A student-led movement is challenging what they claim is the 'capture' of the state by Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić. Asia Leofreddi reflects on how this uprising, sparked by tragedy and corruption, seeks to transform power structures. While Serbia's political future remains uncertain, the people's call for change grows louder
On 1 November 2024, the station canopy in the Serbian town of Novi Sad collapsed, killing 16 people. Since then, Serbia has experienced unprecedented student anti-government mobilisation. The Novi Sad tragedy was the result of systemic corruption and infrastructural neglect. It triggered silent protests all over the country with the slogan 'Corruption kills'.
Protests escalated on 24 November when, during one of these peaceful demonstrations, individuals allegedly linked to the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) assaulted student protesters at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade. This marked a turning point: campuses nationwide became sites of occupation and resistance. Students have since taken over more than 80 faculties. Protesters are demanding accountability and justice for the victims of the Novi Sad station, the release of unfairly detained activists, and a 20% increase in education funding.
What began as student-led protests has evolved into a broad social uprising. The movement now includes academic staff and students, farmers (notably those who opposed the Rio Tinto lithium extraction project), artists, journalists, taxi drivers, engineers, and other citizens. The Serbian government is pushing a 'protest of the privileged' narrative. In reality, resistance cuts across class and generational lines, uniting people from urban centres and rural areas. By early February, independent source Arhiv javnih skupova had recorded protest activity in 419 locations across Serbia.
By early February 2025, protests had broken out in 419 locations across Serbia
Notably, the movement has transcended entrenched ideological and political divisions. It has brought together people with differing views on polarising issues like the EU, Russia, and Kosovo. This fragile but powerful display of unity culminated on 15 March 2025, when over 350,000 people defied bus and train blockades to converge on Belgrade for the largest demonstration in Serbia’s post-Yugoslav history.
Since the 1968 student demonstrations, recurring waves of protest have marked Serbia's political history. The 1998–2004 Otpor! (Resistance!) anti-Milošević movement became a global emblem of nonviolent resistance. While today’s mobilisation draws on these legacies, it also innovates. Its model is rooted less in traditional activism than in the experiences of the 2006 Belgrade student protests and the 2009 Croatian university occupations.
The Croatian student movement’s use of the plenum — an open, horizontally structured assembly for collective decision-making — has been a major source of inspiration for young Serbians disillusioned with representative politics. Documented in the Blokadna kuharica (Occupation Cookbook), the plenum approach emphasised deliberation, inclusion, and direct democracy. Serbian students revived this model in 2014, and today it has re-emerged as method and message: not just a form of protest, but a reimagining of politics.
Unlike earlier Croatian student protests, which mounted a clear leftist critique of neoliberalism, today’s Serbian movement is rigorously nonpartisan. It refuses alignment with any party, and protest spaces are free of party symbols; only the national flag appears. When asked about President Vučić’s resignation, students redirect the focus to structural and institutional demands. Their emphasis is on restoring accountability, reviving civic participation, and challenging the political passivity that defines much of Serbian public life.
Rather than calling for Vučić to resign, students want to restore accountability and revive civic participation
So far, their strategy appears to be working, laying a solid foundation for broader social change. New values — like solidarity, community, and individual responsibility — are beginning to replace the apathy and uncritical individualism that shaped previous generations. In their place, a renewed belief in collective transformation is starting to take root.
Western Balkan scholars distinguish between state and societal capture. State capture is the colonisation of public institutions by private interests. Societal capture is political domination over society to ensure continued rule and manufactured democratic legitimacy. In Serbia, students are working to 'decapture' society. They are fostering environments in which agency replaces fear, and which contest the legitimacy of established authoritarian institutions.
The protesters are not merely criticising government figures. They are challenging the broader architecture sustaining authoritarian rule: state media, compromised judicial structures, and co-opted cultural institutions. Their aim is a transformation that is not only political, but deeply societal. They may have worked out how to decapture society. But can they decapture the state?
Despite widespread mobilisation, President Vučić shows no sign of stepping down. Instead, following the resignation of the previous cabinet on 16 April, the Serbian Parliament installed a new government led by Djuro Macut. Macut is a doctor and academic with no prior political experience, who was personally selected by the President. The move has been met with tacit support — or, rather, silence — from international actors. The EU in particular continues to treat Vučić as a geopolitically stabilising figure, which only reinforces his grip on power. In turn, Serbia’s civil society remains politically vulnerable and diplomatically isolated.
How to resolve the Serbian crisis politically has become the subject of intense debate among intellectuals, politicians, and activists. At its core lies a divide between different — often generational — visions of democracy. There are those who would prefer to resolve the crisis within the framework of representative democracy, and those who advocate for more radical alternatives.
Ahead of the 15 March demonstration, students issued a communiqué clarifying their position: they were not offering political solutions but had already introduced a model of direct democracy that others could adopt. In response, and reflecting the students’ growing influence, spontaneous citizen assemblies emerged, embracing the plenum model and calling for a bottom-up restructuring of public life.
Spontaneous citizen assemblies have formed in response to the 15 March demonstration, pointing toward a grassroots restructuring of the public sphere
Some saw the moment as an opportunity to break from both authoritarianism and liberal democratic orthodoxy. Others argued that representative democratic institutions should lead the change — and that students, as the most legitimate force, should guide it.
Serbia’s political future remains uncertain, and the situation is evolving rapidly. As I write, on 5 May, we stand at a turning point. After much resistance, the students have decided to call for early elections, and are urging the public to support the candidate lists they proposed.
The likely outcome remains unclear, but one thing is certain: a new political generation has emerged in Serbia, more politically aware and engaged. By reclaiming public space, reviving democratic imagination, and confronting societal capture, Serbia’s students are laying the groundwork for a new social future and, I hope, a new political one.
