Political transition and democracy in Slovenia

The paper analyses the three-stage model of democratisation elaborated in the ‘80s on the experience of transition of the South European (SE) countries. The model served as a tool for explaining democratisation in East European countries, however it did not allow sufficiently clear understanding of the process of transition in particular East Central European countries. It is argued that the real differences among the successful and unsuccessful post-communist countries in the process of transition are not expressed in formal (normative) indicators but in the actual practices which are a consequence of a set of factors like the level of economic development, autonomy of the civil society in the period before the crisis, and the democratic traditions of each country. Economic relations in the former Yugoslavia were seriously disrupted at the end of the ‘80s, and in the middle of 1990 the Yugoslav program of economic stabilisation failed and Yugoslavia as an economic system ceased to exist. Due to favourable socio-economic conditions, the pre¬-transition and transition started in Slovenia earlier than in other countries. The developments in Slovenia have been \u27a-typical\u27 compared with East Central Europe and also with the republics of the former Yugoslavia with the exception of Croatia