Slovenian 1989: Elite Construction of a National Democracy

Sa？etak Slovene 1989 started in May 1988, after the arrest of Janez Jan？a and the Foundation of Odbor, and finished in September 1989, when the ideological configuration of the sovereigntist process was institutionalised through a substantial constitutional reform carried out by the Assembly of the Republic, still solely ruled by the communists. Odbor and the developments after the "Slovenian spring" of 1988 – which triggered nationalist mobilisation – accelerated the pluralisation of the system and advanced the creation of new political parties in the country. Through the analysis of the Slovene transition it is possible to observe 1989 as a time in which social mobilisation merely played a subsidiary role in political change in relation to political elites, characterized by the consolidation of a new paradigm of legitimacy and, above all, for its insertion in the sovereigntist process that was taking place in that Yugoslav republic. During that period, Slovene ideological elites delimited a common political space characterized by confrontational attitudes towards the Yugoslav federal institutions from a nationalist perspective