Democratic Politics Today 
Pavle Gantar 
The question that has been puzzling me ever since the uprise of the totalitarian movement in Yugoslavia was established is how to conceive - if this is at all 
possible - an efficient democratic response that would be able to limit to the 
destructive power of mass totalitarianism, which seems to be on its victory march 
throughout Yugoslavia. 
Indeed, this question addresses the old issue of the fragility or vulnerability of 
democratic politics when it is faced with political strategies that do not obey the »rules 
of the game«. 
But in the case of Yugoslavia the problem is even more complicated as difficult - the 
social order in the broadest sense of the word - is not a democratic one, and most 
certainly not in terms of classical representative democracy (cf. Bobbio, The Future of 
Democracy 26-26). Therefore the circumstances in Yugoslavia are far removed from 
the circumstances that Mannheim had in mind in his work Man and Society in an Age 
of Reconstruction, where a liberal political order with all its pitfalls and problems, is 
threatened by totalitarian politics. 
The question for the democratic, political strategy in Yugoslavia is how to cope with 
the totalitarian politics supported by the political system and, somehow, the inevitable 
outcome. 
It is commonly known that in response to the deep economic, social and political crisis 
of socialism in Yugoslavia three political strategies have developed. 
The »status quo« strategy advocated by the federal political elite which seeks to 
prolong the existing balances of power. 
The strategy of totalitarian reconstruction of Yugoslavia on the premiss of strong 
centralist and monetarist state with an open revival of stalinist political practices. 
The strategy of democratic reconstruction, with all its implications in the economy, 
polity and society. There is no unique concept: nor does any concept belong only to the 
so-called alternative politics. 
Democratic politics today in Yugoslavia faces huge imbalances that might become 
fatal: 
1. What we observe nowadays is that all proposals for the democratic reconstruction 
of society and its politics (legal state, free election, representative democracy, 
150 
parliamentarism, civil society etc.) are attacked and refused by the ruling party and 
elite, and at the same time it has become evident that the political system with all its 
institutions and devices is very vulnerable to totalitarian demands. Very recent 
developments (the application of martial law in Kosovo) have shown that the status 
quo politics is already captured by the pressure of totalitarian politics. Federal state 
institutions and political organizations have become the vehicles of totalitarian 
reconstruction. 
2. Opposite to this the democratic coalition in Slovenia is still very fragmentated and 
unable to carry out the strategies that would stop the »export« of the totalitarian 
model to as yet unconquered regions (republics) in Yugoslavia. 
The institutional politics in Slovenia which is, in a vague sense, democratically oriented 
tries to avoid direct confrontation within the institutions of political systems. Or put 
another way: it seems that they still play the »positive sum game«, although it is 
obvious that there is a »zero sum game«. In this light the basic weakness of 
democratic politics becomes evident: democratic politics presupposes the pluralist 
structuring of the polity (political space) which involves nondemocratic politics too, 
but if the latter wins supremacy, then the pluralism is gone. 
3. Democratic political strategy, in elaborating such strategies one has to have in mind 
the following elements: 
a/ That: some sort of tacit or explicit agreement with totalitarian politics seems 
impossible, for the characteristic of the latter is the tendency of selfperpetuating and 
seizing as yet unconquered spheres and regions. 
b/ The only feasible policy seems to be to persist and strengthen the divergent social 
economic and political development by setting very definite limits to totalitarian 
politics (i.e. a point to which it can go - but the problem is that it has gone too far). 
c/ To strengthen the civil society in terms of self-organization of democratically 
oriented political subjects and to exercise pressure for institutional changes that would, 
at least in Slovenia, codify the level of democratization already achieved and set forth 
on the path for further democratization. 
Yet, the success of such policies cannot be guaranteed. The great advantage of 
totalitarian politics is that it promises the deprived and frustrated people much more 
than it is able to achieve (well-being...), but the problem has that this becomes evident 
only after the tragedy is already happened.