The Stabilisation of the Capitalist Order and Liberal Value Orientations in Serbia

Conceptual Framework

In this study, we examine to what extent the establishment and stabilisation of the capitalist order in Serbia have influenced changes in value orientations of its population. Our research into the country’s political and economic subsystems is based on a comparative review of research data obtained in 2003, 2012 and 2018, followed by a more detailed analysis of current orientations, as well as additional factors that may bear upon value changes.

The basic social relations in the capitalist order are characterised by three specific features. First, economic relations are primarily regulated by the market, where independent actors exchange resources, while the state appears as a secondary regulator, and the essentially profit-orientated private property is the prevailing form of ownership. Next, interests of social groups are represented in the political subsystem, as a rule through political parties competing for power under more or less equal conditions. Lastly, basic social relations are legitimised through a relatively free public articulation of interests of dominant social groups, represented as overall social interests. These three characteristics indicate that, in capitalism, a society’s main subsystems—economic, political, and cultural—are mutually relatively autonomous, being subjected to different forms of regulation, and their coherence is achieved through their reliance on a joint pattern, established by the general conditions for profit making, to ensure the unobstructed reproduction of these basic social relations through capital. This is clearly an ideal-typical determination, the forms of which characterise the relations prevailing in the capitalist core. The farther towards the periphery, the more distant these patterns (potentially) become from their basic form. Moreover, the dominant market regulation of profit-orientated economic relations is crucial for the capitalist order, while departures from the historically formed, ideal-typical core pattern in the other two subsystems, political and cultural, are prone to substantial variation, going from democracy to dictatorship, from cultural hegemony to a monopoly in the public sphere. ^[1] The above determinations are necessary to understand the process of transformation of Serbian society from socialist to capitalist. This transformation started in the last decade of the 20^th century and developed initially at a very slow pace. The first multiparty elections in Serbia in 1991 were won by ex-socialist nomenklatura top member Slobodan Milošević with his Socialist Party of Serbia (Socijalistička Partija Srbije, SPS). He stayed in power for ten years. During this phase of ‘blocked transformation’ the ruling party retained control over the key economic and organisational resources of the state. Only after the elections in the year 2000, won by the opposition parties, has Serbia experienced an acceleration of economic and political transformation—the privatisation of public ownership, neoliberal market reforms and a gradual stabilisation of political pluralism. ^[2]

Thus, accelerated in the new millennium, a capitalist order of the semi-peripheral type was established in Serbia and has gradually formed according to the core pattern. This is primarily related to the fact that the state decreasingly appears as the dominant owner of economic resources due to the privatisation or liquidation of formerly large public firms. Nor is the state now the main regulator of exchange, due to the advancement of autonomous market regulation. In the political subsystem, although these relations are still far from those of an order that guarantees free party competition for (temporary) control over state apparatuses, elections are held under conditions that ultimately enable the electoral victory of opposition parties and a change at the top of the power hierarchy, as demonstrated already in 2000, and especially by several interchanges of parties in power in subsequent electoral cycles. Lastly, state domination over the media sphere still does not secure an equality of chances for the representation of different interests, but leaves a possibility (at least to private media and social networks) for the presentation of alternative programmes and the mobilisation of opponents to power. We may doubtlessly conclude that the capitalist order in Serbia has been gradually consolidated over the past twenty or so years. This said, Serbia is presently faced by the fourth subsequent mandate of the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (Srpska napredna stranka, SNS), with Aleksandar Vučić as head of state, and by severe democracy deficits, just two decades after the turnover of Milošević’s regime. ^[3]

Stable reproduction of dominant social relations assumes, among other things, that their main patterns are accepted by the majority in society as both necessary and desirable. The key factor that enables legitimisation of the social order, not only in the political sphere (‘legitimate power’) but also in the economic and cultural spheres, is values. ^[4] In our theoretical framework, we start from the fact that within a given social order, the main source of values is the basic principles of reproduction of dominant social relations, represented as desirable patterns of human (group and individual) thought and action. In view of the previously mentioned characteristics of the capitalist type of society— prevailing profit-orientated and private-ownership-based market economy, political competition, and relative cultural autonomy—the values emerging as basic (systemic) are sanctity of private ownership, universal civil rights (such as freedom and equality before the law), and individualism. ^[5] Certain values also appear in a wider historical perspective, thus having a ‘trans-historic’/ trans-systemic character, and are carried over from one social order to another. However, values of this kind are not historically crystallised in unchangeable forms. Their linguistic expressions, or modes of interpretation, are adjusted depending on the actual dominant social relations.

When the dominant manner of reproduction of social relations is set as the fundamental source of the value system, the possible existence of a normative-value dissonance (NVD) appears as one of the key problems. ^[6] Given that the dominant order is, on the one hand, maintained by norms, institutionalised rules, which imply the existence of sanctions for their protection, and thus an element of manifest coercion, values, by contrast, represent a less ‘visible’, latent manner of protecting order and implying modes of desirable thinking and acting. A problem in the relation between norms and values may arise for at least two reasons. One is the fact that, along with dominant social relations, other relations, resting on different bases, may exist, for example as ‘left overs’ from a previous order. In capitalism, remnants of feudal, and even slave-owning relations, exist. Another example is potential alternatives to currently dominant relations, such as the socialist movements of the 19^th and 20^th centuries in capitalist societies. These extra-systemic relations give rise to values that are different from the dominant ones and (potentially or manifestly) in confrontation with the ruling norms. Furthermore, social relations are dynamic (historical) phenomena, and thus their change, which remains within the frameworks of the dominant order, leads to normative as well as value changes, that is to at least a temporary departure of the value system from that of the norms. These conflicts between norms and values are referred to as normative-value dissonance (NVD).

The dissonance may take several forms. A conflict between the ruling norms and certain values, based on the fact that they emerge from different fundamental social relations, may be defined as a systemic dissonance. An example is capitalist values within the frameworks of a feudal or state-socialist normative order. ^[7] Distinct from this is an intra-systemic dissonance, appearing due to changes in partial structures within the dominant order, which, however, remain within the framework of that social order. An example is a neoliberal regime of capitalist accumulation in the wake of the welfare-state regime. Where a systemic dissonance is concerned, it is possible to distinguish between the conflict between a normative order and a value system remaining from the historically preceding type of society—this dissonance we refer to as regressive.

On the other hand, there may be a dissonance arising between the currently dominant order and the potential, emerging order, such as when capitalist values exist in state-socialist societies, which we refer to as prospective dissonance. A similar conflict may however appear also within the intra-systemic dissonance, when values characteristic of the previous regime of accumulation are retained in the next one, a regressive dissonance, as opposed to a prospective dissonance, when values appear that were produced by emerging relations.

The normative system, due to its institutionalised, coercive nature, may in principle be expected to have at least tendential internal consistency. As for the values, however, given that social relations are, very often, of a ‘hybrid’ type (certainly within the dominant social form), this kind of consistency is difficult to achieve, on both individual and group level. In other words, at the empirical level and within the framework of the dominant value system they support, individuals and groups generally advocate mutually discordant values. A phenomenon of this kind, which is all the more probable the stronger the NVD is manifested, is called value confusion.

The degree of manifestation of an NVD is obviously directly linked with the conditions under which the reproduction of the dominant system of social relations unfolds: its growth indicates increasing problems in that reproduction, whereas its decrease suggests the advance of the process of a system’s unobstructed unfolding. The harmonisation of norms and values, resulting from the trend to impose the ruling social relations as a dominant framework for social-life reproduction, is a lasting social process. This harmonisation, as well as the increase, or decrease, in the degree of NVD manifestation depends on concrete historical circumstances. NVD growth, for instance, may ensue from the breakthrough of new social relations (in the case of prospective dissonance) as well as from the persistence of old value patterns in the new type of order, thus interfering with the completion of its establishment (regressive dissonance). Furthermore, within a dynamic mode of social reproduction, characteristic of capitalism, wherein regimes of accumulation change in approximately fifty-year periods, intra-systemic dissonance is as a rule more pronounced than in slow-changing orders.

In the analytical part of our study, the systemic change from a socialist to a capitalist order in Serbia represents the framework to establish the existence and proportions of the systemic NVD, while the crisis of the neoliberal type of capitalist regulation, manifest especially since the global financial crisis of 2008, is taken as a possible cause for the potential appearance of intra-systemic NVD. As already pointed out, the prospective NVD, that is the expansion of the value system characteristic of the capitalist order, had an important role in the crisis of the socialist order towards the late 1980s, while the slow advance of capitalism in Serbia during the 1990s, was, among other things, notably due to the existence of a regressive NVD, that is the persistence of remnants of the socialist value system in the new social order. ^[8]

Historical Assumptions of Value Changes in Serbia

Bearing in mind that this subject has already been extensively addressed elsewhere, ^[9] we will indicate only the basic analytical points. First, there have been several empirically verified claims that within the framework of Yugoslav liberal socialism, along with dominant values such as authoritarian collectivism and redistributive statism, values typical of the capitalist order, such as political and market liberalism, were rather widespread, too. ^[10] This systemic dissonance produced two, at first sight mutually opposed, consequences. The change of the dominant social relations could have been (and actually was) represented in Serbia as a limited reform of hitherto (socialist) relations, to thus ease the breakthrough of the new (capitalist) value system, that is the prospective NVD effect in the final stage of Yugoslav socialism. On the other hand, the presentation of systemic changes as partial facilitated the survival of elements of the old dominant value system, causing the growth of regressive NVD during the system transformation. These two trends, together with a series of other factors, including the country’s disintegration through war and international isolation, enabled the top ranks of the socialist nomenclature, Slobodan Milošević and the circles around him, to retain political domination as well as to significantly slow down and direct the systemic changes to their advantage. This importantly resulted in a situation wherein, based on control over conversion of economic resources, a substantial part of public / state property was transformed into private ownership of former nomenclature members and their associated circles. Still, the establishment of the capitalist type of economic (and overall social) reproduction, although rather slow and directed, did unfold in Serbia during the 1990s.

Changes at the top levels of state power in 2000 accelerated the process of capitalist transformation in all three subsystems. In the political sphere, the periodical change of parties in power was enabled through relatively free elections. In the economic subsystem, privatisation was expedited and development of the market supported, especially by opening the country to foreign capital, international financial institutions, etc. As for the sphere of culture, possibilities for public representation of interests of diverse groups and their mobilisation increased. This normative consolidation of the new dominant social order reinforced the basis for a wider breakthrough of corresponding values. Thus, the neoliberal form of accumulation and its corresponding value system prevailing in the capitalist core countries expanded towards (semi)peripheral areas, and thus also to Serbia.

However, before the new value patterns, both the general ones typical of the capitalist order as a whole and those developed during Serbia’s specific neoliberal regime, could take a firmer hold, came the year 2007 with a dramatic financial crisis in the USA, followed the next year by the worldwide economic crisis. One of its key consequences was the realisation that the neoliberal form of capital accumulation was exhausted, ^[11] which substantially undermined the specific value system characteristic of this regime. In this way, the basis for the emerging of intra-systemic NVD was enlarged.

These developments had a twofold effect in Serbia. On the one hand, the overall framework of establishing capitalism as the exclusive global order secured the further strengthening of basic assumptions of the capitalist mode of production in society, including the dominant value system, creating the conditions for the decrease of systemic NVD. ^[12] On the other hand, due to the crisis of the existing neoliberal regime of accumulation and the resulting economic crisis (drop of the GDP, declining standard of living, etc.), specific value patterns characteristic of this regime were called into question, creating the possibility for the growth of intra-systemic NVD.

Finally, from towards the end of the second decade of the 21^st century the overall economic circumstances in Serbia have gradually improved: financial stabilisation is underway, the GDP increases, unemployment is on the decline, and the living standard slowly increases. ^[13] All this creates the conditions for the reinforcement of general value patterns typical of capitalism. However, the overall economic recovery in Serbia is still slow (GDP and real wages remained below the 1989 level until 2019) and uncertain, while, importantly, the capitalist core countries failed to develop a model that would replace the neoliberal regime of accumulation revealed as inadequate by the crisis. Growth rates have oscillated at a low level, while indications of a new world economic (and therefore also political, national, and international) crisis are strong. These two factors, internal and external, endanger the specific value patterns characteristic of neoliberalism in Serbia, and presumably influence the proportions of both systemic and intra-systemic NVD.

Hypothetical Framework

Previous research data collected by the Institute for Sociological Research in Belgrade (2003, 2012) showed that changes in the mode of social-life production were not accompanied by linear changes in the value system. ^[14] While the systemic—prospective—NVD (spread of liberal values) preceded the breakdown of socialism, the establishment of the capitalist order was not directly conducive to the expansion of new values. The systemic NVD from the final period of socialism was succeeded by value confusion, especially characteristic of lower social strata, but also present in the higher ones. And while the systemic NVD (regressive, with values carried over from socialism) established in Serbia in 2003 could be attributed to conditions of ‘blocked’ transformation, hesitant acceptance of liberal economic values in 2012 (intra-systemic NVD), even by members of the economic elite, was probably the outcome of the world crisis of the existing regime of capitalist accumulation. In view of that and the fact that, in the meantime, the international crisis had not been overcome, while domestic economic recovery was at the very beginning (especially in terms of population incomes, and the high growth of economic inequalities) and on shaky ground, we may assume that the sources for the survival of both systemic and intra-systemic NVD were not removed.

Furthermore, there are two additional elements at work in Serbia. First of all, in view of a slow formation of capitalist relations during the first decade of the systemic transformation, it may be assumed that we still have a process aimed at reinforcing the normative basis of the order and with it also the dominant values (decrease in the systemic NVD). Additionally, the past few years of economic recovery of the country act as a factor that may spur the decrease in intra-systemic dissonance, at least in some social strata. In other words, we shall assume that, on the whole, compared with the previous period, liberal values are more widely accepted (drop in systemic NVD), except among the members of the social strata directly affected by the crisis (both on a long-term and short-term basis). As concerning the intra-systemic dissonance, the overall crisis of the neoliberal regime of accumulation hardly leaves any space even for its local decrease. In other words, we may assume that, especially in the economic sphere, the state of intra-systemic NVD is retained, which at the level of value orientations of social groups and individuals appears as a value confusion.

Thus, when value orientations are analysed by the relevant subsystems that they, along with norms, regulate (political, i. e. economic relations), we may assume that in Serbia the decrease of systemic NVD has until recently been more vigorous in the political than in the economic sphere, which could also characterise intra-systemic NVD. We should add that the data of the latest research were collected before the mass street protests of citizens and opposition political parties, which began in 2019. However, the inability of opposition parties to offer institutional resistance to the domination of the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) at the elections and the abuse of this weakness by the SNS, through a hold on to the state apparatuses and public media, as well as to a corruptive use of private media, undermine the trust in the liberal-democratic order and may provide a basis for the growth of intra-systemic NVD even within the political subsystem. In a similar vein, state reliance primarily on foreign capital in the attempted reindustrialisation of the country shows (as well as causes) the weakness of the domestic economic elite and may lead to an increase in intra-systemic NVD even within the social stratum that ought to be the main promoter of liberal ideas.

Data and Methodology

The first part of this analysis addresses the changes in the degree of acceptance of liberal values during the period of consolidation of capitalism in Serbia, i. e. monitors the changes in the growth, or drop, of the systemic and intra-systemic NVD. The data were collected at three points of time, corresponding to different stages of consolidation of the capitalist order in Serbia. These are the data obtained in three research projects of the Institute for Sociological Research of the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade: the first was the South-East European Social Survey Project, carried out in 2003, on a national representative sample of 2,997 adult citizens of Serbia; the second was a survey within the project Challenges of the New Social Integration in Serbia – Concepts and Actors, completed in 2012 on a sample of 2,500 respondents; and, finally, a survey conducted within the same project in 2018 on a sample of 2,211 respondents.

The analysis includes a comparison of statements in all three years, i. e. their differentiation into those indicating the existence of the systemic and intra-systemic NVD within two social subsystems (Table 1). Unfortunately, in view of the small number of comparable statements, the analysis had to be limited to comparisons of only one statement for each of the four separated dimensions.

The second part of the analysis probes deeper into the NVD using the 2018 data. Here, the abovementioned analytical scheme, differentiating between the systemic and intra-systemic NVD, is operationalised only on data of that year. This enabled us to employ reliable data using a larger number of empirical statements, in order to also carry out the analysis of the dissonance with respect to its timewise orientation (regressive vs. prospective NVD). On the basis of the explorative principal components analysis (using Varimax as the rotation method), we have separated empirical statements converged on several latent dimensions representing those of the NVD (Table 2).

As for the political order, we have distinguished two orientations: authoritarian and illiberal pluralist. While the former indicates the existence of a systemic NVD, i. e. an orientation towards the authoritarian type of political order, the latter relates to a principled acceptance of political pluralism, but in its illiberal variant, which after the start of the world economic crises in 2008 has characterised no small number of formerly democratic regimes: in Poland, Hungary, and Turkey, among others, and, with respect to certain of Trump’s policies, also in the US. ^[15]

In the economic order, three factors became prominent: orientation to private-ownership market economy, neoliberal market orientation, and state-redistributive orientation. Here again the first dimension reveals the general attitude towards the market economy and therefore represents an indicator of the systemic NVD. The remaining two dimensions are intra-systemic: the first is indicative of an orientation towards the neoliberal variant of capitalism (and is opposed to the model of state interventionism, aimed at supporting large capital), while the second indicates a social-democratic understanding of the role of the state in a capitalist economy (implying a redistributive role of the state in favour of lower social groups). ^[16]

In our analysis, we establish the changes in value orientations of the population of Serbia in the period of consolidation of the capitalist order between 2003 and 2018. In the following, we inquire into the controlled effects of factors such as class position, degree of education, size of their place of residence, gender and age of respondents, their material position, and degree of political participation on the examined value orientations. The analytical sections provide a more detailed explanation of the operationalisation of independent variables in regression models.

Changes of Value Orientations during the Consolidation of Capitalism in Serbia

Data on the changes in value orientations in Serbia in the period of consolidation of capitalism between 2003 and 2018, and the directions of these changes are shown in Table 3.

The findings clearly reveal that after an NVD growth, i. e. the decreased acceptance of values supportive of the capitalist social order, as a consequence of the global financial crisis, the short and temporary economic recovery in the world and also Serbia over the past years has brought again a more widespread acceptance of these values (decreased NVD). However, this acceptance is still lagging behind that of the pre-crisis period, and barely exceeds the theoretical mean of the scale (being supported by less than half of the respondents). It is interesting, however, that support for neoliberal values (historically specific of the regime of capital accumulation) went a somewhat different path. In Serbia it increased, even under remarkably unfavourable conditions, according to the 2012 data, at the time of the world and domestic crises (and thus also the crisis of the capitalist order as a whole, including its neoliberal variant). That earlier growth was probably the consequence of the belated breakthrough of capitalism in Serbia, wherein, for that reason, the neoliberal doctrine still had a mobilising domination and thus directed the building of the normative order. Further expansion of neoliberal values (until 2018) was therefore to be expected, in view of the ensuing economic recovery in the country, although the economic growth was substantially assisted by state interventions, although resting on neoliberal normative bases.

Overall acceptance of the neoliberal value position was expressed by just over 40 % of respondents. As a whole, values supportive of the capitalist order were accepted more strongly by the respondents than those values related to neoliberalism. However, less than half of the respondents, and thus a minority, accepted the capitalist order, both generally and in its current variant in Serbia (at the level of individual statements analysis). This means that not only intra-systemic but also systemic NVD is remarkably prominent in the economic subsystem in Serbia.

Examination of the findings for systemic NVD among the data related to the political subsystem reveals that acceptance of the pluralist order over time developed in a manner similar to that in the economic sphere, but with a somewhat more pronounced support. Over two-thirds of the respondents accepted political pluralism after the deposition of the Milošević regime (2000), only for their support to drop substantially at the time of the economic crisis, and the accompanying crisis in the political system. In the 2014 elections the political forces that had been instrumental in removing the Milošević regime lost.

Chart 1

Theoretical and empirical means on selected dimensions of the examined value orientations

Finally, the political circumstances created by the consolidation of the Serbian Progressive Party rule and Aleksandar Vučić’s regime, with the onset of economic recovery, ‘restored’ the support of a part of the Serbian citizens to the pluralist political order, characteristic of capitalist relations. However, although it is still a majority of respondents who provide support to political pluralism, the number is less pronounced than at the start of the millennium.

The data for the intra-systemic NVD reveal somewhat different trends. The decade of faster consolidation of capitalist relations after the year 2000 helped to strengthen the support of the liberal principle of media autonomy (as the main legitimacy-mobilisation instrument) irrespective of declining support for the ruling parties (decreasing NVD). Following the same logic, but in the opposite direction, the consolidation of the new political regime (2018 data) was accompanied by decreased support for pluralist principles (increasing NVD, showing a conformist acceptance of the government pursuing an illiberal policy towards the media). In that respect, the situation in Serbia follows the rise of illiberal policies gaining momentum in Europe. Still, overall findings for 2018 on a five-degree scale exceed the theoretical mean value, which means that the liberal view still prevails, although it is unambiguously supported by just over two-fifths of the respondents, thus revealing a still remarkable dissonance.

Finally, taking into account the entirety of the findings, between 2003 and 2018 in Serbia the value system supportive of capitalism as a social order accounted for the prevailing orientation primarily within the framework of the political subsystem, while it is much less manifest in the economic subsystem. In both cases the period is characterised by a vacillation in value orientations.

In these vacillations, related to current political and economic developments (crises), support for political pluralism remained prevalent, while support for capitalist economic values (private ownership) oscillated around the middle of the scale, and then dropped below the mean in 2012. This shows clearly that the capitalist order has not yet taken deeper root in Serbia.

The situation is somewhat different with respect to values characteristic of the neoliberal regime of capitalist accumulation. These values are increasingly widespread in the economic subsystem (declining NVD within the neoliberal principle of state withdrawal from the economy) but even in more recent times they fail to secure the majority support of respondents. By contrast, support for independent media has been declining, which reinforces the above conclusion that the capitalist order (in its ideal-typical variant) in Serbia still has relatively weak foundations.

Current Value Orientations of the Serbian Population

The following focuses on re-examining and supplementing the findings on the NVD for 2018 with more differentiated data. As noted in the section on methodology, based on a principal components analysis of the 2018 data, the empirical statements measuring different attitudes on the political and economic subsystems (Table 2) were grouped around three latent dimensions related to the economic subsystem, and two dimensions related to the political subsystem. Latent factors, representing a reduction of a larger number of data to a single dimension, are referred to as authoritarian orientation and illiberal pluralism, when the political subsystem is concerned, that is, an orientation towards market economy based on private ownership, followed by a neoliberal market orientation and a redistributive orientation in the economic subsystem. Using the statements converging on the abovementioned latent factors, we construed the relevant scales in order to calculate the averages (empirical means) and compare them with mathematically obtained mean values within the given distribution of data (theoretical means). The comparison of the theoretical and empirical means indicates a majority acceptance, that is a rejection of the examined value orientation. The findings so obtained are presented in Chart 1.

The results obtained through insight into a larger number of variables turned out only marginally different from those obtained by analysing individual statements. Actually, all the examined dimensions revealed the same trend, except the one related to the neoliberal orientation, which, as shown by the comparison of the findings in Table 3 with Chart 1, is somewhat more pronounced in the analysis of individual statements, compared with its manifestation on a whole series of indicators used to compose the scale for neoliberal orientation. The further interpretation of the findings therefore needs to take this correction into account.

In terms of the political subsystem, it seems that the systemic NVD is not strongly manifested. The mean score on the scale of authoritarian orientation is somewhat lower than the theoretical mean, indicating that authoritarian orientation is not the dominant value orientation. Still, the fact that the difference between the empirical and theoretical means is relatively low confirms the view that a substantial part of the Serbian population still upholds values related to the previous socialist order (regressive NVD). If this finding is supplemented with another, indicating that an illiberal concept of democracy is dominant in Serbia, it is quite clear that the economic crisis of capitalism since 2008, which also caused the more general crisis of democracy, undermined the fragile and relatively hard-won confidence in the democratic institutions in Serbia. ^[17] In other words, although the main orientation towards political pluralism and democracy is not strongly questioned, it is clear that the economic crises and derogation of democratic institutions by political elites has given rise to serious doubts as to their efficiency. The Eurobarometer data concerning trust in political institutions—government, parliament, political parties, and public administration—indicate that this trust has, for several years, been relatively low in Serbia compared with other European countries, and especially with consolidated European democracies belonging to the capitalist core. ^[18]

The data related to the economic subsystem indicate that the overall orientation towards market economy provides a relatively strong legitimacy basis, with the empirical mean substantially surpassing the theoretical (support by just over 50 % of respondents). In other words, it appears that systemic NVD in the economic sphere does not prevail, or rather that, on the whole, in present day Serbia capitalism in both the political and economic respects represents the ‘only game in the town’ for a substantial number of the country’s citizens. This outcome is probably encouraged by two factors: the first is the global and local ideological defamation of the previous socialist order, unfolding in parallel with the rise of the neoliberal agenda (repressing the basis for the regressive NVD); while the other has to do with the still non-existent global (utopian) alternative which would anticipate a future social order with differentiated social proponents and corresponding value patterns.

The data on intra-systemic dissonance show that the neoliberal paradigm fails to obtain majority support among Serbian citizens, although it continues to represent a relatively widespread value matrix (the difference between the theoretical and empirical mean is almost negligible). In a situation marked by a world economic crisis and its local reflections, state interventionism in the economy is recognised in Serbia as the new desirable form of regulation of the capitalist order, now appearing alongside the neoliberal paradigm. In this respect, it is clear that a pronounced dissonance does exist in consequence of necessary changes in the dominant mode of regulation of the capitalist order.

The other most pronounced aspect of intra-systemic dissonance has to do with the redistributive role of the state aimed at lower social strata. Our findings indicate the widest and unambiguous support of respondents to redistributive values, paradoxically under the circumstances wherein the state implements fiscal austerity measures, that is policies to decrease budget outlays for vulnerable social categories and the public sector of the economy. This finding would by itself suggest an orientation towards a social-democratic type of capitalism. However, in view of the remarkably pronounced authoritarian orientation observed in the political subsystem, this seems to be primarily (although not exclusively) a value matrix ‘carried over’ from the previous socialist order (regressive NVD). It seems that the survival of the redistributive value orientation has also been influenced by ‘trans-historical’ factors, providing trans-systemic grounding to such orientation. ^[19] And, finally, with a substantial number of respondents also accepting the neoliberal paradigm, the findings on the whole reveal a pronounced value confusion, namely simultaneous support for different, even contradictory, value orientations.

Determinants of the Examined Value Orientations

The objective of the final part of the analysis is to establish the determinants of the selected value dimensions, using the data obtained in 2018. In regression models, where the dependent variables were the scales representing value orientations (with items previously selected through principal component analysis), we have examined controlled effects of the following predictors: gender (with ‘males’ as reference category), urban residency (with ‘village’ as a reference category), class position (with ‘professionals’ as reference category), political participation, economic position of the respondents, as well as age and years of education (Table 4).

The class position predictor distinguished seven class-strata categories: 1. political and economic elite; 2. lower managers and small entrepreneurs; 3. professionals; 4. transitory stratum (clerks, technicians and the self-employed with intermediate education); 5. highly-skilled and skilled workers; 6. semi-skilled and unskilled workers; 7. small farmers. ^[20] The index of political participation was construed on the basis of responses to the questions as to whether, over the past three years, respondents had contacted a politician or a person in authority, signed an appeal or a petition, donated money to a political party or organisation, participated in a blockade or occupation of public facilities, took part in a strike or demonstration, or attended any rallies. Membership of a political party as a separate factor has no predictive importance in explaining variations of the examined dependent variables, and was therefore excluded from the analysis. And finally, the index of economic position included different indicators of income, property, and consumption of respondents. ^[21]

In the first place, the findings show that only the variance on the scale of authoritarian (non-democratic) orientation is to a relatively satisfactory degree explained by the independent variables in the model (21.2 %), while for the other dependent variables this percentage remains below 10 % (see the R Square values in Table 4). In other words, it seems that the selected independent variables, taken either independently or jointly, are not strong predictors of the examined value orientations (except for the authoritarian orientation).

As for the authoritarian (non-democratic) orientation, not only is it best explained by independent variables compared with other dependent variables (value orientations) but it also registers the largest number of independent variables with predictive effect. The degree of education shows the strongest predictive effect (measured in years of formal education), where the result that the scale of authoritarian orientation decreases with the increase in the number of years of education. A similar—negative—effect is registered with the index of political participation, economic position, and dummy variables for urban residents and clerks (compared with professionals). On the other hand, a positive effect, i. e. an inclination towards an authoritarian orientation, increases with the age of the respondents (although this is not a strong predictor). In other words, the regression model suggests that a given value orientation is influenced by ‘standard’ modernisation factors: education, urban environment, higher economic position, and stronger involvement in political processes (in contrast to a passive attitude).

Concerning the second value orientation—illiberal pluralism—the index of economic position shows the strongest (negative) predictive effect: the higher the economic position, the more the inclination towards the illiberal concept of democracy decreases. Something similar also applies to education, although the effect of this particular predictor is substantially weaker compared with the previous value dimension, political participation, urban residency, and class position within the political and economic elite (compared with class position within the category of professionals). In other words, it seems that an inclination towards the populist political mobilisation is to be found among the respondents with lower education, the rural population, respondents who are generally less involved in political processes, as well as those at the bottom of the economic position scale. Given that more or less the same factors influence the overall (non-)acceptance of democracy and support of its illiberal variant, it is clear that attitudes towards the desirable type of the political order are (in addition to systemic factors) also determined by factors typically accompanying the modernisation process.

However, this finding does not apply with respect to general attitudes towards the capitalist order (orientation towards market economy and private ownership). Support for this orientation increases with the rise of economic position, but decreases among politically more active respondents and the urban population. The economic position appears as the most powerful positive predictor of neoliberal orientation, too, along with the members of the entrepreneurial group, while belonging to the female gender suggests the opposite effect.

Finally, the effect of economic position on a redistributive orientation is also strong, but predictably negative, along with the class positioning within the elite and entrepreneurial groups. On the other hand, the strongest supporters of redistributive orientation are respondents whose economic (market) position would be the most vulnerable without the redistributive role of the state, and in particular older respondents.

To sum up: in contrast to attitudes concerning the desirable type of the political order, in the case of the economic order, the number of predictors is smaller and their effect weaker. The strongest predictor is no longer the degree of education, but one’s economic position, acting in support of capitalism and especially its neoliberal variant. On the other hand, an important finding suggests that when the effects of economic position and education are controlled, the effect of class position still remains statistically significant. A respondent’s position in the hierarchical social structure acts in such a way that membership of groups that are the main bearers of the capitalist order (the ruling class and the entrepreneurial stratum within the middle class) incites stronger orientation towards the neoliberal variant of capitalism, that is a more pronounced rejection of the redistributive role of the state.

Conclusion

The research data reveal how the institutional and normative consolidation of a capitalist social relations in Serbia was not consistently accompanied by an increasing wider acceptance of the corresponding value system. Just as the establishment of new social relations evolved unevenly—belatedly and with a momentum interrupted by economic and political crises—so did the process of value changes in both the examined subsystems advance and regress, and was, over the past few years, clearly marked by a pronounced NVD, much like before the beginning of the systemic changes in 1990. That (systemic, prospective) dissonance recorded towards the end of the socialist period (potentially) facilitated the beginning of the systemic change, while today, both the systemic and intra-systemic NVD represent obstacles to the stabilisation and unobstructed reproduction of capitalist relations.

The dissonance is visible in both the social subsystems we researched, economic and political. Value orientations of a systemic nature related to economic processes were, between 2003 and 2018, susceptible to vacillations, while towards the end of the observed time period, the orientation supportive of capitalist economic relations as the basic form of social reproduction became typical of the largest number of respondents and all social strata. That orientation is supported by about 55 % of respondents, while a substantial number—between a fifth and a quarter of them—are undecided. In addition to the fact that a relatively large number of respondents did not, value-wise, fully accept the dominant form of social relations being established in Serbian society, a possible problem may be the fact that the prevailing majority supported (intra-systemic) values typical of the state-redistributive type of economy. These represented about 90 % of respondents—the largest number to uphold any of the examined value orientations.

The abovementioned findings primarily evidence an existing intra-systemic dissonance, that is support to the welfare regime of regulation of the capitalist economy, in a situation where, normatively and ideologically, the neoliberal economic model (its crisis notwithstanding) still prevails at the global level. This conclusion appears even more convincing, if we take into account the finding that only about a quarter of respondents accepted the statements supportive of the neoliberal type of regulation of overall economic relations. However, those who opposed this orientation were only slightly more numerous, while the majority were indecisive.

If, however, we recall the contents of the statement concerning the redistributive orientation, supported by so convincing a majority of respondents (state intervention aimed at redistribution of resources for the benefit of lower social strata) and link this orientation with findings on values characteristic of the political subsystem, a different interpretation comes to the fore. Namely, here again, when responses concerning the overall acceptance of the fundamental capitalist relation—party pluralism—are analysed, we can see that the majority of respondents supported the systemic values. But this pluralistically orientated majority was formed by only about 40 % of respondents, with even (approximately) a third of those with authoritarian orientation and a quarter of the undecided. In a word, in this sphere, too, we find a pronounced NVD. Besides, if the data on the type of pluralism preferred by the respondents are observed, it turns out that—with the exception of members of the political and economic elites—the largest number of members of all other strata accepted the values characteristic of the so-called illiberal pluralism (two-fifths of the respondents in total, compared with a third of those liberally oriented). In other words, the largest support was given to the type of political system that is nominally democratic (multiparty system) but where one party, as a rule, with an entrenched leader at its head, has a dominant position in the longer term.

Thus on the whole, value support for the establishment of capitalist social relations in Serbia is more vacillating than prevailing, and its expansion over time has been accompanied by occasional declines characteristic of both economic and political subsystems, and, moreover, its contents are changeable.

These variations only partly depend on changes in legitimacy patterns in capitalist core countries, and are also partly directed by earlier life experiences in the state-socialist system. Thus, the world economic crisis of 2008 which, in a wider context, shook the neoliberal legitimacy of capitalist regulation regimes, was not conducive to a more substantial decrease in the corresponding value orientations in Serbia, but to a high increase in the number of undecided respondents (nearly 50 %), and was, moreover, accompanied by a dramatically strong orientation towards state interventionism in favour of the lower strata (supported even by members of the economic elite, as well as by medium and small entrepreneurs). If this orientation, as already mentioned, is linked with the most pronounced value orientation in the political subsystem, that of illiberal democracy, the most acceptable (and logically most consistent) interpretation points to the strengthening of the regressive NVD, i. e. to the sustaining (or revival) of legitimacy elements of the previous political system. Clearly these value patterns, related to both the economic and political spheres, include socialist forms of regulation as well as even longer-lasting traditional forms of social regulation, such as an authoritarian government as an economic arbiter in support of forms of solidaristic redistribution, prominent in this region until the establishment of the socialist order in the mid-20^th century. In fact, forms of regulation characteristic of a capitalist welfareregime were never present here. ^[22] This means that the initial hypotheses of our analysis were only partly confirmed, and more convincingly so in the part addressing the indeterminateness of changes, than in the one dealing with the potential decrease in the systemic NVD.