"A New Political Spectrum Is Being Created..."

Attempting to write a paper about the development of the Slovenian politics of the last quarter of a century represents a special challenge and a kind of an adventure for historians. It is best illustrated by looking at the beginnings and the final stages of the period – namely, extreme points help historiography to correctly place and interpret the processes. Let us begin in 1993 and take a look at the young National Assembly (Slovenian Parliament). That autumn it was visited, in the middle of an intense budgetary discussion, by the Czech President Václav Havel, "Citizen Havel". The former dissident, dramatist and author of political essays addressed the Slovenian MPs with a short speech in accordance with his political thought about the "anti-political politics". Jiří Suk, "Od nezmožnosti politiky k politice jako umění možného. Paradohní život občana Václava Havla v letech 1969–1992," in: Kapitoly z dějin české demokracie po roce 1989, ed. Adéla Gjuričová and Michal Kopeček (Praha and Litomyšl: Paseka, 2008), 16–51. The popular Havel symbolised the romantic, "velvet" image of the transition, which, however, was essentially quite a bit rougher than that in the Czech Republic as well as in Slovenia.

"One of the things we most definitely have in common is that we are both building a parliamentary democracy," Havel said.

"A new political spectrum is emerging, with new political subjects who are seeking their own identity and their place. These subjects are now searching for new avenues for cooperation, also with regard to the ways of representation. To put it simply, we are building a political system... However, many dangers lurk in this dramatic, interesting and exciting situation, and we should pay special attention to them. In my opinion, one of such dangers is that the parties in our territory could obtain an overrated role. It seems as if the state suddenly belonged to the political parties. As if the parties were not supposed to serve their country, but rather that the country should serve the parties... I wholeheartedly wish that your Parliament as well as ours were safe from these dangers, which have been preying on us in this difficult period." Dokumentacijsko-knjižnični oddelek Državnega zbora Republike Slovenije, Dobesedni zapis 13. seje I. mandata DZ z dne 9. 11. 1993 [Verbatim Record of 13th Session of the first Mandate]. Available at: Portal DZ, http://www.dz-rs.si.

As the most recent research of our Czech colleagues emphasises, in Havel’s opinion the Czech Parliament was "not safe" from danger. As President, Havel constantly criticised it for being hesitant and slow. Havel’s attitude was quite openly anti-parliamentary (which has until now been overlooked by those who have studied his work), and this stance of his was widely supported by the Czech people. Adéla Gjuričová, "Anti-politics and anti-parliamentarism. Václav Havel and the Czechoslovak parliament in the 1990s." Conference Paper (European Information and Research Network on Parliamentary History: Parlamentarismuskritik und Antiparlamentarismus in Europa. Berlin, 7 and 8 May 2015). However, Havel was not only supported by his own compatriots, but also by the citizens of Slovenia. Already in the time when the Slovenian political system was being formed – when there was a lot of optimism in the country – people did not trust the political institutions, parties and politicians. Niko Toš, ed., Vrednote v prehodu VIII. Slovenija v srednje in vzhodnoevropskih primerjavah 1991–2011 (Ljubljana and Wien: Univerza v Ljubljani, Fakulteta za družbene vede, IDV-CJMMK and Edition Echoraum, 2014), 302. Jure Gašparič, "O samoumevnosti uvajanja parlamentarne demokracije v vzhodni Evropi po letu 1989." Conference Paper (Regionalni vidiki tranzicije. Nova Gorica, 15 October 2015). According to the former politician and Constitutional Court Judge Ciril Ribičič, people were supposedly convinced that the Parliament was a "gang of lazy spendthrifts". Ciril Ribičič, Siva tipka 074 (Ljubljana: Enotnost, 1995), 124. In the following years Slovenia became the absolute champion in almost all of the statistical categories used by Brussels to compare the countries of the European East. At the tenth anniversary of the independent Slovenia, the Government Office for Communication presented the Slovenian achievements in the following manner: »In these past ten years Slovenia dismantled the old economy and set up a new one. It has a national shipbuilding industry and its own airline, a stock exchange, its World Trade Center and other institutions. With 892,000 people in employment, it boasts a per capita GDP of US$ 9,150 and an inflation rate of 8.9 per cent. It introduced its own currency, the Slovene tolar, it has strong foreign exchange reserves, and a tax system that is increasingly in tune with that of Western Europe. The former socially-owned companies have been (almost) entirely privatised. Business activities are increasingly liberal, the exchange rate is favourable, the interest rate is high in real terms and fiscal policy envisages minimal budget deficits. Slovenia is rapidly becoming a transport hub, with the shortest route connecting France and Italy with Hungary (Milan-Ljubljana-Budapest), and the Balkans with Central Europe (Zagreb- Ljubljana-Munich). In the political arena it has become established as a partner and adviser on the margin of the turbulent Balkans. From its acceptance into the United Nations up to its membership of the Security Council, the Council of Europe, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other international institutions and also to becoming the most serious candidate country for membership of Nato and the European Union, it is mapping out the path of a recognised and established state in the modern world. It is an up-to-date, progressive democracy, while at the same time it has retained the unique image of a small nation that has not just survived millennia of foreign influence and rule, but has also entered into the new order as a winner.« – Slovenia - 10 Years of Independence, 30 May 2016, http://www.slovenija2001.gov.si/10years/independence/. The slogan about the Story of Success spread, but the standpoint with regard to politics and political parties did not change. Quite the opposite: if we look at the end of "our period", at the year 2013, we can establish that this opinion of the people has only strengthened.

In 2013 the dissatisfaction resulting from the economic crisis kept getting increasingly profound and more and more obviously oriented against the political elites. The description of 2013 is based on my text about the sixth term of the National Assembly. See: Jure Gašparič, Slovenski parlament. Politično-zgodovinski pregled od začetka prvega do konca šestega mandata (1992–2014) - Elektronska izdaja 1.0 (Ljubljana: Inštitut za novejšo zgodovino, 2014). Available at: Zgodovina Slovenije – SIstory, http://www.sistory.si/SISTORY:ID:26950. The general disgruntlement, disappointment, resentment and mistrust due to – according to the people's conviction – inappropriate responses of the state gradually escalated into direct protests. The events started in the socially sensitive environment: in the city of Maribor, from where the spark of the "people's uprisings" also spread to other cities, including Ljubljana, where protesters would frequently gather in front of the Parliament en masse. Mottoes about the wrongfulness of the political system as well as appeals for the introduction of direct democracy started appearing... Politics once again became similar to the oldest trade, and this was expressed by one of the protesters in a brutally direct, vulgar, but politically exceedingly meaningful banner: "A fuck or a refund!"

The beginning and the end of "our period" are thus, at the first glance, quite closely connected in terms of the issue at hand. The cause-and-effect relationship looks like this: a quarter of a century ago we started building a political system, but ever since the beginning we have been finding that it did not work very well and that it should not be trusted. Towards the end of our period we have shown this through protests. The interpretation is simple, but lacking a vital part: politics itself. What have the actions of the politicians been, how have the political institutions developed, and how have they adapted to the world and the times that have changed in the last twenty years? Obviously completely differently from what the people expected. Does this mean that politicians are irrational? Are the voters, who keep electing supposedly unsuitable politicians all the time, those who are irrational? How can we explain and describe politics in the modern world? Vaclav Havel once said: "We live in a postmodern world where everything is possible and nothing is certain." Quoted after: Andreas Rödder, 21.0. Eine kurze Geschichte der Gegenwart (München: C.H.Beck, 2016), 11. In the opinion of many historians, the period after the Cold War is unclear and chaotic, "unlesbar", Ibid. and the same goes for politics. Despite many similarities with the political history of the older periods, delving into the more recent past is a true adventure, which at the very beginning poses a few important methodological questions, brings on challenges, reveals dilemmas, but at the same time already offers some answers in advance.

About the Distinctiveness of the Topic and about the Dilemmas

The first answer, which can often be noted in the media and in a part of the expert public, is that the research of the Slovenian politics after 1991 may be an interesting and relevant topic, but that nothing truly new can be written about it – at least not anything that has not already been written by those who wrote about it and deliberated on it as it was happening. When the biography of the former President Milan Kučan was published, a journalist of the Delo newspaper brought the attention to this issue as well when he asked the author the following: "I've mentioned to a few of my colleagues that I'm reading your book. Every one of them asked me the same question: 'Is there anything new in it?' What they meant was whether the book revealed anything to refute all of the previous interpretations..." – Matija Grah, "Vem za pričakovanja, da bom odkril skrivnosti murgelske kleti," Delo, 30 October 2015. This sort of history would therefore only make sense if the researcher stumbled upon reliable documents about one of the unknown or unexplained political scandals from the last quarter of the century.

Another preliminary answer, which is actually already a dilemma, concerns the question of the general sensibility of researching processes that have not yet come to their conclusion or we at least do not know that they have concluded. As it is, a quarter of a century of the Slovenian state is a period of a multi-layered transition, which is not yet complete in all of its aspects and surges (of course, it is questionable how to define the conclusions of processes). At the same time this period has been co-created by the elites that are still at least partly publicly active (and which, of course, interpret these processes in their own way). Hence it is supposedly too soon for historians to take a look at this period of time. Things which may seem very significant today and which the historians might focus on in their research could look completely insignificant in time (and vice versa). Rödder, 21.0. Eine kurze Geschichte der Gegenwart, 13. The history of the present, as George Kennan referred to it, is thus allegedly not truly possible.

The following dilemma, which is simultaneously a challenge, is related to the temporal component. What is a methodologically suitable manner at all in which historians could explore the recent politics and the phenomenon of the political? As it happens, the available materials are inexhaustible in all aspects, with regard to quantity as well as in terms of substantive and scientific breadth. Besides the enormous quantities of materials produced by the media – from newspapers to television, radio and internet sites – it is also possible to collect the oral sources from the participants of the political developments and make use of the vast quantity of the materials produced on a daily basis and published by the state or its institutions (reports on the work of the governments, handover files, studies, legislative materials, verbatim records of parliamentary sessions, etc.). On the one hand these materials are more diverse as, for example, the materials from the period of the first Yugoslav state (Kingdom of SHS/Yugoslavia), but simultaneously also more extensive and more comprehensive (non-evaluated, unfiltered, preserved in their totality). Especially the audio-visual materials, which influence the world view of the today's generations most significantly, represent a special challenge and make the century-old historiographic rule Quod non est in actis non est in mundo quite problematic. To find out more about the challenges that the audiovisual media represent for the researchers of the present see: Thomas Lindenberger, "Vergangenes Hören und Sehen. Zeitgeschichte und ihre Herausforderung durch die audiovisuellen Medien," in: Zeithistorische Forschungen/Studies in Contemporary History, Online-Ausgabe, 1 (2004), H. 1, URL: http://www.zeithistorische-forschungen.de/1-2004/id=4586, Druckausgabe: 72–85. Furthermore, a truly vast quantity of online and other digital contents is being produced today: tweets, Facebook posts, text messages... Quite a few resounding public stories have been triggered precisely by this sort of media, but nevertheless nobody archives these sorts of contents systematically.

At the same time the historians of the most contemporary period have numerous studies and analyses at their disposal as well as rough data produced by other sciences that focus on modernity. In order to research the period of the independent Republic of Slovenia it is critical to acquire the materials and analyses from the Social Science Data Archives See: O Arhivu družboslovnih podatkov, http://www.adp.fdv.uni-lj.si/o_arhivu/. – especially the surveys produced in the context of the Slovenian Public Opinion research (these have been carried out continuously ever since the 1960s), studies of the political analysis centre, and other studies from the field of politology, sociology, and social sciences. Political economy researchers have the materials of economic institutes at their disposal, while almost all sciences contribute their viewpoint with regard to, for example, research policy.

The (un)manageable amount of materials on the one hand is closely connected with its research usefulness on the other hand. Naturally, all kinds of materials are useful for researchers. It is only a question of what the researchers focus on and how. However, the materials for the most recent period are largely permeated by the prejudice that they only represent the surface of the events – in accordance with the aforementioned answer or conviction that we already know everything about "our" period, and what we do not know has been concealed and will remain hidden. (Of course, I do not know according to what logic it will then be revealed to our descendants.)

On the Approaches to the Topic and about the Dilemmas

Quite a few challenges and dilemmas undoubtedly exist; we only have to ask ourselves how to deal with them. The first dilemma (or rather a preconception) for the researchers who claim that nothing new can be written about this period of time is actually the easiest to handle. We can look at it from a purely philosophical and theoretical as well as from the practical point of view. Namely, when we undertake any serious and methodologically sound research we cannot theoretically know what sort of interpretative conclusions we will reach. Any evaluation in advance can turn out as erroneous (for example, years ago I myself was convinced that from its very beginning King Alexander's Dictatorship in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1930s kept generating new political problems instead of solving them, but later I kept discovering more and more that initially its image as well as its perception were completely different).

In the same vein the questions that we asked yesterday were perhaps completely different and non-essential in comparison with the issues that we are interested in today. Not long ago it was important which politician used to be a member of the League of Communists, while today we are already interested in other things. After all, this kind of questioning represents the essence and the general characteristic of historiography, which concerns all the historic periods. The present and the environment we live in always dictate the research questions. For example, in Germany the 2008 financial crisis resulted in a notably increased interest in the economic history in general. Frank Bösch and Jürgen Danyel, "Die Zeitgeschichtsforschung und ihre Methoden," in: Zeitgeschichte – Konzepte und Methoden, ed. Frank Bösch and Jürgen Danyel (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2012), 9–21, here 13. Rödder, 21.0. Eine kurze Geschichte der Gegenwart, 13. Simultaneously it is completely practical to claim that research in historiography, which does not lead to any new or original interpretations, is neither meaningless nor flawed. In a sense this is just another way of accumulating knowledge and bringing the attention to the topics and aspects of the historiographic science. However, in so far as research is integral and synthetically-oriented, it is especially meaningful and well-founded – after all, historiography is oriented towards writing complete interpretations.

Another dilemma – that the contemporary time is too young for historians, because historical distance is required for serious research – is justified up to a point. It is certainly simpler to research a remote and concluded process, unlike the today's seemingly chaotic times. Things are easier to interpret if we see them whole, including their beginning and end. However, the advantage represented by distance hides quite a dangerous inherent trap: the knowledge of the end. If we are familiar with the conclusion of a certain process, we are in danger of adapting the whole interpretation of the developments to this ending. We are in danger of looking for reasons in the actions of people, logical in view of the familiar ending (consequence), while forgetting that in history things happen even when nobody is planning them. The historian of ideas and concepts Quentin Skinner refers to this mistake as the myth of prolepsis. One of the researchers of the process of the dissolution of Yugoslavia Dejan Jović underlines the frequency of this mistake in the explanations of the end of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. – Dejan Jović, "Razlozi za raspad socijalističke Jugoslavije: kritička analiza postojećih interpretacija," Reč 62, No. 8 (June 2001), 91–157, here 142–52. The historians focusing on the present do not know the end, and therefore the relationship between the purpose and the supposed result cannot compromise their analyses. The German historian Andreas Wirsching, author of the book about the history of Europe in our time, also states that the advantage of researching the present lies in the "erzwungene Verzicht auf jegliche Teleologie." Namely, historians are not exposed to the danger of the teleological search for the purpose and goal of history. – Andreas Wirsching, Der Preis der Freiheit. Geschichte Europas in unserer Zeit (München: C.H.Beck, 2012), 14, 15.

On the other hand, however, we should be aware that the history of the present can have rather direct effects on the formation of the self-image of the state and its citizens, as it studies a recent period and thus addresses the memories of the living or their direct descendants. The history of the present explains "our time", which is why people do care how it is described (this is not only an issue with the history of the present, but rather with all of contemporary history – perhaps in Slovenia this especially concerns the World War II historians). Historiography can contribute to the formation of a "suitable" self-image, just like it happened in Germany after World War II when the myth about the so-called "Erfolgsgeschichte" formed, as well as in Great Britain, where this period was for a long time characterised as the "post-war consensus". The British historiography has characterised the post-war "consensus" as a myth. – Gabriele Metzler, "Zeitgeschichte: Begriff – Disziplin – Problem, Version: 1.0," in: Docupedia-Zeitgeschichte, 7 April 2014, https://docupedia.de/zg/Zeitgeschichte. Addressing living contemporaries can therefore represent a specific trap for historians, but it is still much more manageable than what is probably the biggest research problem: the amount and variety of materials.

If only a few decades ago historians kept finding that the history of the most recent period was not possible since the thirty-year restriction on the access to materials was enforced, as a matter of principle, in all the archives, today the situation is quite the opposite. The ocean of sources is endless, and, moreover, these sources are different in many aspects from, for example, the sources for studying the history of the First Yugoslavia. In both cases we can outline the developments in politics on the basis of newspaper articles; in both cases we can resort to documents that have been preserved (it seems interesting that historians do not have either the complete archives of the pre-war political parties nor the archives of the today's parties at their disposal); Currently only the materials of three parties – the socialists, the Greens and the Liberal Democracy of Slovenia – are in the Archives of the Republic of Slovenia. Of these the LDS was the most influential and has, to date, taken part in the various governments the longest (SI AS 366, Socialistična stranka Slovenije (1990-1993), SI AS 2117, Zeleni Slovenije (1990-1993), SI AS 2111 Liberalna demokracija Slovenije (1976-2011)). and in both cases we can also make use of political memoirs Quite a few memorial records by the politicians of our period exist, but they focus either on the time of the Slovenian emancipation or represent merely a collection of thoughts and notes about a certain period of time (which may also be very interesting and useful in terms of research). However, only a few of these texts are systematic and chronologically ordered, focusing on concrete political developments. See for example Ivo Hvalica, Zadnja replika (Ljubljana: Promag, 2002). Ciril Ribičič, Siva tipka 074 (Ljubljana: Enotnost, 1995). Miran Potrč, Klic k razumu. Spomini (Ljubljana: Modrijan, 2014). and verbatim records of parliamentary sessions. However, here the similarities end. Of course, it is questionable to what a degree the dissimilarity of sources hinders the political historians in their research. In principle this should not represent an obstacle, but it is certainly a kind of a challenge. First we have to be aware that every period has its own sources with their own particular characteristics. The materials about the Theresian reforms of the 18th century are certainly different from those about the history of the Communist Party after 1945, and these again differ from the materials about the contemporaneous politics. Today the world is different and individuals operate and work in accordance with other guidelines. In the past a large amount of meeting-minutes was available, and the archives also frequently contained personal notes, letters, and so on. Today these materials are virtually non-existent and unavailable for historians; but we do have television, the internet, living participants of the events, etc. These sources appear less reliable than archival documents, at least at the first glance, even though they can be much more telling. This is especially true of the oral sources – witnesses, once upon a time seen as the "enemies of historians", The collocation was coined by Wolfgang Kraushaar when he problematised the German historiography about the 1968 movement. – Metzler, "Zeitgeschichte: Begriff – Disziplin – Problem." can also enrich the available historiographic material considerably, if only we gather and methodologically process their testimonies in a suitable manner. See: Zdenko Čepič et al., Prikrita modra mreža. Organi za notranje zadeve Republike Slovenije v projektu MSNZ leta 1990 (Ljubljana: Inštitut za novejšo zgodovino and Zveza policijskih veteranskih društev Sever, 2010).

All of the sources of our time – the classic ones, known already from the previous periods (especially newspapers, verbatim records of parliamentary sessions and legislative materials), as well as the newer (digital) sources – can be thoroughly analysed and evaluated only if we apply the following two approaches: interdisciplinarity and the tools provided by the today's digital humanities. The latter enables us to focus on new research questions and process extraordinary amounts of materials (we can easily analyse the characteristics of the parliamentary discussions in the period of fifty years, which used to be physically impossible before), while interdisciplinarity ensures a more thorough and focused approach. As it is, research into modernity focuses more and more on the topics and problems, while the distinctions between the individual disciplines are being blurred. Metzler, "Zeitgeschichte: Begriff – Disziplin – Problem." Thus nowadays politologists, lawyers, linguists, anthropologists and historians cooperate (or have done so) in practice. See Conference Program: Parliaments and Methodology. Anthropological, Discourse-Oriented and Digital Approaches to Parliamentary History. Helsinki and Jyväskylä, Finland 12–14 June 2014, 1 June 2016, https://www.jyu.fi/en/congress/parliaments-and-methodology/program/EuParl_Programme.pdf.

Finally, what about the prejudice that the available materials do not reveal all the secrets? The situation is similar as it used to be. Also in the Habsburg Monarchy and in the First Yugoslavia everyone was convinced that the political decisions were adopted behind the doors of smoky cabinets and coffee houses, which is what the notes (sometimes different from one another) of various political actors attest to.

In principle the digression about the materials of our period could be much longer than what I have just written, and all the concrete problems that the researchers may stumble upon cannot be predicted at all. Therefore I would just like to underline one more issue that I have faced myself, closely connected with the sheer amount of the materials and density of the political developments. In so far as a researcher's ambition is to comprehensively describe a certain political period at least to a certain degree, the massive amount of the materials at the initial stages dictates a descriptive approach. Thus the wish to control and encompass everything in itself impedes any methodological creativity. Bösch and Danyel, "Die Zeitgeschichtsforschung und ihre Methoden," 9, 10. However, if researchers only have a limited amount of materials at their disposal, they are forced to resort to different approaches and can at the same time be more daring in the thesis they propose.

Topic Presentation

Regardless of all the dilemmas and methodological challenges I will now take the first step into the adventure and give a short description of the political history of the independent Slovenia, on the basis of which it will be possible to ask new questions and open new research dilemmas. In the book about the history of the Slovenian Parliament I have outlined the basic sequence of events with the main chapters of the post-independence development. Here I will sum up its main points. Jure Gašparič, Državni zbor 1992–2012. O slovenskem parlamentarizmu (Ljubljana: Inštitut za novejšo zgodovino, 2012). It seems that the events in the last twenty years can be most logically broken down by the parliamentary terms of office. This may seem self-evident, but the questions of the periodisation and (non)linearity of the development are not always easy. The Czech colleagues have decided for a similar division as well. See: Jan Wintr, Česká parlamentní kultura (Praha: Auditorium, 2010).

Findings and Challenges

What conclusions can we draw on the basis of this short insight in the political history of the last quarter of a century? Firstly, the introductory finding that out period is very dynamic, riddled with events and "unreadable" can certainly be confirmed. Despite the relative political stability of the Slovenian governments (in comparison with the Czech Republic, for example), the party space has been unstable and ever changing, in a continuous state of restructuring. Its most notable constant was the polarisation – the division of the political actors into the Slovenian left and right. Furthermore, certain characteristics already noted in the broader European space can also be ascribed to the Slovenian development: the personalisation of politics, medialisation, and informalisation. Wirsching, Der Preis der Freiheit, 308–18.

Let us first look at the phenomenon of the left-right polarisation. Where does it originate from and what is its perception based on? At list partly the dividing line was (and still is) the attitude of the political parties to the past, especially to World War II and the post-war socialist period. In this regard certain parties see Yugoslavia and its society in an exceedingly binary manner. Their interpretative pattern is totalitarian‑historical, reducing the past merely to good and evil. See: Michal Pullmann, Konec experimentu. Přestavba a pád komunismu v Československu (Praha: Scriptorium, 2011), 15, 16. The adherents of this pattern only look at this state in order to find arguments for and against their views. According to them an "evil" regime reigned in Yugoslavia, which was an "artificial creation" that repressed the good of the society. Some of them may acknowledge, though, that Yugoslavia also had some advantages. Such a generalised claim is disputable already in the very analytical sense, since it presupposes that people were nothing but indoctrinated masses, incapable of taking care of themselves and simply persisting quietly in the Yugoslav framework. However, as soon as these masses became capable of thought, they immediately wanted to break free of the Titoist chains and seek safe haven in their own democratic national states. This pattern is clearly understandable and politically useful, but it overlooks the actual disposition of the people.

The attitude towards the past can be associated with the issues of continuity and discontinuity in the historical development. Despite the various convictions of individual political parties, in the development after 1990 and 1991 we can notice many elements of continuity from the previous period as well as radical turning points and transformations, which is characteristic for the whole of the eastern Central Europe. Gašparič, "O samoumevnosti uvajanja parlamentarne demokracije v vzhodni Evropi." We can also discern that the parties with their emphasised interest in history and their opinions about it frequently introduce additional confusion into the political space or contribute to the mythisation of the past. There are ample examples: for instance, in the last twenty-five years two parties from opposing sides appealed to the heritage of the social democratic party from Austria, established in 1896. The president of the Slovenian People's Party stated that he was extremely proud to be the successor of Anton Korošec, the most eminent Slovenian politician in the First Yugoslavia, even though the today's Slovenian People's Party has nothing to do with Korošec (except fictitiously). Cf. Mateja Ratej, "Začetki politične pluralizacije v pojugoslovanski Sloveniji. Vprašanje političnega nasledstva Koroščeve SLS," Zgodovinski časopis 67, No. 3–4 (2013), 472–92. Later another party referred to Korošec's party as well...

The personalisation of politics is another characteristic of the Slovenian politics as well as of the European politics of our time. This may be nothing new, as we have known many examples of outstanding political personae in the post-war Europe (e.g. Charles de Gaulle, Willy Brandt). However, these were always personifications of concrete contents and standpoints. On the other hand, after 1990 we find that in Europe political personalities per se have come to the forefront, frequently without any contents (they have even been known to form their parties in an ad hoc manner). Wirsching, Der Preis der Freiheit, 313–15. Slovenia is no exception in this regard. It seems that few parties are resilient enough to survive the replacement of their main leaders, whom all the spotlights are aimed at, without significant turmoil. On the other hand, the pre-election events in the neighbouring Croatia in the summer of 2016 attest to the fact that the replacement of an unpopular president of the party with a more likeable leader can swiftly restore the trust of the voters in the party. As it happened, after the fall of the Most-HDZ coalition government in June 2016 it seemed that the HDZ and its President Tomislav Karamarko would certainly be defeated at the elections. However, the sentiment of the electoral body changed in just a few months – when the party was taken over by Andrej Plenković. The latter phenomenon is certainly closely connected with the medialisation of politics, which is also a wider all-European characteristic. Wirsching, Der Preis der Freiheit, 312. While jumbo posters were a great novelty of the campaigns back in 1992, the political actions of today are taking place on a variety of media platforms. The Parliament may still be the central arena for political debates, but other formats represent an increasingly serious competition. Furthermore it seems that the Parliament in its essence is mostly and merely the following: the arena for debates and not the space where politics is being formed. In the people's opinion, serious political decisions are reached far away from the public gaze, which means that politics is informalised. This is also nothing new: we have already underlined that even in the old Yugoslavia and old Austria people were frequently convinced that politics is being made behind closed doors, often in the absence of the Parliament (the only difference is that once upon a time the cabinets and coffee houses were filled with smoke, which is probably a thing of the past). However, back then the frustrated Members of Parliament finally gave vent to their irritation by engaging in severe obstructions. In our period, however, deputies are simply overburdened with their functions in the working bodies and other activities, which may consequently diminish the importance of the Parliament. Ibid., 311.

In light of these findings it seems that the connection between the introductory Havel's warning and the large-scale anti-political demonstrations is more understandable. Nobody (or almost nobody) wanted to undermine the trust in the parliamentary democracy intentionally. That simply happened due to the aforementioned characteristics of politics. There is no cause-and-effect relationship; and this, on the other hand, gives rise to other questions, partially focused on the future. One of the first questions is whether we have arrived to the end of the big and deeply-rooted parties with their traditional electoral bases. This does not seem impossible. In 2005 a large-scale public opinion research was carried out among the voters in the Western European countries, who responded that political parties were necessary, but also rejected the thesis that the existent parties were truly concerned with the welfare of the people. Ibid., 347. So what is the alternative, then? In parliamentary democracy the alternative can only be another political party, but in the future such a party will have to be very different from those established a quarter of a century ago. The detailed exploration of party-political dynamics is thus certainly one of the research challenges – not only external dynamics, but possibly also the dynamics within the parties themselves, in so far as the researchers are enabled to analyse that. Shedding some light on the party dynamics will finally allow us to gain a better insight in the decision-making process. The aforementioned collaboration of anthropologists, linguists, politologists and historians should be ensured, since the issue is multi-layered and the answers are not necessarily rational.

As it is, politics is not a game of chess, as the German historian Gerhard A. Ritter wrote wittily. Gerhard A. Ritter, Der Umbruch von 1989/91 und die Geschichtswissenschaft. Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften. Philosophisch-historische Klasse. Sitzungsberichte. Jahrgang 1995, Heft 5 (München, 1995), 23. Nobody is forced to make their move once the opponent has made one. Politicians are frequently lost. Time and again they do not do anything, their actions are often irrational, and concrete results are frequently unrelated to their actions. However, when the moment is right, some of them know how to exploit it and are capable of doing it (after which they, of course, present their actions as a result of a strategic consideration). The former German Vice-Chancellor and Minister of Foreign Affairs Joschka Fischer admitted this freely in his memoirs, as he wrote that without the financial scandal of the CDU party the red-green coalition, created in 1998, would never have existed: "Luck and chance are essential for politics, like the air we breathe. What is later shown as a brilliant plan or a well thought-out strategy, or what the actors later declare as such, is often a result of chance or simply luck, not so much of the alleged genius of the people involved." – Joschka Fischer, Rdeče-zelena leta. Prelomni dogodki od vojne na Kosovu do 11. Septembra (Ljubljana: Didakta, 2011), 271. The factor of time – the context – thus remains an essential element of the analysis, and without it we cannot truly understand politics.