Book review: 'Democracy struggles. NGOs and the politics of aid in Serbia'
Abstract
Book review: "Democracy struggles. NGOs and the politics of aid in Serbia" by Theodora Vetta, New York, Berghahn Books, 2018, 240 pp. (hardback), ISBN 978-1-78920-099-7.
Although the transitological approaches to post-socialist country reforms, which aim to simplify their realities, have been recently widely criticized; in-depth analyses of so-called democratization processes in post-Yugoslav states are still largely missing. Theodora Vetta’s book provides an important reflection of contemporary Serbia’s NGO and international aid scene, making a significant contribution to understanding Serbian society and the restructuring state processes that took place since the 2000s. Vetta shows that in the neoliberal world democratization and reform policies lead to the recomposition of class structures but not necessarily to democracy, and as such, her book echoes beyond Serbia and the Balkans...