Capturing resources: the role of professional communities and middle classes in fostering social reforms within Serbia

Abstract

In this article, I analyze the role of professionals (as part of the middle classes) and their communities in fostering reforms within the fields of higher education and social protection, and working towards, and supporting, the development of civil society. The analysis is based on the series of studies that explored lawmaking and policy-making processes in the fields of law, employment, social protection, rural development, tax policies and civil society development. The analysis of the work of professional communities, and the course of changes in these fields, indicates that policy networks had a major impact on the public policymaking process. These networks bring together typical representatives of the middle class: professionals, government officials, professional associations, representatives of modern non-governmental organizations, etc. The interests, upon which these networks were based, can be classified into three groups: (1) control of conditions of reproduction of the profession, (2) control of public resources in a given system (which includes, but is not limited to, control of the funding channels) and (3) control of conditions of reproduction of a given system. All these interests have a clear redistributive character, are - in general - focused on the control of public resources and have created an alliance between the middle classes and the elite. Middle classes have participated in the process of making laws and public policies in a way that has deepened the political inequalities, and to phenomena which, by analogy with the process of state capture by the elite, can be recognized as the capture of resources by the middle classes. The analysis points to an important aspect of sluggish social reforms: the lack of enthusiasm among middle classes and professional elite in fostering deep social change which is due to their ideological and redistributive alliances and strategies of "resources capturing."