Reform-democratic capacity dynamics during structural changes in transition's subjects

Abstract

The topic of the article is a problem of real and potential bearers or subjects of transition and their respective reform capacities. The analysis is based on the experience of transition in Serbia in the period of "democratic changes" 2000-2006. The problem is set up with a demarcation between the main transitive social groups, that are seen as a source of the future ruling elite members. A reform capacity of each group is scrutinized on the scale of its possession of three kinds of capital: economic, symbolic and social. The main dynamic process, which was designed for analytical purposes, concerns the mutual influences, alliances and divisions among these groups. These result in huge changes in the structure that is composed by the various amounts of the three kinds of capital. These amounts are changing during that very process and due to these changes, along side with the change of the group's identity, the rise or fall of its reform capacity occurs. The prediction of this capacity is founded in the thesis that maximal reform capacity asks for optimal equilibrium between all three kinds of capital: social, economic and symbolic. A factor, which is constant throughout this dynamics and which could be introduced as a fourth kind of capital, is political capital, and it makes the axis of the whole analysis. This capital (political power) is the instrument for obtaining at last some of the remaining three kinds of capital. Results of this analysis are very helpful in an explanation of the unexpected outcomes of the transition, of the diminishing pace of the very process, of frequent criminal affairs, and of the fall of citizens' confidence in the reform capacities of "democratic forces", or in an explanation of the return of defeated powers as a rule in the second or the third wave of democratic elections. The author believes that results and the explanation that have been given are valuable not only in the case of Serbia, but in the case of many others transitional countries (Russia, Ukraine, The Balkans countries, etc.) .