Serbia is once again trying to oust an authoritarian. What can we learn from its past success?

This article Serbia is once again trying to oust an authoritarian. What can we learn from its past success? was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

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Serbia is witnessing its most significant mass protests in a generation, triggered by the collapse of a concrete canopy at the Novi Sad railway station on Nov. 1, 2024, which claimed 15 lives. The student-led movement protesting the public corruption they blame for this fatal tragedy has already won concessions: In late January President Aleksandar Vučić ordered the publication of classified documents related to the canopy collapse, and Prime Minister Miloš Vučević resigned days later. 

Yet civil resistance shows no signs of stopping until there is full transparency and accountability, or regime change. In the last two months, the protests have gained significant momentum and pose the most significant threat yet to the 12-year-old regime of President Vučić and the ruling Serbian Progressive Party, or SNS. Between Nov. 1 and March 7 (the last date for which we have data), Serbia has had 1,162 mass demonstrations across hundreds of cities and villages nationwide.

Scenes across Serbia in recent days reverberate like echoes of the landmark student-led nonviolent movement that ousted Slobodan Milošević, otherwise known as the bulldozer revolution. This past Saturday, some 325,000 peaceful demonstrators — and as many as 800,000 or 12 percent of Serbia’s population, according to organizers — shut down Belgrade’s city center. The rally was dubbed “15 for 15,” with the massive crowds holding 15 minutes of silence on March 15 in remembrance of the 15 killed. 

While many students hesitate to engage in conventional politics, anti-Vučić crowds have held signs or chanted “Gotov je!” (“He’s finished!”), an old bulldozer revolution slogan. The political opposition has also started to express solidarity with students. In early March, opposition lawmakers threw smoke grenades and tear gas in parliament, and even unfurled a banner that read: “Serbia rises up to bring down the regime.”

The cat-and-mouse game between dictators and pro-democracy movements is eternal. Which side prevails in Serbia matters for the future of democracy in central Europe and the European project. More broadly, the ability of pro-democracy movements to bring down dictators and authoritarian regimes will determine whether the arc of 21st-century history bends towards democracy or entrenches a new generation of populist strongmen.

Fortunately, there’s a wealth of information today’s movements can draw from to better their chances. Unfortunately, that kind of help is needed now more than ever, as global trends are pointing in the direction of growing authoritarianism.

A global wave of autocratization

As in 2000, Serbian students today oppose what they see as a corrupt, authoritarian regime. After more than a decade of post-bulldozer democratic rule, Serbia under the SNS suffered among the 10 worst cases of ongoing autocratization globally — only Hungary suffered a larger decline in liberal democracy score in Europe, per the Varieties of Democracy, or V-Dem, project. While electoral participation remains robust, electoral contestation and constraints on Serbia’s executive branch have weakened significantly since 2012.

More generally, the world is more than a decade into a “third wave of autocratization.” Political freedom worldwide has declined each of the last 19 years according to democracy watchdog Freedom House. Meanwhile, V-Dem notes that the world has fewer democracies than autocracies for the first time in two decades. Average democracy levels around the globe in 2024 were back to 1985 levels, with 45 countries autocratizing but only 19 democratizing. 

As the world enters an era of authoritarian sharp power — malign efforts by China, Russia, and others to pierce the political and information environment in other states — dictators and “wannabe dictators” around the world are increasingly curtailing democratic freedoms at home and cooperating with one another abroad in a so-called Autocracy Inc. or Axis of Authoritarianism. Civic space for NGO activism is shrinking. 

Authoritarian self-coup attempts are becoming more common, and strongman rule is on the rise as elected leaders personalize power over ruling parties and the security apparatus, in part as a way to deter and defeat peaceful pro-democracy mass uprisings.

Mass mobilization for democracy

Nature abhors a vacuum, and like a law of political physics, almost every autocratizing action sooner or later has an equal and opposite pro-democracy reaction. As a result, the current global autocratic surge has also led to unprecedented mass mobilization for democracy, with revolutions overtaking coups or civil wars as a means of irregularly ousting autocracies in the last couple of decades. 

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We live in the most rebellious era in history. The number of mass protests more than tripled between 2006 and 2020. Over half of all protests worldwide in this period were motivated by a failure of political representation. In 2024, there were more than 160 major election protests. In December, mass protests thwarted South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol’s attempted executive power grab. In 2025, we have seen mass pro-democracy protests around Europe, including Germany, Georgia, Hungary, Serbia, and Slovakia. In the United States, despite what some see as puzzling demobilization, hundreds of thousands have taken part in civil resistance, from boycotts to walkouts.

The nature of revolutionary upheaval has changed over time. In place of rural armed social revolutions, mass mobilization in an increasingly urban and developed world takes the form of what political scientist Mark Beissinger calls “urban civic revolutions.” These contests take place mainly in cities, and increasingly adopt modular nonviolent tactics. Data on nonviolent and violent campaigns and outcomes from “Why Civil Resistance Works” co-author Erica Chenoweth and other colleagues show that primarily nonviolent campaigns of resistance have become more common than primarily violent campaigns (e.g. civil wars) in recent years.

Historically, the success rate of nonviolent campaigns significantly exceeded violent campaigns. Unfortunately, the success rate of nonviolent campaigns has declined since about 2010. As journalist Vincent Bevins documents in “If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution,” the mostly spontaneous, social-media mobilized, and horizontally-led protest movements of the 2010s largely failed to deliver real change.

While observers still debate the causes of this trend — from the rise of violent flanks to dictators getting wiser to movement over-reliance on demonstrations and digital organizing — I prefer to look for inspiration on how nonviolence can get its mojo back. That means going back to the pre-2010 era for clues to strategic nonviolent success.

In my course on Nonviolent Conflict and Revolution at Carnegie Mellon University, I have students watch the 2002 documentary “Bringing Down a Dictator,” which chronicles how the rag-tag student movement Otpor! brought down the dictator of the Balkans, Slobodon Milošević, in Serbia’s 2000 bulldozer revolution. Over the years, I’ve synthesized five lessons from this case and the growing literature on civil resistance.

5 lessons on bringing down a dictator

1. Strategize and organize. In “How to Start a Revolution” – a documentary on the lessons of nonviolent theorist Gene Sharp — the first lesson is to plan a strategy. According to Sharp, the Tiananmen protests in China in 1989 failed not because the student organizers lacked numbers or passion, but because the students leading the movement lacked a strategy, which led to disunity when the state initially offered negotiations. “This Is An Uprising” authors Mark Engler and Paul Engler likewise argue that movements need to combine strategic planning with “spontaneous” mass protest into strategic campaigns of momentum-based organizing. 

A pro-democracy movement’s strategy must do several things. First, strategists must identify the incumbent dictator’s “pillars of support” and potential points of weakness. This includes analyzing partisan, elite and ethnic bases of support, each of which may shape strategies of contention to seek incremental shifts in the “spectrum of allies.” Second, strategists must employ inverse-sequence planning. That is, don’t start by planning tomorrow’s rally. Instead, start by crafting your “vision of tomorrow” or ideal endgame, then work backwards step-by-step from the end of the game tree to today.

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The bulldozer revolution was made; it was not just a spontaneous uprising. From just a few dozen young activists at its founding in late 1998, it took Otpor! a year of active organizing to recruit thousands of followers. According to the how-to manual of former Otpor! leader Ivan Marovic, Otpor!’s strategy involved designing appealing actions to win recruits. They engaged in what former Otpor! leader Srdja Popovic calls brand warfare in his book “Blueprint for Revolution.” Whereas Milošević tried to burnish his image as a strong nationalist leader necessary for order, Otpor! offered a more compelling brand around hope and democratic normalcy. They started with a positive vision of tomorrow, then worked backwards to set goals, tally up resources and seek unity in diversity. 

2. Maintain nonviolent discipline. Pro-democracy movements must expect some repression due to what political scientist Christian Davenport called a “law of coercive responsiveness.” State counter-strategies often involve a variety of tactics, including encouraging troop loyalty (to follow orders to repress), neutralizing international sanctions and dividing the opposition. To those ends, dictators often try to discredit the opposition as violent radicals, making it harder to market rebellion to domestic and international audiences. For example, Serbia’s Vučić has adopted Russian-style talking points, demonizing protests as led by violent agitators and stoked by Western “foreign agents.” Vučić has even sponsored masked hooligans or regime supporters to beat up opposition or drive cars into protests; others will sponsor agent provocateurs to try to elicit violence. 

As such, movements must be vigilant in recruiting and training members committed to nonviolence. During the Indian independence movement in the 1920s-1930s, Gandhi famously had satyagrahis sign a pledge of conduct, including a promise of nonviolence. Gandhi’s gift was not just forging a multi-ethnic mass movement, but keeping it peaceful. The most successful Gandhian campaign, the civil disobedience movement of 1930-32, had high levels of nonviolent discipline (as exemplified during the Salt March), and resulted in key concessions, including the Gandhi-Irwin Pact (which allowed Indians to produce salt) and the Government of India Act of 1935 (which allowed provincial elected governments and extended the franchise to 30 million Indians). When authorities arrested leaders of the Quit India movement in 1942, the campaign turned violent and no policy concessions followed, but they were instead met with violent repression.  

During the bulldozer revolution, Otpor!’s nonviolent discipline helped generate momentum and undermine the regime’s pillars of support. Student leaders today smartly make nonviolence and cleaning up debris priorities, but nonviolent discipline is easier when the regime limits repression. To overcome fear of state repression, Otpor! developed protocols for arrest, lionizing those who got arrested and rewarding them pins or T-shirts — the most coveted in Belgrade was the black T-shirt with a fist in a white circle, as it was reserved for those arrested more than 10 times.

3. Avoid the pitfalls of horizontalism. Many historic successful pro-democracy campaigns in the 20th century had identifiable if not charismatic leaders, from Nelson Mandela in South Africa to Corazon Aquino in the Philippines in 1986. By contrast, there are no identifiable leaders among many recent protest movements, as they appear committed to democratic decision-making in long plenary debate sessions. 

But leaderless mass protests over the last decade have had trouble maintaining unity and momentum, as noted in Bevins’s “If We Burn.” One of the key contributions of Otpor!’s leadership of the 2000 electoral revolution against Milošević was pressuring the democratic opposition to unify during the election campaign. Students Against Authoritarian Rule formed a year ago at the University of Novi Sad, appears to be trying to play an Otpor!-like role and leading much activism against President Vučić today. Organizational leadership or “campaign infrastructure” is also important for regrouping after repression. Research shows that the presence of organizational leadership is an important factor in making repression backfire after massacres.

4. Size matters, but generating elite defections is critical. Nonviolent resistance has a participation advantage, which promotes campaign success. Erica Chenoweth’s 3.5 percent rule suggests that participation of just this small share of the population almost guarantees victory. But, as Zeynep Tufekci, the author of “Twitter and Teargas,” points out, protest size by itself doesn’t matter. Instead, what is critical is generating elite defections. In fact, the single strongest determinant of whether or not a nonviolent revolution succeeds is whether or not security forces defect. 

The largest rallies in Belgrade in recent months have drawn crowds of more than 100,000, yet similarly large rallies by the Democratic Movement of Serbia from 1990-1992 and the Zajedno (or “Together”) protests of 1996-1997 failed to bring down Milošević. Over half a million joined the bulldozer revolution. The key difference: Elites abandoned Milošević in 2000, but not earlier. Protests in Serbia this past weekend may have achieved protest size on par with the bulldozer revolution, though as of yet there have been few major defections among Vučić’s political allies or among the security forces.

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For generating defections, it is not protest size but momentum that matters. The Women’s March in 2017 drew more than 3.3 million people across 500 cities, the single largest day of protest in U.S. history. Yet “the resistance” to Trump failed to maintain this momentum. Participation shrank to fewer than a million people by 2019, according to the Crowd Counting Consortium. The physics of dissent is only overwhelming when the perception is created that the status quo can’t possibly continue — that something must give.

5. Deploy dilemma actions. These actions force the state to choose between repression, which may backfire, or inaction, which makes the regime look weak. They are win-win for the resistance and are associated with campaign success. Otpor! often designed such actions with revolutionary humor, which let them laugh their way to victory, adopt tactical diversity, and create an attractive carnivalesque atmosphere.

For example, in a classic dilemma action, Otpor! would place an oil barrel with Slobodan Milošević’s face on it in a busy shopping area. Pedestrians were then invited to donate a “dime for change” into the barrel and in return be allowed to hit the barrel with a baseball bat. Unsure how to respond, police “arrested” the barrel to end the stunt. If populists try to claim the mantle of support of a “silent majority,” dilemma actions reveal that the emperor has no clothes. They force a “vibe shift” in favor of democracy.

While these five lessons don’t guarantee victory, they do give today’s pro-democracy crusaders — from Serbia to South Korea to the United States — their best fighting chance to combat corruption and achieve real democracy. 

This article Serbia is once again trying to oust an authoritarian. What can we learn from its past success? was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

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Source: https://wagingnonviolence.org/2025/03/bringing-down-a-dictator-serbia-what-can-anti-authoritarian-protests-learn-from-past-success/