad became the immediate occasion for the beginning of the active phase of protest mobilization. However, the tragedy was not the sole cause of collective action; it acted as a trigger that actualized the totality of structural, political, and socio-economic factors that had been accumulating in Serbian society over the course of several years.

Within the framework of the comparative analysis, using a prompt (Appendix X), cases of protest since 2010 were collected and compared with Serbia. The conclusions of the analysis would make it possible to understand whether the Serbian case is unique or whether it fits into a pattern observed in other hybrid regimes. The task of the analysis is to identify the factors that influence the duration and outcome of a movement.

All the data are processed on four levels that connect the discourse theory of Laclau/Mouffe with the quantitative V-Dem indices.

A more detailed account of the criteria and the prompt can be found in Appendix No. 1; in brief:

1. Socio-political context - the quantitative V-Dem political corruption index (V-Dem corruption index), the V-Dem free expression index, and the Bertelsmann Transformation Index (BTI).
2. Structure and organization of the protest - qualitative (horizontality, plenums, composition).
3. Discourse and symbolism (following Laclau/Mouffe) - empty signifiers, antagonism.
4. The authorities' response strategy - labels, tityshki (hired thugs), ignoring.

This produced 12 cases.

Table No. 5. Matching protests with their causes.

Each case is described in more detail in Appendix No. 4.

For the analysis, the peak year of the protest and the preceding year were used, in order to track the deterioration that provokes the protest.

Table No. 6. Indicators of the 11 cases and the indices.

Each indicator is described in more detail in Appendix No. 2.

Serbia occupies a characteristic niche of a hybrid regime with high corruption and low democracy, but with a significantly higher freedom of information than the harsh autocracies. It is precisely this combination, formal institutions plus de facto authoritarianism, that creates the conditions for a prolonged but fruitless protest.

Which cases are similar to Serbia qualitatively and which quantitatively, and which on both counts?

Quantitatively close cases (similar regime type, level of corruption and freedom):

1. Turkey - 0.807 - the closest "twin" by the numbers. Both are electoral autocracies with almost identical corruption (0.712 against 0.760) and free expression (0.446 against 0.438). The difference is that Turkey was more democratic (polyarchy 0.469 against 0.315).
2. Belarus - 0.750; both are in the zone of electoral autocracies (regime = 1), but Belarus is far more closed (free expression 0.129 against 0.438).
3. Georgia - 0.745, the same regime type (1); both are post-socialist hybrids.

Qualitatively close cases (similar in structure, discourse, organization):

1. Bulgaria - 0.510, antagonist as "the system"/"the mafia", a student core, horizontality, an anti-corruption frame, duration (400 days). The only case that combines a systemic antagonist plus duration plus a student core, as in Serbia.
2. Chile - 0.506 - the only case (besides Serbia) with a framing of the antagonist at the level of "the system" AND an abstraction of the antagonist at the level of "the system". Assemblies (cabildos), students, supra-partisanship. But quantitatively Chile is the complete opposite: a developed democracy with minimal corruption (0.055), which makes the quantitative similarity indicator (quant_sim) minimal (0.356).
3. Georgia - 0.468 - horizontality, students, ongoing status, labels, tityshki (hired thugs).

Georgia became the leader of the ranking because it scores high on both components rather than leading in only one. It is a "balanced-similar" case.

The paradoxical data on Chile showed that it is the closest in discourse (qual = 0.506) but the most distant in context (quant = 0.356). This shows that the discursive strategies of protest (a systemic antagonist, plenums, empty signifiers) can be reproduced under fundamentally different political conditions, from electoral autocracies to developed democracies.

Conclusions on the three hypotheses

Hypothesis 1 is confirmed, but with a qualification. A tragedy is a unique type of trigger in the sample (1 of 12). No other case was launched by a catastrophe involving the loss of human life. However, the comparative analysis shows that a tragedy does not simply "launch" a protest but shapes its discursive structure through moral invulnerability, a unique empty signifier, a "laying bare of the system". Unlike state reforms (6 of 12 cases), where the authorities can frame the protest as a "political question", a tragedy creates a frame of mourning to justice, which it is practically impossible to delegitimize. The Serbian trigger, in terms of vulnerability to delegitimization, stands on a par with the murder of Kuciak in Slovakia: minimal.

The tragedy gives rise to "responsibility", a signifier that is present in no other case. It is at once concrete (who is to blame for the collapse?) and systemic (who is to blame for the corruption that led to the collapse?). This "double bottom" explains why a symbolic concession (the resignation of Vučević) does not satisfy the protest.

The trigger_reveals_system data showed a positive result. It coincides with ALL 12 cases; this is a necessary condition for mass mobilization. But in Serbia the laying bare is literal: the collapse of the canopy, caused by corruption in the allocation of contracts, literalizes the metaphor of institutional dysfunction.

The protest did indeed arise as a reaction to the tragedy, but the tragedy functions not as an isolated cause but as a discursive trigger that "laid bare the system" and created the conditions for the formation of a chain of equivalence that linked anti-corruption, legal, and moral demands.

Hypothesis 2 is partially confirmed. Horizontality is necessary but not sufficient. Ritual practices (plenums, silence) are the critical differentiator.

10 of the 12 cases are horizontal. Horizontal organization has become the standard of the contemporary protest, and therefore it does not explain why it is specifically Serbia that lasts 500+ days. Assemblies and plenums matter more. The formal institutions of direct democracy (plenums, cabildos, forums) create what may be called an "institutionalization of counter-power", a kind of alternative space.

Data on duration

Protests with assemblies (Serbia, Bulgaria, Chile, Belarus, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Turkey): average duration ~211 days (median 180). Protests without assemblies (Georgia, Romania, Slovakia): average duration ~152 days (median 60).

But the correlation is ambiguous, since Turkey had assemblies and held out for 30 days, whereas Georgia without assemblies lasted 365+. This means that assemblies reduce the costs of participation but do not guarantee duration. Duration is determined by the interaction of the organizational form with other factors (regime type, violence, antagonist).

It is important to specify, regarding the practices, that the "16 minutes of silence", a direct reference to the number of the dead, functions as a ritual of solidarity with a zero cost of entry. Any bystander can stop and be silent, needing neither political literacy, nor party identification, nor even physical presence at the march. This reduces the costs of participation to a minimum and broadens the coalition to a cross-ideological one (the only three such cases are Serbia, Turkey, Sri Lanka). It follows from this that horizontality is a necessary condition of mobilization in contemporary protests, but that plenums and ritual practices (silence, symbols such as the "bloody hand") are a specific mechanism that institutionalizes participation regardless of political identity, reduces the cost of entry to a minimum, and creates a regular rhythm of protest that sustains mobilization over the long run. Serbia is one of the few cases where all three elements are present simultaneously.

Hypothesis 3 is confirmed. The structure of power is the key predictor of duration and of the type of outcome.

The data make it possible to distinguish three clear patterns:

Table No. 7. 4 patterns of social-movement behavior.

Out of the twelve cases in the sample, three groups were distinguished according to the relationship between the institutional environment and the outcome of the protest.

Group A brings together countries with an electoral or liberal democracy (regime 2-3): Romania, Slovakia, Armenia, and Chile. In all four cases an independent judiciary and an accountable parliament were able to channel the demands of the protesters. The conflict was resolved quickly: from 24 days in Armenia to 180 in Chile. The result was either concessions by the authorities or regime change.

Group B comprises the closed autocracies: Belarus and Hong Kong. Polyarchy is below 0.25, free expression below 0.2. Here the authorities had sufficient repressive resources for suppression. The protests held out for half a year (Belarus) and a little longer (Hong Kong) but ended in a victory for the regime.

Group C comprises the electoral autocracies (regime = 1) with polyarchy in the range of 0.2-0.5: Serbia, Georgia, Bulgaria. It is precisely this zone that gives rise to protracted protests. The authorities cannot suppress the movement the way it was done in Minsk, because the formal democratic institutions impose constraints. But they also cannot channel the demands through the courts or parliament, since the institutions are controlled by the executive. The protest in Bulgaria lasted 400 days and ended in concessions. Serbia (500+ days) and Georgia (365+) are ongoing.

The regularity can be traced in the libdem indicator. The cases of group A had a libdem above 0.4, those of group B below 0.1. Group C occupies an intermediate zone (0.2-0.35), where the judiciary formally exists but is incapable of performing the function of arbiter. The result is an institutional deadlock in which the protest can neither win nor be suppressed.

Table No. 8. V-Dem libdem (liberal democracy) as a proxy for judicial independence.

Serbia, with a libdem of 0.225, falls into the zone where the judiciary cannot be an instrument of accountability, while the authorities are not strong enough for open suppression. As a result we obtain an institutional deadlock. The duration of a protest is determined not by the absolute "strength" of the regime but by the relationship between the executive and judicial branches. In electoral autocracies with dependent courts and controlled media the protest drags on, because there are no institutional channels for channeling the demands, and the regime is not strong enough (or is not prepared to pay the price) for open suppression; all this leads to a situation in which the formal democratic procedures create an illusion of the possibility of change, keeping the protesters within the field of non-violent action. It remains to determine whether the Serbian protest is an exceptional case or an element of an emerging pattern.

If Serbia is regarded as a difference, then the Serbian protest is one of the most inclusive in the sample. It is one of three cases with a cross-ideological coalition (alongside Turkey and Sri Lanka) that unites right-wing nationalists, the left, pensioners, veterans, and students. The mechanism operates through empty signifiers ("justice", "responsibility", "dignity") that are abstract enough for each group to invest them with its own content without coming into conflict with the others. The tragedy-trigger reinforces the inclusiveness, since mourning for the dead does not require an ideological position, and the ritual of the "16 minutes of silence" creates a format of participation with a zero threshold of entry. Therefore it can be asserted that the Serbian protest is inclusive.

At the same time, a one-sided analysis limits the validity of the conclusions, so that the analysis is not well-founded. A second scenario is considered below. At the same time, the Serbian case fits into an emerging pattern that I would designate as "protracted horizontal protests in electoral autocracies", that is, an emerging pattern that had no name until the mid-2020s. The features of this pattern are:

1. An electoral autocracy (V-Dem regime = 1) - formal elections plus de facto control over the courts and the media.
2. A horizontal structure with plenums - not simply the absence of a leader, but an institutionalized direct democracy.
3. A systemic antagonist - not a person, but "the cartel"/"the mafia".
4. A moral trigger - a tragedy, a murder, or another event with minimal vulnerability to delegitimization.
5. Symbolic concessions without real institutional change (substantive change) - the regime "feeds" the protest with minor resignations.
6. A duration of 1+ year with an indeterminate outcome.
7. Digital coordination (websites, social networks) as infrastructure.

In our sample this pattern is represented in its pure form by two cases, Serbia and Georgia (both are ongoing in 2026). Bulgaria 2013 was an early forerunner (400 days, but in an electoral democracy, which made it possible to obtain results). Turkey 2013 could have become part of the pattern, but was suppressed by lethal violence within 30 days.

The data make it possible to record the formation of a new type of social movement, characteristic of the hybrid regimes of the post-Soviet and semi-peripheral European space. This type differs from the classical revolutions (Armenia, Bangladesh), which rapidly achieve regime change through the personification of the antagonist; from the classical regression cases (Belarus, Hong Kong), where the autocracy suppresses the movement by force; and from cases of the Romania and Slovakia type, where the institutions channel the demands through concessions.

The Serbian protest fits none of these models. It represents a fourth type, an "institutionalized confrontation in a hybrid regime", in which the protest becomes a permanent parallel structure, achieving neither a change of power, nor suppression, nor concessions. If Georgia continues down the same path, we will obtain two independent confirmations of this pattern, which will make it possible to speak of it not as an anomaly but as an emerging type.

The comparative analysis of 12 cases of mass mobilization (2013-2026) shows that the Serbian protests occupy a unique position at the intersection of two axes: in their qualitative characteristics they are closest to Bulgaria 2013 and Chile 2019 (a systemic antagonist, plenums, a cross-ideological coalition), while in their quantitative context they are closest to Turkey 2013 and Belarus 2020 (an electoral autocracy, high corruption, limited freedom of speech). No single case reproduces all five key elements of the Serbian case simultaneously.

The application of five research methods made it possible to confirm the first hypothesis: the tragedy in Novi Sad became a point of crystallization rather than the sole cause of the protest. The destruction of the narrative of "stability" was documented, along with the consolidation of the nodal point "Korupcija ubija" (9.08% of the corpus). The tragedy was defined as a generative matrix of martyrs, transmitting the demand for "responsibility" as the key empty signifier. Qualitative data (9 of 11 respondents) confirmed that mobilization was driven by previously accumulated traumas (the events of 2020 and 2023), whereas the incident in Novi Sad served as the immediate occasion.

Facts confirming the corruption scheme were revealed, including the technical acceptance of the facility on the day of the disaster (document No. 72) and a fivefold overstatement of the estimate relative to the independent valuation (16 million versus 3 million euros).

The second hypothesis: "Horizontal organization and ritual practices reduce the costs of participation and sustain mobilization" was confirmed with a qualification. Horizontality is not an organizational choice but a value orientation. Rituals are not instruments but forms of reproducing collective consciousness.

According to Tilly's theory, university structures became a ready-made "catnet" - the intersection of a category ("student") and real social ties (faculty, dormitory). The rejection of a leader = the avoidance of the classic dilemma "a leader can be isolated and destroyed."

In the interviews, respondents explain the ban on leadership through the experience of failures: "In the past, when protests had leaders, they fell apart" (Interview 6); "A single leader is always a path to corruption" (Interview 8). The plenum is "a completely new concept for everyone in Serbia" (Interview 5).

In the frequency analysis, the code "Agency/action" = 21.39% describes the protest primarily through action (blockades, marches) rather than through ideology. Humor neutralizes criminalizing labels.

Horizontality becomes a valuative norm; for example, the "16 minutes of silence" is a structured valuative statement performing a threefold function: it lowers the threshold of entry, reproduces martyrs, and binds participants. The protest valuative builds its own lexical field (0 occurrences of "color revolution," 0 of "stability"), which is why suppression failed - it did not enter the discourse of the protest.

In the comparative analysis, Serbia is one of three cases with a cross-ideological coalition. Protests with assemblies last, on average, longer. But horizontality is the norm (10/12 cases), not a distinction; the differentiator is precisely the work of the plenums and rituals.

The third hypothesis: "The duration of a protest depends on the structure of the executive and judicial branches" was confirmed, but the duration is determined not only by institutional weakness but also by a discursive deadlock.

For example, the government announced a budget of 12.03 billion (≈ the stated 12.01 billion), but allocated it to "material expenses" rather than to the entire education budget. The real increase was ~4%, not 20%. Of 857 documents, 195 were published. The attackers were pardoned¹. This is a valuative imitation - a false statement in Korotchenko's terms².

Serbia (V-Dem libdem = 0.225, regime = 1) fits the pattern of "electoral autocracies with dependent courts that prolong the confrontation" (Serbia 500+, Georgia 365+, Bulgaria 400 days). Cases with independent courts (Romania, Slovakia, Armenia) are resolved within 24 to 60 days.

In the interviews, participants point to the absence of institutional channels: "The president does not hold meetings, does not communicate with the crowd" (Interview 4); demands are ignored or fulfilled, but extremely formally.

The duration of the Serbian protest is determined by a system of power in which the court and the prosecutor's office formally exist but are incapable of becoming a channel for the signifier. The two discourses exist in non-intersecting lexical fields, which makes the conflict communicatively irresolvable. Of the 12 cases, electoral autocracies with dependent courts (V-Dem libdem < 0.35) demonstrate a median duration of 382 days against 45 days in electoral democracies. The protest lasts as long as there is a gap between the institutional form (a court, a parliament, a prosecutor's office do exist) and the institutional function (they are unable to fill the empty signifier).

The analysis demonstrates a number of miscalculations in the strategy of the authorities. The prolonged ignoring of the protest led only to the escalation of the conflict. The authorities tried to formally fulfill the demands, but in the end this only led to further inflaming of the conflict and the creation of new martyrs and heroes. The attempt to spotlight other events, the freezing of the Rio Tinto project, the raising of oil prices due to Trump's conditions, failed to divert attention³.

Reasons for the sustained protest activity

The sustainability of protest activity in Serbia is maintained for the following reasons:

By means of resource mobilization theory (C. Tilly), it was established that the structural basis of the protest was formed by already existing social networks ("catnets") - universities and faculties. This made it possible to instantly transfer resources (time, coordination skills) under collective control. Horizontal organization without formal leadership protected the movement from traditional suppression strategies, since the authorities were unable to neutralize specific leaders.

In the analysis of normative legal acts, deep contradictions between the authorities' statements and the actual measures were revealed. For example, with a declared 20% increase in the education budget, the real increase amounted to only about 4%. It was found that the publication of only 22.8% of the documents on the reconstruction of the station confirmed the protesters' thesis of "non-transparency." Such a "valuative imitation" strengthened mobilization, since citizens' demands remained effectively unfulfilled.

In the discourse analysis (E. Laclau and C. Mouffe), the formation of a stable "chain of equivalence" around the empty signifier "responsibility" (odgovornost) was recorded. This term united the demands of different groups (students, farmers, families of the deceased), creating a single front against "the system." The slogan "Corruption kills" became a nodal point that turned abstract discontent into a concrete political demand for justice.

Valuative modeling (Yu. Korotchenko) showed that the presence of a "value bifurcation" is more important than the pro-government "stability." The tragedy in Novi Sad created a "morally invulnerable trigger" and re-created the matrix of martyrs, which the authorities failed to delegitimize. The protest and pro-government discourses ended up in non-intersecting lexical fields, which made the conflict irresolvable through negotiations.

Conversations with participants confirmed that the tragedy of November 1 became merely an occasion for the release of discontent accumulated over years (from the COVID protests to the school shootings of 2023). Respondents described the regime as "authoritarian" and "untrustworthy," emphasizing that the main goal was not simply a change of personalities but a transformation of the entire corrupt formation.

In the comparative analysis (V-Dem indices), the comparison of Serbia with 12 international cases made it possible to define the Serbian protest as an "institutional deadlock." With a low liberal democracy indicator (Libdem = 0.225), the courts were unable to become independent arbiters. As a result, the protest dragged on: the authorities were not strong enough for open suppression (because of formal democratic constraints), while the institutions were incapable of satisfying the demand for justice.

To sum up, the sustainability of the protest in Serbia was ensured by the fact that the movement created a parallel system of meanings and horizontal ties that proved insensitive to the state's imitative measures. The protest lasted (and continues) as long as the gap persisted between the official form of the institutions (court, parliament) and their inability to fulfill their function of holding the guilty accountable.

Possible scenarios for the development of the situation

On the basis of the conducted analysis, several theoretically grounded strategies can be identified that are available to the authorities under conditions of a protracted protest confrontation.

The first is the interception of the empty signifier: an institutional filling of the demand for "responsibility" through the real fulfillment of the three demands or a genuine investigation and publication of documents, which potentially deprives the chain of equivalence of its nodal point.

The second is managed democratization: holding early elections with international monitoring, creating an institutional channel for channeling the demands.

The third is a strategy of attrition: preserving the status quo in the hope of the protest movement's fatigue; however, the data of the comparative analysis (Serbia 500+ days, Georgia 365+) attest to the low effectiveness of this approach in electoral autocracies with a polyarchy indicator of 0.2 to 0.5.

The choice of strategy is determined by the ratio of institutional resources and the regime's readiness for real concessions. Each strategy has its own costs and requires a single, coordinated strategy.

1. European Parliament. Resolution 2025/2917(RSP). P. 14.
2. Коротченко Ю. М. Указ. соч. С. 192.
3. Rio Tinto Halts Serbia Jadar Lithium Project Amid Permitting Delays // IndexBox. 2025. URL: https://www.indexbox.io/blog/rio-tinto-suspends-295-billion-jadar-lithium-project-in-serbia/ (дата обращения: 16.06.2026).

I. Russian-language sources

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2. Попович С. Ненасильственная борьба: 50 важнейших пунктов / пер. с англ. — М. : Альпина Паблишер, 2016. — 224 с.
3. Тилли Ч. От мобилизации к революции / пер. с англ. Д. Карасёва ; под науч. ред. С. Моисеева. — М. : Изд. дом Высшей школы экономики, 2019. — 428 с. — ISBN 978-5-7598-1527-3.

II. Foreign monographs and articles

4. Castells M. Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age. — Cambridge : Polity Press, 2012. — 300 p.
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6. Laclau E. Emancipation(s). — London : Verso, 1996. — 128 p.
7. Laclau E. New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time. — London : Verso, 1990. — 263 p.
8. Laclau E. On Populist Reason. — London : Verso, 2005. — 276 p.
9. Laclau E., Mouffe Ch. Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. — London : Verso, 1985. — 240 p.
10. Levitsky S., Way L. A. Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes After the Cold War. — New York : Cambridge University Press, 2010. — 517 p.

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15. Governments in Georgia, Slovakia and Serbia deploy same narratives to delegitimise protests // IFEX. — 2025. — URL: https://ifex.org/governments-in-georgia-slovakia-and-serbia-deploy-same-narratives-to-deligitimise-protests/ (дата обращения: 16.06.2026).
16. IT struka najavljuje pokretanje mreže finansijske solidarnosti: Podrška prosvetarima // 021.rs. — 2025. — 5 Mar. — URL: https://www.021.rs/story/Info/Srbija/402490/IT-struka-najavljuje-pokretanje-mreze-finansijske-solidarnosti-Podrska-prosvetarima.html (дата обращения: 16.06.2026).
17. Mass Rallies, Marches and Roadblocks Dominate Serbia's Streets in 2025 // Balkan Insight. — 2025. — 22 Dec. — URL: https://balkaninsight.com/2025/12/22/mass-rallies-marches-and-roadblocks-dominate-serbias-streets-in-2025/ (дата обращения: 16.06.2026).
18. Momir je dobio otkaz u leskovačkom pozorištu // Nova.rs. — 2025. — 23 Feb. — URL: https://nova.rs/vesti/drustvo/momir-je-dobio-otkaz-u-pozoristu-jer-je-podrzao-studente/ (дата обращения: 16.06.2026).
19. Niški studenti najavljuju novu fazu borbe u 2026 // Južne Vesti. — 2025. — URL: https://www.juznevesti.com/politika/niski-studenti-najavljuju-novu-fazu-borbe-u-2026-imali-smo-proteste-i-budjenje-otpora-sledi-strateski-pristup/ (дата обращения: 16.06.2026).
20. Od jednog čoveka na blokadi do 15.000 ljudi — na jugu Srbije do sada protesti u 27 mesta // Južne Vesti. — 2025. — Feb. — URL: https://www.juznevesti.com/drustvo/od-jednog-coveka-na-blokadi-do-15-000-ljudi-na-jugu-srbije-do-sada-protesti-u-27-mesta/ (дата обращения: 16.06.2026).
21. PKS: Decline in Business Across All Economic Sectors // Serbian Monitor. — 2025. — URL: https://www.serbianmonitor.com/en/pks-decline-in-business-across-all-economic-sectors/ (дата обращения: 16.06.2026).
22. Political crisis rumbles in Serbia as duelling camps hold parallel rallies // Al Jazeera. — 2025. — 14 Sep. — URL: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/9/14/political-crisis-rumbles-in-serbia-as-duelling-camps-hold-parallel-rallies (дата обращения: 16.06.2026).
23. Poljoprivrednici upozoravaju: Kamioni vuku traktore za Beograd // Agroklub. — 2025. — 10 Mar. — URL: https://www.agroklub.rs/poljoprivredne-vesti/poljoprivrednici-upozoravaju-kamioni-vuku-traktore-za-beograd-pred-protest-najavljen-za-15-mart/102559/ (дата обращения: 16.06.2026).
24. Poslanik SNS Đukanović: Deca su vlasništvo države // Danas. — 2024. — 19 Dec. — URL: https://www.danas.rs/vesti/politika/poslanik-sns-djukanovic-deca-su-vlasnistvo-drzave/ (дата обращения: 16.06.2026).
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29. Serbia-Vucic-Student-Protest-Novi-Sad // Christian Science Monitor. — 2025. — 26 Feb. — URL: https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2025/0226/serbia-vucic-student-protest-novi-sad (дата обращения: 16.06.2026).
30. Šešelj oštro upozorio pred ilegalni protest // Informer. — 2025. — 15 Mar. — URL: https://informer.rs/politika/vesti/999482/protest-2025-beograd-nasilje-vojislav-seselj (дата обращения: 16.06.2026).
31. Student demands / Zahteva // Blokade fakulteta. — 2025. — URL: https://blokade.org/en/zahtevi/ (дата обращения: 16.06.2026).
32. Studenti blokiraju pet mostova u Nišu u subotu // Južne Vesti. — 2025. — Apr. — URL: https://www.juznevesti.com/drustvo/studenti-blokiraju-pet-mostova-u-nisu-u-subotu/ (дата обращения: 16.06.2026).
33. Studenti iz Beograda peške stigli u Novi Sad, odali poštu nastradalima // Danas. — 2025. — 31 Jan. — URL: https://www.danas.rs/vesti/drustvo/studenti-idu-peske-za-novi-sad/ (дата обращения: 16.06.2026).
34. Students left messages to Prime Minister Vučević regarding his shameful statement // Vreme. — 2024. — 16 Dec. — URL: https://vreme.com/en/vesti/studenti-ostavili-poruke-premijeru-vucevicu-povodom-njegove-sramne-izjave/ (дата обращения: 16.06.2026).
35. The authoritarian playbook: How governments in Georgia, Slovakia and Serbia employ same narratives // Global Voices Advox. — 2025. — 22 May. — URL: https://advox.globalvoices.org/2025/05/22/the-authoritarian-playbook-how-governments-in-georgia-slovakia-and-serbia-employ-same-narratives-and-tactics-against-protests/ (дата обращения: 16.06.2026).
36. The Student Movement Challenging State and Societal Capture in Serbia // The Loop (ECPR). — 2025. — URL: https://theloop.ecpr.eu/the-student-movement-challenging-state-and-societal-capture-in-serbia/ (дата обращения: 16.06.2026).
37. Trgovište, Ražanj, Gadžin Han na nogama // Južne Vesti. — 2025. — Feb. — URL: https://www.juznevesti.com/drustvo/trgoviste-razanj-gadzin-han-na-nogama-juznjaci-ne-odustaju-traze-pravdu/ (дата обращения: 16.06.2026).
38. Vienna Institute: Student Protests and Trade War Have Slowed Down Serbian Economy // Serbian Monitor. — 2025. — URL: https://www.serbianmonitor.com/en/vienna-institutestudent-protests-and-trade-war-have-slowed-down-serbian-economy/ (дата обращения: 16.06.2026).
39. Vučević o blokadama: Nećemo dozvoliti da parališu državu // 021.rs. — 2025. — Jan. — URL: https://www.021.rs/story/Info/Srbija/414029/Vucevic-predsednik-SNS-o-blokadama-Necemo-dozvoliti-da-paralisu-drzavu.html (дата обращения: 16.06.2026).
40. Vučić Declares Color Revolution Is Over // Eurointegration. — 2025. — 15 Apr. — URL: https://eurointegration.com.ua/news/2025/04/15/7205050/ (дата обращения: 16.06.2026).

Prompt and list of sources

"Compare the Serbian protests with similar waves in other countries using a composite similarity index, where 60% is qualitative similarity and 40% is quantitative distance. Find the closest cases across four levels:

1) Socio-political context: level of corruption, freedom of the press, media censorship (V-Dem), regime type, electoral democracy, independence of the courts. On the AI's advice, also the legitimacy of the government and the economy, the status of democratic transformation.

2) Structure and organisation of the protest: type of leadership (horizontal, mixed, vertical), models of direct democracy/assemblies, student core, breadth of the coalition, party affiliation, duration, peak number of participants, level of polarisation.

3) Discourse and symbolism (Laclau and Mouffe): what trigger launched the protest, how it exposed the system, empty signifiers, visual symbolism, framing of the antagonist, level of abstraction.

4) State strategy and response: discreditation, use of paramilitary groups, police violence, deaths of protesters, ignoring, media blockade, concessions, outcome, information warfare, economic pressure, co-optation of citizens."

The neural network worked with open and closed datasets that I provided myself.

Data:

• V-Dem corruption index - a dataset covering 180 countries, data collected since 1995, measures the perceived level of corruption in the public sector from the perspective of experts and business.
• V-Dem free expression - freedom of the press, 180 countries since 2002, measures political pressure.
• V-Dem - 202 countries from 1789 to 2023. A multidimensional assessment of democracy, considered the most detailed in terms of the quality of institutions.
• BTI (Bertelsmann Transformation Index), Bertelsmann Stiftung. Transformation of hybrid/transitional regimes - 137 countries, since 2006, measures the transformation of hybrid regimes.
• Polity5 - Center for Systemic Peace. Regime type (-10 autocracy / +10 democracy). All countries, up to 2023. Measures regime type on a one-dimensional scale.

Protest data:

• ACLED (Armed Conflict Location & Event Data) - a dataset added by me. Measures the frequency of protest events, the level of violence, the influence of geography; measures from 2018, some from 1997, continuously updated.
• Mass Mobilization Project, Harvard Dataverse. Includes protests of ≥50 participants. Collects demands, state response, violence. Compiled from 1990-2020.
• NAVCO 3.0, Chenoweth, Harvard. Measures the outcome of nonviolent/violent campaigns: success, repression, the link between mass participation and result, from 1900-2019.
• GDELT Project. Measures the tone of media covering protest events by CAMEO code 14, in real time with qualitative validation applied.
• V-Dem ERT (Episodes of Regime Transformation). Describes episodes of democratisation and autocratisation. Allows a protest to be tied to a wave of regime transformation.
• Serbian media (N1, Danas) - journalistic investigations of corruption (qualitative check of the V-Dem corruption index). Captures specific cases of corruption that may not be visible behind the figures.

Based on all the data, the neural network produced a sample of the 12 most similar cases: Serbia 2024, Georgia 2024, Turkey (Gezi) 2013, Bulgaria 2013, Hong Kong 2019, Sri Lanka 2022, Bangladesh 2024, Belarus 2020, Romania 2017, Armenia 2018, Chile 2019, Slovakia 2018.

A formula based on the Jaccard index was used: composite = 0.4 × quantitative similarity + 0.6 × qualitative similarity. This formula yielded more similar cases, because if only quantitative indicators are taken into account, there are cases, for example, with high quantitative but low qualitative similarity (Belarus, Bangladesh) that demonstrate that a similar institutional context does not guarantee a similar protest dynamic. And conversely: Chile, with low quantitative similarity (0.356), shows a high qualitative score (0.506) - similar discursive strategies in a fundamentally different socio-political context.

Corruption (v2x_corr) - the V-Dem political corruption index (0 = no corruption, 1 = maximum). Serbia (0.760) is the second most corrupt in the sample after Bangladesh (0.922). Its closest "twin" is Turkey of the Gezi era (0.712). This matters: high corruption creates fertile ground for protest, but at the same time it means that the institutions through which demands could be channelled are weakened.

Polyarchy (v2x_polyarchy) - the electoral democracy index (0-1). Serbia (0.315) is in the bottom third, close to Hong Kong (0.300), Bangladesh (0.225) and Belarus (0.208). This means that elections exist but are not free and competitive - "competitive authoritarianism" (Levitsky & Way, 2010).

Libdem (v2x_libdem) - the liberal democracy index (0-1). Serbia (0.225) is one of the lowest. Weakness of the rule of law, dependence of the courts, restriction of minority rights.

Regime (v2x_regime) - regime type according to V-Dem: 0 = closed autocracy, 1 = electoral autocracy, 2 = electoral democracy, 3 = liberal democracy. Serbia = 1 (electoral autocracy), like Turkey-2013, Georgia-2024, Bangladesh-2024, Belarus-2020. This is a key indicator: protests in electoral autocracies most often lead to a protracted standoff rather than a quick result.

FreeExpr (v2x_freexp_altinf) - freedom of expression and alternative sources of information (0-1). Serbia (0.438) is low, almost identical to Turkey (0.446) and Bangladesh (0.444). Significantly higher than Belarus (0.129), which explains why the media blockade in Serbia is "partial" rather than "total".

The empirical base of the study consists of media texts (the Serbian independent outlets N1 Srbija, Danas, Nova, Insajder, 021.rs, Južne Vesti; the pro-government Informer, Pink TV; the international Al Jazeera, BBC, Reuters, CNN, DW, France 24, AP News, NPR, Christian Science Monitor), analytical materials (Journal of Democracy, ECPR, Balkan Insight), data from the student movement's website blokade.org, international indices (V-Dem v16: v2x_corr, v2x_polyarchy, v2x_libdem, v2x_regime, v2x_freexp_altinf; BTI 2024), 11 semi-structured interviews with participants in the movement, official documents on the Novi Sad incident (prosecutorial findings, acceptance certificates, budget data), the European Parliament Resolution 2025/2917(RSP), the opinion of the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (UN OHCHR, 2025), as well as normative legal acts of the government of Serbia for 2024-2025.

As part of the comparative analysis, 12 cases of mass mobilisation between 2013 and 2026 were selected. All the cases share a number of common features: the civic character of the protest, considerable mass participation, and the presence of a trigger event that exposed systemic contradictions.

Serbia (2024): on 1 November 2024, a concrete canopy collapsed at the recently renovated railway station in Novi Sad, killing 15 people. The tragedy became a symbol of corruption in the system of public procurement and sparked the largest civic movement in Serbia's modern history (Mass Rallies, Marches and Roadblocks Dominate Serbia's Streets in 2025 // Balkan Insight. 2025. 22 Dec. URL: https://balkaninsight.com/2025/12/22/mass-rallies-marches-and-roadblocks-dominate-serbias-streets-in-2025/ (accessed: 12.06.2026)).

Turkey, Gezi Park (2013): the protest began as a local environmental action against the demolition of Gezi Park in central Istanbul to build a shopping mall. A harsh police crackdown turned an urban conflict into a nationwide movement against Erdogan's authoritarian course (Ozcelik, Ozbey, 2016, p. 1-15).

Bulgaria (2013): the appointment of media magnate Delyan Peevski as head of the State Agency for National Security (DANS) provoked mass outrage. Protesters saw it as an open capture of the security services by oligarchic capital (Journal of Global Faultlines, 2014, p. 52).

Romania (2017): the government adopted an emergency decree (OUG 13) decriminalising a number of corruption offences, effectively absolving convicted officials of responsibility. More than half a million people took to the streets; the decree was repealed within a month (Olteanu, 2017, p. 797-816).

Armenia (2018): after two presidential terms, Serzh Sargsyan tried to retain power by taking the post of prime minister under an amended constitution. The Velvet Revolution led by Nikol Pashinyan brought about regime change in 24 days (Europe-Asia Studies, 2023, p. 1745-1764).

Chile (2019): a 30-peso increase in the Santiago metro fare was the pretext for a mass uprising driven by inequality accumulated over decades. The movement, known as estallido social (social explosion), swept the entire country and led to the launch of a constitutional reform (Cox, Gonzalez, Le Foulon, 2024, p. 68-89).

Slovakia (2018): the murder of investigative journalist Jan Kuciak and his fiancee exposed the links between organised crime and senior officials. Mass protests led to the resignation of Prime Minister Robert Fico (Reuters, 2018).

Hong Kong (2019): a bill on the extradition of suspects to mainland China was perceived as a threat to the territory's autonomy. The protests grew into a broad movement for democratic freedoms that lasted more than six months (The China Quarterly, Cambridge UP).

Belarus (2020): the falsification of the presidential election results in favour of Alexander Lukashenko triggered a protest wave unprecedented in scale. The movement was suppressed by mass repression; thousands of participants were detained and convicted (DW, 2020).

Sri Lanka (2022): economic collapse and shortages of fuel, food and medicine gave rise to the Aragalaya movement. Protesters occupied the presidential residence; President Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled the country (History Workshop Journal, 2024).

Bangladesh (2024): the introduction of quotas reserving up to 30% of civil-service posts for the descendants of participants in the war of independence sparked a student protest. The movement grew into a demand for the resignation of Sheikh Hasina's government (Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, 2024).

Georgia (2024): parliament's adoption of a law on "foreign agents" modelled on the Russian one, followed by the disputed results of the parliamentary elections, brought the pro-European part of society onto the streets. The protests are continuing (European Parliament, Resolution RC-B9-0244/2024).

(List of the protesters' demands; in the source document this section contains no body text.)

Figure 1. Chains of equivalence of the two protest discourses.