This post by SOHUL AHMED was first published in Polity Weekly, Dhaka

When we heard that Serbian students and protesters succeeded in removing the long-ruling President Aleksandar Vučić, it seemed normal to us because such events are happening all over the world. Yet, the story of how they defeated him at the ballot box is one worth retelling. What truly disrupted the conventional ‘political imagination’ was how the students launched their movement, sustained its momentum over two years, and ultimately entered the election not as a traditional party, but as a unified movement. It comes as no surprise that a conflict expert and Johns Hopkins University lecturer remarked that the students from Serbia deserve the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts.

The reason why I argue that this movement and its dynamics realized a “utopian” version of democracy will become clear by the end of this piece. It all started after the collapse of a freshly renovated railway station on November 1, 2024, which killed 16 people. This tragedy triggered widespread mass mobilization because it was seen as the direct result of systemic corruption and an entrenched culture of impunity. The state machinery responded to the protesters with violence and a smear campaign. Read the full article here