Niksa Grgurevic

University Adriatic Bar, 

Faculty of Management, 

Herceg Novi, Montenegro

niksagrgurevic@t-com.me 

OCRID 0000-0001-6364-1225

Braking factors influencing the long-term stagnation of development in the SEE countries

Abstract. The subject of the paper is to explain the impact of three braking negative transition factors causing the long-term stagnation of socio-economic development in the three selected countries of South East Europe (SEE) - Bosnia & Herzegovina, Montenegro, and Serbia. It is about institutional inefficiency (which is generated in the synergistic action of alternative institutions and neoliberalism), the post-socialist totalitarian legacy related to the nomenclatures of power, and the underdevelopment of socio-cultural capital. The aim of this paper is to prove their dominant influence on the reproduction of the socio-economic development deficit (in fact: stagnation) in the observed countries through a hypothetically constructed survey model. The starting point is the basic hypothesis that the overall phenomenology of developmental stagnation is caused by wrong, slow, and inefficient institutional changes (political and macroeconomic), which have caused the dominance of alternative institutions. It also starts with the auxiliary hypothesis that privileged institutional monism (expressed in pronounced non-market appropriation) was the basic motive for the action of these braking factors, although methodologically and essentially it was in paradoxical contradiction with the proclaimed promises of “reformers”. In addition to the usual methods of social sciences, the paper used the results collected through an electronic survey of 900 respondents. In conclusion, the set hypotheses were verified, confirming the imperative need for democratization of society and the application of institutional pluralism on the model of developed countries, which implies the elimination of the considered braking factors.

Received: March, 2021

1st Revision: February, 2022

Accepted: March, 2022

DOI: 10.14254/2071-8330.2022/15-1/5

JEL Classification: D02, O17, P37

Keywords: institutions, alternative institutions, neoliberalism, quasi-neoliberalism, countries of South East Europe