It was an amazing achievement for the students list movement to get such a diverse group of new politicians elected. I’m very curious to see how government formation without a figurehead/leader goes. Most parliamentary democracies assume you are electing a person with the knowledge/hope the party leader will be sitting in the big chair at the end. Most also put a lot of power in that person’s hands with backbenchers sidelined from the day to day running.
I really hope their success carries over into governance.
Maybe. Politics is a skill, and not everyone has a knack for it. It’s dirty, requires compromise, and a willingness to work with your opponents. Or, well, at least it used to.
It very much is, but I don't believe it is the skill of "solving problems" or "making society better".
Politics is about getting elected. Convincing the people that it's all the others' fault, that you know better, that you will save the world. And then when they get elected... we naively expect them to solve problems. But we selected them for their capacity at being selected, not their capacity at understanding the big problems society is facing...
And in many others they’re small czars of their own kingdoms. However it’s always nice to refresh parliaments with new educated people, with new progressive political movements, shatter old alliances and practices.
I think he means polticians lying, being trecherous, compromising until nothing gets done and no ones career is hurt, etc is a skill. It would be better for the people if people with these skills were not in public office. Anything that takes away from being a servant to the constituents and become self-service needs to be removed from Politics.
I'm not sure if it used to be like that, but the skill required to politicians now is to get themselves elected, and that largely means the ability to lie well
Management is basically 99% people's relations/network. It doesn't matter how good the technical implementations are at the top, if they don't have the knowledge and capacity to enforce it downstream from middle layer to the base. There's so much people involved whose interests are farmed by your competitors.
Imposing it top down requires oppression. Imposing or pressuring this huge layer from the bottom requires a continuously updated base so you can squeeze from the top and the bottom to enact the changes needed quickly.
It's impossible for leaders at the top, to personally vet the members of a village or city council for example.
I think I've never seen any of such concatenation of events and organization to have ever happened.
The exact opposite is true. The only consistently working, stable democracies do not have a single leader of the executive branch, e.g. Switzerland.
The CIA sponsored extensive studies on this and came to the conclusion that democracies with a strong presidential role are associated with a greater risk of failure. It's not really surprising, and it can be seen in the US right now.
I mean ... most countries are run by some sort of committee hierarchy / supervisor chain. Having consulted at many different levels of govt. over here in Europe, I can tell you there are way more committee decisions than Executive directives.
In many cases, the executives / politicians / directors just rubber stamp what a working group / committee has decided.
as a Serb I can tell you it's because Swiss are very different people compared to the rest of the world, I hope this government will work for some time, but with our people I expect them to get some idiot into power again
The constitution will necessitate a certain structure so it's not like "it can't work". It is working and then at some point soon the structure will be reified and some will be given more power and different portfolios than others.
> An electrical engineer who has helped design robots. An organic chemist who, during the pandemic, worked on COVID-19 drugs. An education researcher, a sociologist, several political scientists, economists, physicians, and medical researchers.
Diverse? Over-educated university graduates is possibly the least diverse set of thinkers one could hope to find.
> Dozens of them come from the academic world, and more than half have a Ph.D. or M.D.
Lord help up. This is going to be demonstration of hubris and an exercise in arrogance.
Yeah, there's plenty of high-profile academic politicians in Europe with debatable legacies including Thatcher and Merkel. Time will tell.
A quick search suggests the economists associated with this movement are fairly 'mainstream' institutionalists of the type that's popular with government these days in the west. I don't think there will be big changes soon beyond dealing with corruption/nepotism.
Later on, I imagine they will push for faster EU integration on possibly slightly worse terms. Serbia may become marginally less independent in terms of fiscal policy at least and the markets might become even more exposed/beholden to foreign capital. This process has been in motion for years now and I don't expect the student movement to care - the upsides are broadly popular with younger people globally. Personally, I think it is deeply ironic that in the age of tariffs and huge government spending by the superpowers, small countries like Serbia are still signing up to be bound by the 'free market' consensus which is rapidly disintegrating globally.
Knowing nothing about it this particular movement, the main danger I foresee is essentially hubris. That the PHDs will be overly confident in political decisions they make in new domains completely foreign to them, primarily due to their expertise in their own domains and that this will lead to disastrous policy decisions.
I see this often in many areas. Perhaps they'll be lucky and have a few behavioral psychologists among them to maintain intellectual humility.
I’m not sure “brainy” people are that much more likely to think they can make good decisions than any other politician. So why do you feel this would exacerbate the hubris politicians already have?
Many if not most career politicians have education in their domain: law, civics, economics, political science, or similar. On the other hand it’s a common failure mode of STEM people in particular to assume their expertise can be directly applied to more "human" fields and indeed to dismiss those fields as unscientific hand-waving.
> Many if not most career politicians have education in their domain
They don't have "domains", they are career politicians. It is nice when a politician has some experience in the topic they're legislating on but the system is works on having generalists who bow in whatever direction winds are blowing the most money from.
It is not possible to be an effective career politician by having firm principles or technical expertise. It requires a near total dedication to politicking. It's nice when they happen to have some experience on a topic they're involved in but it is nearly never the case because the number of political topics is large and the number of politicians is comparatively small.
Maybe they are just less experienced in politics. I wonder if their education includes much about the problems they need to solve for society in that country. On the plus side a PhD is good at research and can probably get up to speed damn quick and read a lot. As long as they don't have the hubris!
Have politicians ever been voted en masse for their ability to navigate the domain they will be deployed to work on? It's a combination of popularity and (stated) opinion overlap.
Looking back my guess would be that infiltration is an even bigger danger. The opportunity of visibility and power, without the hassle of climbing the ranks for decades inside an established party, attracts a certain type of human.
Definitely a risk, but politicians are professionals at being overly confident. With this selection (there are not only PhDs, and not only academics), there is actually a chance of... actually trying to understand the problems?
Politics also require quite a bit of emotional intelligence and charisma and ability to get diverse people to come to the table for compromises. Academic achievements are orthogonal to all these.
Best case would be multi-talented persons who have both IQ and EQ and good character. Just IQ is not enough.
Definitely not my experience in academia, mostly small mini czardoms who can't stand and won't speak to their competitors. Often engaged in ancient blood feuds with the person two doors down. Add a dash of corruption in publishing and citing each others works while excluding those they disagree with etc.
Some character traits that are useful to academics are useful to politicians; others are kinda the opposite of what politicians need.
Intelligence? Problem solving? Understanding statistics? Speaking in front of rooms full of people? Communicating complex ideas clearly? Useful for both jobs.
But an academic can be bookish, shy or haughty. Pursuing your own ideas is actively encouraged. There are arguments - but the main audience for the debates are other academics. They needn't collaborate on research with anyone they don't want to, and when they do collaborate everyone has the same destination in mind even if they disagree about the route to get there. When dealing with students, they've all chosen to be there, passed exams and paid money. The work is mostly low-medium stakes, with time to get important things right. And of course they have excellent job security.
Politicians, though? Gotta love campaigning and talking to voters. Gotta all get together behind the party's national platform. Even colleagues in your party are rivals because everyone wants the top job. 'Debates' all about playing to the audience and getting 3-second soundbites for social media, not engaging with the substance of arguments. No choice in who you collaborate with, including people with deep-seated disagreements about things like tax, debt, spending. Gotta represent voters many of whom hate you. Do well at the job and high stakes things you didn't even do get blamed on you, like train crashes and oil markets getting expensive. Oh, and every 4-5 years you're fired and get to re-apply for your job.
> fight corruption and establish meritocracy, accountability, and the rule of law
Keep into account that the baseline for governing Serbia is low. As long as they can lower the corruption, they can do a lot wrong and still come out ahead.
I feel most comments in this thread do not really understand what Vućiċ regime was.
Google Aleksandar Vućiċ Voja Nevolja meat grinder…
Vučiċ is successor of people that assassinated Zoran Ðinďić, a Serbian prime minister. Basically drugs and arms dealers from either mafia, secret service or special forces.
Even if this government ends up being corrupt the level of moral lows they would need to hit to reach previous regime is staggering.
So people justifiably think it can’t get worse… but that only the time will tell…
IMO more than the academic prowess, the key positive is that the newly elected representatives will have different priorities and perspectives, and be younger. I can’t help but thinking that young people that went through high achieving secondary studying must have internalised delayed gratification and long term thinking by necessity, and be at least trying to improve things for the longer term rather than short term gain.
Then again, I might just be hoping it is so. Given that, sadly, similar movements elsewhere (perhaps with not as much laurel leaves) have quickly fallen apart. (5 star movement in Italy and Piraty in Czech Republic come to mind)
Academia is often the path of least uncertainty; you do exams, get a student stipend, and follow a very linear path.
In some ways it's the ultimate short term thinking, taking the mediocre but predictable steps, instead of risking the real world with its unbounded upsides.
Possibly that mindset is good in a parliament, but I wouldn't really classify it as long vs short term.
Not exactly academics but as they were mentioned somewhere in this thread, physicians follow this same sort of path. It's actually a lot less uncertain than academia, it's almost impossible to screw up if you're a mediocre but somewhat bright "good" student. There were people I met in medical school who basically never had to take decisions in their life (which is sort of crazy as they take decisions about the lives of others).
I share your hope. I, too, am aghast at the "dumbing down," and "lowest common denominator" approach of populist politics.
I would like to mention that when I was young, I figured that if young people ruled the world, then things would be much better. I was pretty sour on the bitter, cynical old farts that didn't have a stake in things, and had basically ruined our world.
Sound familiar?
After seeing what's happened in Silicon Valley, which is pretty much my "utopian dream," I have come to realize that young people can be much, much worse than "old farts."
Silicon Valley is worse than average because they're mostly techies and techies are people that on average love things more than people and have low empathy. They also lean isolationist/libertarian and are the perfect victims for "bootstraps" mentality.
You need to spend a lot of time publishing, studying etc to become an academic it's not a highly social pursuit. In fact techies in order to achieve anything mostly have to operate in a team and it's not the zero sum ruthless game of academic careerism (only so many tenured spots available).
Also the output of tech companies is ideally something tangible not just the careerist publish or perish mindset of academics. Academics are not exactly principled either they will go to exactly where the funding/grants are.
I think it's very much a combination of American "you are what you do" mentality, combined with making money automating what other people do... Very much a frame where people are evaluated compared to the complexity of replacing them with tech.
I'd probably be fine with the average opinion of silicon valley workers. Even accounting for the overabundance of priveliged white men that leads to a libertarian/fascist undercurrent. It's the sociopaths that rise to the top by fucking everyone else over that are a problem.
I hope it works out for them. In my home country students overthrow the government and put a Nobel Prize winning economist in charge. Now GDP growth has collapsed and the security situation has become precarious.
I’m also reminded of Ashraf Ghani, the last President of Afghanistan, who was a professor and wrote a book “Fixing Failed States.” He ended up fleeing the country like a coward as it collapsed.
It’s notable that students played a major role in the 1979 Iranian revolution that ended up putting the Ayatollah in power. In fact to my knowledge, student-led revolutions have never produced a long term positive outcome. Any examples?
Just because they are academics and experts in some scientific or technical field does not mean they are immune to corruption and abuse of power. Arguably they are just as vulnerable to these things.
I hope so so much that the current level of corruption will get down. They have been given an immense task. I wish them all the best. The world will be watching.
I've seen posts of yours on other threads, and all I have to say to you is that you keep on pretending that only the politicians you don't like are the corrupt ones; this is very naive.
I never said they were equally corrupt. What I notice quite often, especially from people that are the most partisan, is that they will add things you never said because they think they are arguing with an imaginary person constructed in their head.
I never mentioned any particular politicians and was making a general observation that if you haven't had to deal with unsavoury characters, dishonest actors and quasi-crooks, you will lack the experience of how to deal with them. These people exist in all walks of life.
The person I was replying to was playing team sports, which I find tiresome, because every post about everything has to become about Trump or whoever the current villain of the week is. It is quite frankly moronic.
which brings to mind the old William F. Buckley Jr., who famously remarked that he would rather be governed by the first 2,000 names in the Boston telephone directory than by the faculty of Harvard University.
But the idea of randomly selecting leaders as a leveling distribution is as old as Athens. We still practice it in Jury selection in much of the world.
So this experiment in Belgrade might be worth watching and it wouldn't surprise me at all if they outperform previous and regional governments.
These new batch of people are not randomly selected; they are thought of as more suitable to rule due to their being academics and scientific/technical experts, rather than lifetime politicians. Same as the old politicians who were cut from a certain cloth.
The cloth is now different, but a cloth it remains.
I would love to be governed by 500 average Joes and Janes, chosen at random, for a mandatory 4 years of (political) conscription.
But eventually they will themselves vote to abolish this in favour of career politics. It is one of those cursed problems there are no valid solutions to.
To be fair even if that worked out somehow they would be dominated by the professional bureaucrats running the civil service and other day to day government activities. Effectively it would turn into a technocracy with some degree of oversight.
Wow, this is such a cool thing! Having PhDs and MDs select the course of a country would be a first-of-its-kind social experiment, too. Serbia could become a great country to pursue higher studies. But what I would like to see more is how they tackle basic concepts like corruption, reduction of red-tapism, better infrastructure, and more. I think this would be a unique situation where people might choose between a couple of REALLY educated candidates, never have I seen that before anywhere.
Quite a lot of cynicism and contempt expressed in this thread, and not entirely unjustified: historically, "governments of intellectuals" led to some of the worst regimes.
However, I want to look at this experiment more optimistically, see if this assembly can defeat the stereotype. I'll be observing its activity with interest!
I dunno man. Having worked with organisations that exist purely to coordinate academics and doctors in the medical field made up of a committee of the same folks...I only have concern. Smart as they maybe in their fields...academics are usually poor at management, logistics, empathy and organisation.
The committee of doctors, surgeons and biophysicists I supported couldn't organise a piss up in a brewery...they all had PhDs.
And then there’ll be the inevitable “I have to work with that person for how long!?” And the fiefdoms will be set up, and the back stabbing will begin.
That’s before we even consider the effect of the unelected bureaucracy and the power of the lobby groups and foreign interests.
It's extraordinary they managed to form a list in 2025 and defeat the super corrupt, super established incumbent. A huge win for Serbia and democracies everywhere.
I'm a bit skeptic on all those professors and PhDs being a boon, though. In Portugal, we've been ruled by PhDs since 1926, if not before. Most ministers are professors, many of them independent. Results haven't been good. I hope Serbia proves us wrong.
Are we still doing this thing where we attribute success in one area to completely different fields? You may as well elect Opus 5.5, seen as it is already superhuman at certain tasks.
In India at one point AAP had raised hopes. But they couldn’t work as a team. Let us hope Serbia shows the way for others. If they get some good advisors it might help. AAP infighting felt to me like infighting of French revolutionaries though it was not that bloody.
Politicians are lacking in EQ, not IQ. Higher IQs would make things slightly better while higher EQ leads to much better outcomes. Ideally, yeah, both are needed.
> Rather than stand themselves, the students pulled together a slate of trusted figures—not just academics, but also farmers, lawyers, artists, teachers, and a former basketball player.
I came here to say that it's not "just academics", as many of the comments here seem to imply.
> Many of the new representatives have zero experience in politics. But their unparalleled professional expertise should be helpful in reforming Serbia,
So non career politicians.
This is essentially a technocratic government that is left leaning. Just because they are academics, researchers, doctors, engineers and sociologists does not mean they cannot go corrupt themselves (it will). The EU itself is heavily corrupt as well.
We have also seen how corrupt a technocratic right government can get in the US. It will be no different to a left leaning one once money and promises are involved.
To give an analogy of what this is, this is like electing effective altruists from Anthropic with the difference being that they are using your money (taxes) instead of theirs and giving lots of promises for your vote.
If they are serious, they need to pass the world toughest anti-corruption laws while also significantly growing their own economy or borrowing economic policies from the least corrupt nations in the world such as Singapore and to exceed them.
> Student List has promised to fight corruption and establish meritocracy, accountability, and the rule of law.
While these are good promises, the problem is that this is the first lie that they have already made.
They better do all four of them without angering the electorate otherwise they can’t be trusted.
There is often resistance to technocratic forms of government that, in my opinion, misses the mark, appealing to either a "they don't understand the real world" or a "we tried this before" argument, both of which deliberately ignore the "policy is personnel", reflecting the idea that their moral character is perhaps the most defining aspect when addressing large-scale change.
It is clear from populist approaches that conducting business-as-usual without any foundational knowledge is dangerous and leads to corruption and regulatory capture, and it is equally true that purely rationalist efforts neglect the messy nature of political governance and social complexity, leading to an overly narrow idea that ends up not serving the people it claims to support.
I expect that this government will rise or fall based on its ability to remain internally cohesive while also trying to resist (and hopefully influence) the many pressures that will be put on it by the regional and global vested interests.
Now, here's a challenge for you: name an elected government that's the polar opposite. The greatest by assemblage of premium-grade idiots to have ever managed by any civilisation. I know - it's a very hard question.
I used to believe very hard in technocratic governments where experts lead instead of politicians merely consulting with them as most countries do (or pretend to do to give cover to whatever they'd do anyway). Supposedly very technocatric governments end up being more corrupt than average but I can't even remember sources, just that after reading about I became less of a believer. I really want to believe it has to be better than having old people who's whole career is politics but who knows.
Any system no matter how well intentioned will outlast its usefulness and eventually dies. I think the key is to see it in the moment and immediate future — Serbia's Gen Z's GDP/GINI/what-have-you is a good yardstick to measure that. So its kind of weird to say we believe because every time something like this is tried it really is different and whatever you/I believe in _never_ lasts even our lifespans.
In a muddled political system(democratic or otherwise) today its about power and how is it balanced. When Nandan Nilekani was creating India's UIDAI(the national aadhar system), he insisted that he would only do the project if he was given a cabinet level post[1]. His is one of the few technology examples to succeed in India when most large government run projects are a disaster. ISRO is probably another decent example of success. I think Nilekani succeeded because he had a clear moral compass and a defined goal.
But there is a problem with kings, soon they have an asshole child.
Metaphorically speaking at least. UIDAI is being used stupidly enough like an SSN now and in ways it was never meant to be.
Singapore is the opposite of the ivory tower rule. Most high-ranking officials hold either a master's or a professional degree. You wouldn’t find many PhDs with no prior executive experience.
Politicians are very well compensated there. And part of their pay is linked to how well they perform.
Prime minister gets 3 million per year for example.
thing with Mugabe n his government - those guys were mostly just lawyers and other PHDs in things social studies etc
they grew up on communist rhetoric, got support from communist countries - so their main ideology had already failed in the real world. so accumulating degrees without practical experience is a recipe for failure as seen in most african countries.
Rationality has to be guided by common sense. I’m sure Nazi Germany had many extraordinarily capable technocratic leaders but we have those in ample supply and with the computers now reasoning with us I don’t think we need more of those. Rationality is a solved problem as far as I’m concerned. We have other issues. We lack a coherent moral vision, societal cohesion, stability, sanity. Once you lose those it doesn’t really matter what system you implement, it’s just delaying the inevitable.
Seeing the billions of people who believe in the imaginary, and a few millions of these fight and kill others over these imaginary things, I would say, rationality is not a solved problem.
> I’m sure Nazi Germany had many extraordinarily capable technocratic leaders [...]
Actually, not. They had a few left-over from when Germany had a functioning state, but the Nazis were overall fairly incompetent at actually running the country.
The latter, maybe? The former, I'm not so sure. However we don't have many examples of competent organisations trying to enact genocide to compare against. (Fortunately.)
How were the Nazis technocrats? The core of the Nazi party were weirdo political extremists and violently nationalistic army veterans. The only example I can think of which matches your idea of an 'extraordinarily capable technocratic leader' is Speer, and like his military counterpart Rommel, his reputation has been somewhat laundered and propagandised both during and after the war.
Lots of governments just end up with career lawyers and politicians.
They can choose their advisors and their advice.
The more varied experts you can get into parliament, the more likely you have an on the record disagreement from an expert preventing a politician from choosing the incorrect advice that suits them better.
Thats not to say they are going to be any better for corruption, but in todays world there are so many deep silos that governments just completely step over and disregard.
> Supposedly very technocatric governments end up being more corrupt than average
Hardly. But it depends on who is on board.
Corruption exists everywhere. Do you think that Vukic was
less corrupt? I am pretty certain you will find many people
in Serbia who want to fix the country. Other Europeans would
ask: why let only poor countries join? They drain money from
richer countries. Switzerland and Norway will never join and
they know why. Hint: there is a reason they are rich.
Second hint: they got rich without the EU.
Which country got rich with the EU? I don't know of a single
one. Germany was already wealthy before the EU was founded.
France is now in debt crisis from which it can not escape,
so it will drag the whole EU down.
Estonia and Poland. I’m going to France and Estonia every year, and Estonia seems more developed and comfortable, I’m now seriously thinking of retiring there so good it is
Hint: Norway has oil and Switzerland has been fairly rich for a while. No country got rich with the EU and that's a good sign, otherwise it would probably also imply that many got much poorer. But the living standards for a lot of people certainly went up in comparison to what they had before.
Being able to freely and easily trade with the EU, and not wanting to be controlled by Russia, are probably the most important two reasons to join the EU!
It does not pay into EU budget - it contributes to and participates in specific programs and projects. The treaties are rather sectoral agreements which are always under the threat of swiss direct democracy. Bilaterals III has not yet been approved neither by the referendum nor the parliament - while it will likely pass the opposition is every significant.
Ah yes. China used to have 100% technocrats in their leadership 30 years ago. No one with a law degree in sight. Nowadays it is less, but they still have quite a few.
But that's precisely the point of the article: that after "countrywide student protests" this group has managed to unseat "13 years of populist authoritarian rule by Aleksandar Vučić".
I'm not saying they will succeed, but they have been explicitly voted to fight the corruption you speak of.
technocratic governments are great when a strong leadership is present that also listens to the technocracy. But it's important to realize that technical skill does not correlate with political skills like consensus building, horse trading, compromise, etc that make governments actually work.
What will happen here will strongly depend on how good these people are at actually playing the game of politics. I don't have any particular reason to be more or less optimistic than any regular slate of politicians.
Whilst politics always exist, how deep it goes varies.
It's entirly possible that the experiment fails because of politics, but it's also possible that the amount of politics is simply lower because people are simply more reasonable.
The last part will come down to vested interest and ideologues.
Pretty cringe, and if what I've seen at the top of university faculties is any indication, it's gonna be a shitshow. There's something to be said for at the very least the common working class man having a direct say in things, if not the deciding say in the things.
There's no modern historical indication that more degrees results in better governance.
Meh getting them elected is one thing can they overcome the institutions and the bureaucracy stuffed with corrupt friends and former politicians that’s completely different.
Only one Serbian university barely qualifies to international rankings. Education from these institutions is not what you think it is. I'm not arguing against Serbia in particular, this applies to most Eastern and Central European countries.
Nobody takes seriously those gaming metrics. University rankings are based on how many researchers, you can get to pretend they are teaching at your University...based on the extortionate funds you get from students more interested in partying at their AlphaPis.
All this while said Researchers offload the real work the students are paying for... to TAs.
They need to translate the election victory into
tangible improvements and results. Otherwise
voters in Serbia would not see any difference to
the cleptocracy established by Vukic.
Hungary has this problem by the way - people thought
Péter Magyar will fix, and change, Hungary. Recently
Hungary signed a "we are ultra-right servants of
Trump" in the USA (see https://telex.hu/english/2026/10/30/hungarian-fm-and-rubio-s...), thus validating all those who pointed
out that Peter is just a younger face but the same
Orban 2.0 in the end.
Corruption runs very, very deep. I am also certain the Epstein
network is not only much bigger than known, but has different
actors and beneficiaries. To this day the US court system can
not explain why only Maxwell is in prison. That makes logically -
and logistically - no sense at all.
I mean this specific example seems like a far cry from how horrible the Orban regime was. It’s basically ultra-conservative posturing. And Magyar being super conservative was known ahead of the vote. Granted I am no expert in Hungarian politics, but from this single example it seems a bit intense to call him Orban 2.0.
And I also don’t think you can compare Magyar pre- and post election to the new Serbian elected government at all. But I do agree actually producing enough noticeable change until the next election will be hard for both. It just takes time to unfuck countries.
Can you elaborate? I mean to my limited outsider understanding, Magyar's entire platform "exactly as right wing as Orban, but with less corruption and with proper democratic civil liberties". Does signing some symbolic agreement about "boo antifa" really break with that promise?
Proper up to the point. No way he is giving up built in advantages right wing has in Hungary - like rural voters votes having way more power then city voters.
Sure but that’s a far cry from the “Magyar is just another Orbán style despot” vibe that this thread started with. It just means Hungary is Little America.
Not necessarily, but do you think voting in the guy who held power for 13 years is going to help?
He clearly redirected the railway station maintenance budget to his friends instead, because he assumed the public were suckers who'd vote him back in no matter how badly he fucked up. Then the station canopy collapsed and killed people. Entirely avoidable.
When your leaders are nakedly corrupt, and through sheer luck you still have free and fair elections, you vote those fuckers out. Otherwise they'll fiddle while your country burns.
It looks like the public want someone else in charge, they'll give them a fair shake. Maybe the new lot will direct the treasure more appropriately.
Since they are not a political party, the issue will be who will run the institutions. They have 250 people on the election list. Institutions are also made of people. I believe these people are smart and know what they are doing, but they cannot do all of it themselves. I support this "experiment", but it will be interesting to see where they will find hundreds if not thousands of people to run the country. An established party has members as a pool to pick from.
You cannot setup a team of dozens of people to run an important sector of the whole country by having them apply for positions. Not even companies hire that way, most companies hire based on recommendations and contacts. You don't have time for this, they need to form a government in a month or so. Six months in people already get antsy if enough is getting done, you'd be going through the third round of interviews.
Not every country has a spoil system, there's probably no need to change anyone in the institutions (except those very close to Vučić in dangerous positions)
This is true, but doesn't contradict my statement. As I said, I am looking forward to this and am in fact not that pessimistic. But in the end you need actual people, and these need to be found.
I unfortunately predict doom for this group. Statecraft is largely about coalition building and who is doing favors for whom. Without this the wheels simply stop turning, public bureaucracies stop cooperating, private funding dedicates itself to destroying you instead of supporting you. This is never going to change, this is how politics is, it's why parties always form even when we try to prevent them.
The essential factor in whether a state is good or bad for the people at large is arguably whether you can draw a clear line around which sorts of favoritism are permitted and which are outlawed as corrupt, and actually achieve enforcement when people in power inevitably break these rules. A cardiologist, bioarchaeologist and a physicist are going to know nothing about all of this. Their job is to work with the incumbent bureaucrats and elites who hold the real power in that society and those people will almost certainly run circles around them. Fantasyland Reddit politics consists of making aggressive, principled statements. Real world politics is about recognizing you have to deal with a ton of people who are quite frequently awful but because they've managed to cling to one lever of influence or another you can't ignore them. They are moving things in a the direction you don't want them to go every day so what do you do about them? Jail them? Kill them? Buy them off? Cut a deal with them? Make them see reason even though it's against their personal interest because you're just that smart? (lol!) You can't ignore them. It's nothing like the deterministic systems all these people have studied. I wish them luck but I think I know how this is gonna end.
Whilst it seems like a good idea to have academics run government, history has shown that countries run by engineers and scientists tend to end up with some great roads and dams, but failing economically and socially in almost every other way.
Idk which period you're referring to, but for a long time, the Politburo was nothing but Stalin's mouth piece, as was the Central Committee and the rest of the Party, ad they ruled through very hard repression. That puts a long-lasting kind of mark on a society that you can't engineer yourself out of. So I'd argue it's not much of an argument.
At a guess, 30% of the speeches given today in parliaments across the western world were already written/inspired by an LLM. This is somewhat inevitable.
US government-funded pro-opposition outlet BIRN through its Media Ownership Monitor Serbia project admits the central Student List media channels - N1 and Nova S - were created by former US director of the CIA David Petraeus via KKR and former US Ambassador to Serbia Cameron Munter;
The parent United Group was acquired and the media platforms built up from 2013-2014 onward as the center of opposition media in Serbia opposing Serbia’s existing leadership and institutions, and playing a central role in both “student protests” last year and the “Student List” movement this year;
United Group was only recently (earlier this year) acquired by Alpac Capital, but KKR still maintains an undisclosed amount of shares
with the move a likely an attempt to distance US involvement in the media network;
When “leaderless” and “decentralized” protests are praised in the Western media, scroll down in the article where they eventually admit who the leaders and organizations are behind them, perform a simple internet search to identify the key people and investments making them possible to determine whether a movement is indigenous or the product of foreign interference;
Those two channels with limited cable availability had 0 to do with the extremely horizontal and leaderless Student List, that openly stated will do fuck all on the foreign front apart from stopping manufacturing of Israel’s drones.
Btw since you’re “doing your own research” see who supported and even better who installed the former ruling party.
On the one hand, I have no doubt that the US and everyone else able would push their agenda in uncertain times. On the other, imagining that it is all CIA/FSB and so on denies agency to thousands of people who have put in the effort to change thier country.
Exactly. My fellow countrymen fucked my country (Brexit). Foreign meddling didn't help, but it also didn't hinder to the point of changing the outcome.
It was my fellow countrymen, and their long held Eurosceptic views, that fucked us. Russia posting divisive pish in 2016 has nothing on our decades of native politicians and newspapers blaming Brussels for everything bad (often its their own policies being policywashed) and pretending everything good came from them.
Sure jan, the country with an all time low in trust for institutions and academia ruled by an strongman-loving, education-bashing fascist is secretly funding meritocracies around the world…
The US is famous for never intervening into other countries' politics. Other famous examples of no intervention in the area is their total non-involvement in Ukraine with Euromaidan protests for example!
Conspiracy would be saying that the US orchestrated the existence of the Student's list and created protests from thin air. Realism is that the US is very happy about any political destabilization that could favor their interest and will provide unofficial support wherever it's convenient for them.
I really hope their success carries over into governance.
There's definitely a chance of failure here.
It must be like a pit fight, but with connections and half truths
It very much is, but I don't believe it is the skill of "solving problems" or "making society better".
Politics is about getting elected. Convincing the people that it's all the others' fault, that you know better, that you will save the world. And then when they get elected... we naively expect them to solve problems. But we selected them for their capacity at being selected, not their capacity at understanding the big problems society is facing...
Imposing it top down requires oppression. Imposing or pressuring this huge layer from the bottom requires a continuously updated base so you can squeeze from the top and the bottom to enact the changes needed quickly.
It's impossible for leaders at the top, to personally vet the members of a village or city council for example.
I think I've never seen any of such concatenation of events and organization to have ever happened.
The CIA sponsored extensive studies on this and came to the conclusion that democracies with a strong presidential role are associated with a greater risk of failure. It's not really surprising, and it can be seen in the US right now.
They will choose who will that be by a committee, but after that they have to function as usual.
In many cases, the executives / politicians / directors just rubber stamp what a working group / committee has decided.
Also, see the Tomato guys: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqUBdX1d3ok
Diverse? Over-educated university graduates is possibly the least diverse set of thinkers one could hope to find.
> Dozens of them come from the academic world, and more than half have a Ph.D. or M.D.
Lord help up. This is going to be demonstration of hubris and an exercise in arrogance.
A quick search suggests the economists associated with this movement are fairly 'mainstream' institutionalists of the type that's popular with government these days in the west. I don't think there will be big changes soon beyond dealing with corruption/nepotism.
Later on, I imagine they will push for faster EU integration on possibly slightly worse terms. Serbia may become marginally less independent in terms of fiscal policy at least and the markets might become even more exposed/beholden to foreign capital. This process has been in motion for years now and I don't expect the student movement to care - the upsides are broadly popular with younger people globally. Personally, I think it is deeply ironic that in the age of tariffs and huge government spending by the superpowers, small countries like Serbia are still signing up to be bound by the 'free market' consensus which is rapidly disintegrating globally.
At least these guys might be honest about their hubris and arrogance and won't smile to you while slaughtering your future or robbing your family.
I see this often in many areas. Perhaps they'll be lucky and have a few behavioral psychologists among them to maintain intellectual humility.
They don't have "domains", they are career politicians. It is nice when a politician has some experience in the topic they're legislating on but the system is works on having generalists who bow in whatever direction winds are blowing the most money from.
It is not possible to be an effective career politician by having firm principles or technical expertise. It requires a near total dedication to politicking. It's nice when they happen to have some experience on a topic they're involved in but it is nearly never the case because the number of political topics is large and the number of politicians is comparatively small.
Definitely a risk, but politicians are professionals at being overly confident. With this selection (there are not only PhDs, and not only academics), there is actually a chance of... actually trying to understand the problems?
Best case would be multi-talented persons who have both IQ and EQ and good character. Just IQ is not enough.
Intelligence is a tool - one that can be put to use against any problem. "Get diverse people to come to the table for compromises" is no exception.
Intelligence? Problem solving? Understanding statistics? Speaking in front of rooms full of people? Communicating complex ideas clearly? Useful for both jobs.
But an academic can be bookish, shy or haughty. Pursuing your own ideas is actively encouraged. There are arguments - but the main audience for the debates are other academics. They needn't collaborate on research with anyone they don't want to, and when they do collaborate everyone has the same destination in mind even if they disagree about the route to get there. When dealing with students, they've all chosen to be there, passed exams and paid money. The work is mostly low-medium stakes, with time to get important things right. And of course they have excellent job security.
Politicians, though? Gotta love campaigning and talking to voters. Gotta all get together behind the party's national platform. Even colleagues in your party are rivals because everyone wants the top job. 'Debates' all about playing to the audience and getting 3-second soundbites for social media, not engaging with the substance of arguments. No choice in who you collaborate with, including people with deep-seated disagreements about things like tax, debt, spending. Gotta represent voters many of whom hate you. Do well at the job and high stakes things you didn't even do get blamed on you, like train crashes and oil markets getting expensive. Oh, and every 4-5 years you're fired and get to re-apply for your job.
It's a pity this disclaimer cannot be made to serve as a header for about 99% of the comments here today, because, holy shit...
Keep into account that the baseline for governing Serbia is low. As long as they can lower the corruption, they can do a lot wrong and still come out ahead.
Power to the people man!
I'm really excited for this to be successful and stay in place.
It's going to end up being something quite unique perhaps in a ways similar to Switzerland's unique democracy.
Google Aleksandar Vućiċ Voja Nevolja meat grinder…
Vučiċ is successor of people that assassinated Zoran Ðinďić, a Serbian prime minister. Basically drugs and arms dealers from either mafia, secret service or special forces.
Even if this government ends up being corrupt the level of moral lows they would need to hit to reach previous regime is staggering.
So people justifiably think it can’t get worse… but that only the time will tell…
Then again, I might just be hoping it is so. Given that, sadly, similar movements elsewhere (perhaps with not as much laurel leaves) have quickly fallen apart. (5 star movement in Italy and Piraty in Czech Republic come to mind)
Hopefully the Serbian youths learned from them.
In some ways it's the ultimate short term thinking, taking the mediocre but predictable steps, instead of risking the real world with its unbounded upsides.
Possibly that mindset is good in a parliament, but I wouldn't really classify it as long vs short term.
I would like to mention that when I was young, I figured that if young people ruled the world, then things would be much better. I was pretty sour on the bitter, cynical old farts that didn't have a stake in things, and had basically ruined our world.
Sound familiar?
After seeing what's happened in Silicon Valley, which is pretty much my "utopian dream," I have come to realize that young people can be much, much worse than "old farts."
Maximilien Robespierre was an intellectual.
Also the output of tech companies is ideally something tangible not just the careerist publish or perish mindset of academics. Academics are not exactly principled either they will go to exactly where the funding/grants are.
Ha! <knee slap> <snort!> Good one!
I’m also reminded of Ashraf Ghani, the last President of Afghanistan, who was a professor and wrote a book “Fixing Failed States.” He ended up fleeing the country like a coward as it collapsed.
It’s notable that students played a major role in the 1979 Iranian revolution that ended up putting the Ayatollah in power. In fact to my knowledge, student-led revolutions have never produced a long term positive outcome. Any examples?
I never mentioned any particular politicians and was making a general observation that if you haven't had to deal with unsavoury characters, dishonest actors and quasi-crooks, you will lack the experience of how to deal with them. These people exist in all walks of life.
The person I was replying to was playing team sports, which I find tiresome, because every post about everything has to become about Trump or whoever the current villain of the week is. It is quite frankly moronic.
But the idea of randomly selecting leaders as a leveling distribution is as old as Athens. We still practice it in Jury selection in much of the world.
So this experiment in Belgrade might be worth watching and it wouldn't surprise me at all if they outperform previous and regional governments.
These new batch of people are not randomly selected; they are thought of as more suitable to rule due to their being academics and scientific/technical experts, rather than lifetime politicians. Same as the old politicians who were cut from a certain cloth.
The cloth is now different, but a cloth it remains.
I would love to be governed by 500 average Joes and Janes, chosen at random, for a mandatory 4 years of (political) conscription.
But eventually they will themselves vote to abolish this in favour of career politics. It is one of those cursed problems there are no valid solutions to.
To be fair even if that worked out somehow they would be dominated by the professional bureaucrats running the civil service and other day to day government activities. Effectively it would turn into a technocracy with some degree of oversight.
However, I want to look at this experiment more optimistically, see if this assembly can defeat the stereotype. I'll be observing its activity with interest!
The committee of doctors, surgeons and biophysicists I supported couldn't organise a piss up in a brewery...they all had PhDs.
And then there’ll be the inevitable “I have to work with that person for how long!?” And the fiefdoms will be set up, and the back stabbing will begin.
That’s before we even consider the effect of the unelected bureaucracy and the power of the lobby groups and foreign interests.
I'm a bit skeptic on all those professors and PhDs being a boon, though. In Portugal, we've been ruled by PhDs since 1926, if not before. Most ministers are professors, many of them independent. Results haven't been good. I hope Serbia proves us wrong.
F. A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit (1988).
vs electing lawyers as done in other countries.
Yes, very STEM oriented indeed.
I hope they are confident enough to reach out to people who can help them in matters where not smarts but experience is needed.
I came here to say that it's not "just academics", as many of the comments here seem to imply.
So non career politicians.
This is essentially a technocratic government that is left leaning. Just because they are academics, researchers, doctors, engineers and sociologists does not mean they cannot go corrupt themselves (it will). The EU itself is heavily corrupt as well.
We have also seen how corrupt a technocratic right government can get in the US. It will be no different to a left leaning one once money and promises are involved.
To give an analogy of what this is, this is like electing effective altruists from Anthropic with the difference being that they are using your money (taxes) instead of theirs and giving lots of promises for your vote.
If they are serious, they need to pass the world toughest anti-corruption laws while also significantly growing their own economy or borrowing economic policies from the least corrupt nations in the world such as Singapore and to exceed them.
> Student List has promised to fight corruption and establish meritocracy, accountability, and the rule of law.
While these are good promises, the problem is that this is the first lie that they have already made.
They better do all four of them without angering the electorate otherwise they can’t be trusted.
It is clear from populist approaches that conducting business-as-usual without any foundational knowledge is dangerous and leads to corruption and regulatory capture, and it is equally true that purely rationalist efforts neglect the messy nature of political governance and social complexity, leading to an overly narrow idea that ends up not serving the people it claims to support.
I expect that this government will rise or fall based on its ability to remain internally cohesive while also trying to resist (and hopefully influence) the many pressures that will be put on it by the regional and global vested interests.
In a muddled political system(democratic or otherwise) today its about power and how is it balanced. When Nandan Nilekani was creating India's UIDAI(the national aadhar system), he insisted that he would only do the project if he was given a cabinet level post[1]. His is one of the few technology examples to succeed in India when most large government run projects are a disaster. ISRO is probably another decent example of success. I think Nilekani succeeded because he had a clear moral compass and a defined goal.
But there is a problem with kings, soon they have an asshole child. Metaphorically speaking at least. UIDAI is being used stupidly enough like an SSN now and in ways it was never meant to be.
[1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/10/03/the-i-d-man
Edit: which makes sense, because technocracy leans heavily on trust (in the experts).
> but I didn't realise it was so strong on corruption.
That's literally a core part of the brand, isn't it?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vieta_jumping#History
they grew up on communist rhetoric, got support from communist countries - so their main ideology had already failed in the real world. so accumulating degrees without practical experience is a recipe for failure as seen in most african countries.
Actually, not. They had a few left-over from when Germany had a functioning state, but the Nazis were overall fairly incompetent at actually running the country.
But he was extremely successful as manager then. Just like the ex-NAZI NASA leader then a bit later.
That was the golden time of German management.
Either the Delusional Leftist Against AI Bro Award or the Delusional AI Bro Against Leftist Award.
Lots of governments just end up with career lawyers and politicians.
They can choose their advisors and their advice.
The more varied experts you can get into parliament, the more likely you have an on the record disagreement from an expert preventing a politician from choosing the incorrect advice that suits them better.
Thats not to say they are going to be any better for corruption, but in todays world there are so many deep silos that governments just completely step over and disregard.
Hardly. But it depends on who is on board.
Corruption exists everywhere. Do you think that Vukic was less corrupt? I am pretty certain you will find many people in Serbia who want to fix the country. Other Europeans would ask: why let only poor countries join? They drain money from richer countries. Switzerland and Norway will never join and they know why. Hint: there is a reason they are rich. Second hint: they got rich without the EU.
Which country got rich with the EU? I don't know of a single one. Germany was already wealthy before the EU was founded. France is now in debt crisis from which it can not escape, so it will drag the whole EU down.
https://www.euronews.com/2024/12/09/eu-budget-who-pays-the-m...
Poland and the other new members in the East, probably?
However I broadly agree otherwise.
Switzerland is the opposite of a state being "without the EU".
Poland? >250 billion Euros received in subsidies since joining the EU; almost any construction you walk by has the "Funded by EU" poster next to it.
I think the massive service and outsourcing industry would also not have been possible (at the current scale) without EU membership.
... checking notes ...
Ah yes. China used to have 100% technocrats in their leadership 30 years ago. No one with a law degree in sight. Nowadays it is less, but they still have quite a few.
It can work.
I'm not saying they will succeed, but they have been explicitly voted to fight the corruption you speak of.
What will happen here will strongly depend on how good these people are at actually playing the game of politics. I don't have any particular reason to be more or less optimistic than any regular slate of politicians.
It's entirly possible that the experiment fails because of politics, but it's also possible that the amount of politics is simply lower because people are simply more reasonable.
The last part will come down to vested interest and ideologues.
There's no modern historical indication that more degrees results in better governance.
All this while said Researchers offload the real work the students are paying for... to TAs.
Hungary has this problem by the way - people thought Péter Magyar will fix, and change, Hungary. Recently Hungary signed a "we are ultra-right servants of Trump" in the USA (see https://telex.hu/english/2026/10/30/hungarian-fm-and-rubio-s...), thus validating all those who pointed out that Peter is just a younger face but the same Orban 2.0 in the end.
Corruption runs very, very deep. I am also certain the Epstein network is not only much bigger than known, but has different actors and beneficiaries. To this day the US court system can not explain why only Maxwell is in prison. That makes logically - and logistically - no sense at all.
And I also don’t think you can compare Magyar pre- and post election to the new Serbian elected government at all. But I do agree actually producing enough noticeable change until the next election will be hard for both. It just takes time to unfuck countries.
Proper up to the point. No way he is giving up built in advantages right wing has in Hungary - like rural voters votes having way more power then city voters.
He clearly redirected the railway station maintenance budget to his friends instead, because he assumed the public were suckers who'd vote him back in no matter how badly he fucked up. Then the station canopy collapsed and killed people. Entirely avoidable.
When your leaders are nakedly corrupt, and through sheer luck you still have free and fair elections, you vote those fuckers out. Otherwise they'll fiddle while your country burns.
It looks like the public want someone else in charge, they'll give them a fair shake. Maybe the new lot will direct the treasure more appropriately.
The essential factor in whether a state is good or bad for the people at large is arguably whether you can draw a clear line around which sorts of favoritism are permitted and which are outlawed as corrupt, and actually achieve enforcement when people in power inevitably break these rules. A cardiologist, bioarchaeologist and a physicist are going to know nothing about all of this. Their job is to work with the incumbent bureaucrats and elites who hold the real power in that society and those people will almost certainly run circles around them. Fantasyland Reddit politics consists of making aggressive, principled statements. Real world politics is about recognizing you have to deal with a ton of people who are quite frequently awful but because they've managed to cling to one lever of influence or another you can't ignore them. They are moving things in a the direction you don't want them to go every day so what do you do about them? Jail them? Kill them? Buy them off? Cut a deal with them? Make them see reason even though it's against their personal interest because you're just that smart? (lol!) You can't ignore them. It's nothing like the deterministic systems all these people have studied. I wish them luck but I think I know how this is gonna end.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50300051
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5lwZU7Q5U0
with the move a likely an attempt to distance US involvement in the media network;"leaderless" is propaganda framing, you have been brainwashed
and there is follow up video
https://youtu.be/P2JKKvKX99c
Or are you simply reproducing a regime’s narrative on here?
It is doubtful he is pro-Russian, but he is surely anti-US.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNL4xoD5uMYIt was my fellow countrymen, and their long held Eurosceptic views, that fucked us. Russia posting divisive pish in 2016 has nothing on our decades of native politicians and newspapers blaming Brussels for everything bad (often its their own policies being policywashed) and pretending everything good came from them.
Conspiracy would be saying that the US orchestrated the existence of the Student's list and created protests from thin air. Realism is that the US is very happy about any political destabilization that could favor their interest and will provide unofficial support wherever it's convenient for them.