On Thursday, March 5th, 2026 at 12:00 PM (CET), we are hosting the CAS SEE Seminar with Filip Milačić on "Abandoning Democracy for the Nation" in conversation with the RECAS Fellow Nemanja Batričević.
Filip Milačić
Filip Milačić studied political sciences and history of Eastern Europe at the University of Heidelberg and obtained the PhD at the Humboldt University, Berlin. He is currently a Senior Researcher at FES Democracy of the Future, Visiting Professor at CEU (Vienna), and Research Affiliate at CEU's Democracy Institute (Budapest). He also held visiting scholar position at the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM) in Vienna and at MacMillan Center, Yale University. He is author of three books: Nationalstaatsbildung, Krieg und Konsolidierung der Demokratie: Kroatien, Serbien, und Montenegro (Springer 2017), Stateness and Democratic Consolidation: Lessons from Former Yugoslavia (Springer 2022) and Abandoning Democracy for the Nation (Cambridge University Press 2026). His work was published in many academic journals such as Journal of Democracy, Ethnopolitics, Nationalities Papers, Nations and Nationalism, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Political Science Quarterly etc.
About the Seminar
This seminar examines the burning question of why voters support politicians who subvert democracy. Instead of focusing on the usual explanations such as polarization or populism, the seminar offers a novel approach by focusing on the interplay between democracy and nationalism. More precisely, by relying on the comparative experiences of Serbia, Hungary, Poland, Israel and Turkey, using extensive data collected via surveys and interviews with relevant actors, seminar seeks to answer three questions: (1) How the subversion of democracy in the name of the nation unfolds, (2) Why many voters acquiesce to the subversion of democracy by nationalist elites, and (3) What matters in resisting the attacks on democracy with nationalist appeals. The answers to these questions reconcile demand-side and supply-side findings on democratic backsliding and shed new light on how to fight back more successfully.
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88989643663?pwd=VnZTOWRmdnl0WEZIdTczc1paZWtkdz09
Meeting ID: 889 8964 3663
Passcode: 328897
Fellowship
Fellowships are supported by OSF Western Balkans, ERSTE Foundation and Rockefeller Brothers Fund.
UNIRI The Moise Palace: Cres Island
An education center of the University of Rijeka. A five-hundred-year-old patrician townhouse and the largest Renaissance palace on the Croatian islands. A venue and forum for various scientific and research activities, it welcomes visiting academics, students and scholars.
