Value Orientations and Systemic Changes in Montenegro, 1989-2015

Abstract

Abstract The author analyses changes in value orientations in Montenegro between 1989 and 2015, examining on the basis of survey data the changes in the values that regulated the economic and political subsystems. He looks first at the period immediately preceding the breakdown of state socialism, in order to identify the spread of values relevant to the regulation of an economic subsystem which may be labelled ‘redistributive statism’, and ‘authoritarian collectivism’ within the political subsystem. He then shows how far Montenegrin society was penetrated by values pertinent to the competitive capitalist order, as well as to economic and political liberalism. He examines the changes in the modes of social reproduction and demonstrates how liberal values in fact replaced the previously dominant redistributive and authoritarian-collectivist ones. Not least, the author establishes that value changes occurred on many levels rather than simply following a linear trajectory from one system to the other.