Irena Fiket is a Senior Research Fellow and academic coordinator of the Laboratory for Active Citizenship and Democratic Innovations at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade. Her current research interests lie in deliberative democracy, citizens' participation, democratic innovations, social movements and the Western Balkans.

¿edomir Markov is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade. His current research deals with the deliberative inquiry approach to audience-media relations, anti-press hostility and democratic innovations in hybrid regimes.

Vujo Ili¿ is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade. His research primarily deals with participation in political processes, from elections and democratic institutions to political conflicts and violence.

Gazela Pudar Draško is a Senior Research Fellow and the Director of the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade. Her fields of interest are deliberative democracy, participatory democratic innovations, social movements and gender.

List of Tables

List of Figures

List of Contributors

Acknowledgments

1 Why Do We Need Participatory Democratic Innovations in Southeast Europe?

IRENA FIKET, VUJO ILI¿, ¿EDOMIR MARKOV AND GAZELA PUDAR DRAŠKO

PART 1

Context of the Participatory Democratic Innovations in Southeast Europe

2 Social Movements, Active Citizenship and Democratic Innovation: An Overview

NENAD MARKOVIKJ, IVAN DAMJANOVSKI AND ZORAN ILIEVSKI

3 Participation, Responsiveness, Interaction: The Importance of Epistemic Checks-and-Balances for the Revitalization of Democratic Institutions

ANDRIJA ŠO¿

4 Political Participation in Southeast Europe: A Scoping Review

VUJO ILI¿ AND ¿EDOMIR MARKOV

PART 2

Social Movements and Civil Society Experimentation

5 Towards the Democratization of Urban Planning: A Case Study of Three Deliberative Forums in Belgrade

JOVANA TIMOTIJEVI¿ AND IVA ¿UKI¿

6 Heterotopia, Social Movements and Democratic Innovation: The Case of AKC Metelkova Mesto in Ljubljana, Slovenia

NATHAN SIEGRIST

7 Enacting Resistance, Performing Citizenship: Trajectories of Political Subjectification in the Post-Democratic Condition

BOJAN BA¿A

8 Agonist Reading of Social Movements in Illiberal Democracies: The Case of The Social Movement for Truth and Justice

JASMIN HASANOVI¿, VALIDA REPOVAC NIKŠI¿ AND EMINA ADILOVI¿

PART 3

Towards Institutional Politics

9 Yugoslav Self-Management as a Model of Participatory Municipal Governance? Local Communities in Belgrade in the 1980s

MLADEN OSTOJI¿

10 Norming Participatory Practices of Movement Parties in Southeast Europe

IRENA FIKET, GAZELA PUDAR DRAŠKO AND JELENA VASILJEVI¿

11 Democratic Innovations in an Illiberal Landscape: Three Ideas from Hungary ESZTER KOVÁCS SZITKAY, DÁNIEL OROSS AND BOLDIZSÁR SZENTGÁLI-TÓTH

Index

List of Tables

4.1 The geographic focus of the articles about political participation in SEE 2010-2022

5.1 Overview of design elements of the three deliberative forums

10.1 Internal party democracy index for Zeleno-levi front and MOŽEMO!

10.2 Comparison of members' rights in the statutes of Zeleno-levi front and MOŽEMO!

10.3 Organizational structure of Zeleno-levi front and MOŽEMO!

10.4 Decision making of Zeleno-levi front and MOŽEMO!

11.1 Topics and questions of National Consultations

11.2 Transformation of National Consultation from deliberative practice to plebiscitary instrument

List of Contributors

Emina Adilovi¿ is a Senior Research Associate at the Institute for Social Science Research, Faculty of Political Sciences, University of Sarajevo in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Her area of interests include information and communication sciences, cultural studies, narratology, knowledge organization, content analysis and digital publishing. From 2015 to 2019 she worked for several publishing houses and as a theater producer. Since 2022, she has been employed as an external associate at the International Burch University (IBU). She won the "Kemal Bakarši¿" Award for activism in helping the users of public library services become information literate. Emina has published various scientific articles and research in monographic and serial publications.

Bojan Bäa is a Marie Sk¿odowska-Curie Fellow at the Department of Sociology and Work Science, University of Gothenburg, and a Research Associate at the Institute for Advanced Studies, University of Montenegro. His research on civil society, social movements, and contentious politics has been published in a variety of peer-reviewed outlets, including Sociology, Antipode, International Political Sociology, Europe-Asia Studies, among several others. His current research examines the relationship between grassroots and elite expressions of populism during turbulent times and, since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the intersection of populism, pseudoscientism, and conspiracism in the digital public sphere. In recognition of his contributions to the field of postsocialist studies, Bäa was awarded the 2022 Routledge Area Studies Interdisciplinarity Award.

Iva ¿uki¿ graduated from the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Belgrade where she also obtained her PhD in urban planning. The areas of her research include urban planning and urban commons, which she pursues through intersecting academic and practice-based perspectives. In 2011, she co-founded the collective Ministry of Space, which aims to contribute to the democratic and just development of cities. ¿uki¿ actively works with the community - supporting local initiatives in their efforts to address spatial issues and contribute to socio-political change in line with the principles of social justice. When it comes to her academic career, ¿uki¿ is engaged as a guest lecturer and/or researcher at many Universities in Europe and abroad such as TU Berlin, ETH, MIT, Oxford, etc. She is a member of the Advisory board of the Faculty of Applied Arts in Vienna, the board of the Guerrilla Foundation in Germany, the board of the Trag Foundation and the Chair of the board of Jelena Šanti¿ Foundation, both in Serbia.

Ivan Damjanovski (PhD) is a Professor at the Department of Political Science, Faculty of Law, Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje. Currently, he also serves as Chair of the Institute for Political Science, Media, and Communication at the Faculty of Law. He is also an associate researcher at the think-tank Institute for Democracy "Societas Civilis" - Skopje. He has previously been engaged as an academic guest at the Center for Comparative and International Studies at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH). His research and academic interests are focused on democratization, Europeanisation, EU enlargement, differentiated integration, EU integration theory and ethnic identity politics.

Irena Fiket is a Senior Research Fellow and academic coordinator of the Laboratory for Active Citizenship at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade. Her current research interests lie in deliberative democracy, citizens' participation, democratic innovations, social movements and Western Balkans. She published a book on those topics, in addition to numerous book chapters and articles in journals such as Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, PACO- Partecipazione e Conflitto, Italian Political Science Review, Javnost - The Public, European Union Politics, and others. She has been involved in numerous international research projects and was the academic coordinator of Jean Monnet Network 'Active Citizenship: Promoting and Advancing Innovative Democratic Practices in The Western Balkans'.

Jasmin Hasanovi¿ is a Senior Teaching Assistant at the Department for Political Science at the Faculty of Political Science, University of Sarajevo in Bosnia and Herzegovina. His area of expertise emphasizes political philosophy and critical political theory, social and political movements, as well as the relations between arts and politics, cyberpolitics, and geopolitics. He is engaged in courses on Basics of Philosophy, Political Philosophy, Theories of Democracy and Human Rights, Geopolitics, International Security and Energy Security. Currently, he is working on his PhD thesis on the epistemological and ontological problem of the idea of emancipation in contemporary political theory.

Vujo Ili¿ is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory at the University of Belgrade. He holds a PhD in Political Science from the Central European University in Budapest. His main areas of interest include participation in political processes, from elections and democratic institutions to political conflicts and violence. He has received several awards, including Central European University's Award for Best Dissertation in 2020 and an award from the Association for the Study of Nationalities for the best doctoral paper in 2016. His articles have appeared in Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, Contemporary Southeastern Europe, Serbian Political Thought, and Philosophy and Society. He has also contributed chapters to several books, including Undermining Democracy: Processes and Institutions in Serbia 2010-2020. Vujo is also a Policy and Research Advisor at the citizen association Crta, where he is developing election observation and survey methodology and conducts its annual Citizen Engagement survey.

Zoran Ilievski (PhD) is a tenured professor at the Political Science Department at the Faculty of Law at Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje. He has worked on a number of research projects with the University of Graz, LSE, European Academy of Bolzano and the University of Zurich, as well as leading a number of EU research and teaching projects in the framework of TEMPUS, FP6, FP7, and the Swiss SCOPES program. Since 2008 he led institutional development projects at his Faculty. The initial project established the first MA program in the country on EU Institutions and Policies taught in English, while the latter established the first joint degree program in the country, together with the Universities of Graz, Zagreb, and Belgrade, focusing on Southeast European studies. He is leading the Southeast European Office of the Global Council for Tolerance and Peace. He has published on topics of comparative ethnic conflict management, international relations and European integration.

Eszter Kovács Szitkay obtained her law degree in 2017 from the University of Pécs Faculty of Law. After working as a junior associate at a law firm, she started her PhD studies in 2019 at...