ABSTRACT

This chapter seeks to understand why social movement mobilization was unable to guide Yugoslavia towards democratization, and instead contributed to the outbreak of civil war. Drawing on the book’s general framework, we pinpoint several mechanisms of importance. These include the country’s economic deterioration, the political destabilization resulting from Tito’s death in 1980, the government’s eventual activation of military networks in response to the fluidification of borders, and the social fragmentation both contributing to and resulting from the country’s militarization. We conclude that civil society mobilization, in the wrong hands, can constitute a highly destructive social force.