ESTADO CIENTÍFICO ACTUAL

(International Republican Institute, N ovem ber 1999), p. 20. M eanwhile, a November 1997 report showed that Plus 7 dni readership was about 15 percent in Slovakia. See Samuel Brecka, “Media in Slovakia” (Nârodné centrum mediânej komunikâcie, November 1997), p. 18.

during the 1990s about Croatian and Slovak politics and society are also used as source material.

In order to gain a general indication of the shifts in popular sentiment during the 1990s, this study examines the results of the two sets of elections in each country, viewing them in connection with the discursive orientation of the competing parties at the beginning and end of the decade. Public opinion poll data is also used to help demonstrate such arguments in a more convincing manner. This work relies to a large extent on opinion polls conducted by the Institute for Public Affairs (IVO) in Bratislava and by the Political Science Department of the University of Zagreb that have been presented through various publications.

The first section, which investigates the rise of national movements and their success in mobilizing populations politically, consists of two chapters. While this chapter presents the overall approach used by the HDZ and HZDS and their competitors. Chapter 2 is devoted to a study of the rise of national movements in Croatia and Slovakia and the entry of the HDZ and HZDS into government through ebctions. After putting the elections in their historical contexts based on the political maneuverings and inter-ethnic tensions in Yugoslavia and

Czechoslovakia, the chapter looks at the founding of the two parties and the discourse they used during the election campaigns, particularly concerning the concept of the nation and the nation’s prospects for full development. Because of the difficulties in finding reliable information on election campaigns so long after they took place, the study of the first elections is focused on newspapers,

magazines, and political party programs. In the case of Croatia’s 1990 elections, discourse analysis of three major dailies — Novi list, Slobodna Dalmacija, and

Vecernji list— has already been presented elsewhere,^^ and this study adds to that

work by looking mainly at the liberal weeklies Danas and Start, as well as at the HDZ bulletin Glasnik {Globus had yet to be established). Slovakia’s 1992 election campaign is examined through Plus 7 dni as well as through three dailies: the center-right , left-leaning P ravJa, and pro-HZDS Koridor.

Drazen Lalic analyzes those dailies from 31 March-20 April 1990. See Lalic, “Pohod na glasace,” in Srdan Vrcan et al, P oh od na glasace: Izbori u H rvatskoj 1990.-1993. (Split: PULS, 1995), pp. 203-280.

The second section of the study consists of three chapters focusing on the attempts by the HDZ and HZDS to use nation-building as a way of maintaining national mobilization. The starting point for this analysis is the identification of leadership groups, their strategies, and the changes and conflicts among them. Thus, these chapters deal with the recognition of the interest groups that controlled the state structures and the specific policies and strategies they pursued, particularly in relation to the national question. Each of the three chapters therefore begins with an analysis of the competing interests within and around the mling parties and their competition, going beyond the narrow political elite that is presented in Chapter 2 and addressing a wider group of conflicting personalities.

After moving on to a brief discussion of the disintegration of Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, Chapter 3 focuses on nation-building in the new Croatian and Slovak states. Resulting from Breuilly’s arguments that nationalist ideology requires simplification and repetition and that it is translated into concrete form mainly through the symbolic and ceremonial, the chapter investigates efforts to simplify national history through the creation of stereotypes and their reflection in new symbols and ceremonies. Building on Brubaker’s work, chapters 4 and 5 investigate the ruling parties’ “nationalizing” policies and programs in the spheres of economy and culture, respectively, where the governments tried to compensate for previous inadequacies by using state policies to promote the national interest. While Brubaker focuses on how such policies are aimed at the core nation as distinct fi*om the new state’s total population, in Slovakia and Croatia nation- building policies in economy and culture often seemed to be aimed not at the core nation as a whole but actually at a small group of ruling party loyalists. After discussing the ruling parties’ policies in the two areas, the chapters demonstrate the counterproductive effects of such measures by looking also at the reactions of the public, including trade unions, the independent media, and the cultural community.

The third and final section deals with the decline of national movements as the predominant force in society and the rise of alternatives in Slovakia and Croatia. Chapter 6 builds on the protest movements discussed in the chapters on economy

Brass, “ Ethnic Groups and the State.’ Breuilly, p. 64.

and culture, presenting a broader picture of the growth of a more democratic civil society by examining the development of independent media and non­

governmental organizations. That presentation creates the background for Chapter 7, which deals with the political aspects of the 1998 elections in Slovakia and the 2000 elections in Croatia. The chapter begins with an investigation of how and why the opposition parties finally managed to come together and form alliances aimed at defeating the HZDS and HDZ. It then looks at the election campaigns of the various competing parties, based mostly on first-hand observations of the parties’ campaigns on television, billboards, and in the print media.

The final chapter offers general conclusions on the ideas presented in this work. Clearly, the lack of success of the HZDS and HDZ in the second set of elections. indicates those parties’ failure to promote their image of the nation and to build up a reliable, nationally-oriented electorate. Although the parties’ approach was successful for much of the decade, the increased organizational ability of alternative actors and their closer connection with the desires and needs of the population eventually helped the opposition to remove the HZDS and HDZ from power by directing their attention away from the national issue, at least

temporarily. Nevertheless, it is difficult to say whether the elections meant an end to nationalism, or even to the HZDS and HDZ as national movements, since that depends largely on the success of the new Slovak and Croatian leadership in maintaining the mobilization of the populations in favor of other ideas.