ABSTRACT
Nikola Pašic was born in Eastern Serbia in 1845, at a time when Serbia was beginning to achieve de facto independence after nearly 500 years of subjugation by the Ottoman Empire. Pašic’s political ideas were in large part shaped during his days as a student at the Federal Polytechnic Institute in Zurich, Switzerland, one of the best institutions of its kind at the time. In launching the fight for democracy, Pašic built on the works of his predecessors. The struggle for constitutional monarchy and parliamentary supremacy had its inception in the ideas of the young liberals, most of whom had been students in Western Europe and were the nucleus of the first Serbian political party, the Liberals. Aleksandar dismissed the regency and proclaimed himself king, even though he was not quite seventeen years of age. In effect, Serbia became a duarchy of son and father, to say nothing of mother Natalija’s role.
