Old and new democracy

The paper examines the change in the meaning and practice of democratic values in interstate and domestic political relations. The main ideas of democracy focus on the state order which is understood as a general good with three branches of power, laws on citizens' rights and the free market. Foreign policy characteristics of the new democracy reality are the prevalence of globalization over national interests, the new role of the media, wars between democratic countries, growing hatred and phobias. Internal changes in democracy are also prominent: the political role of money, non-procedural decision-making, the relationship between the minority and the majority, and the power of the media. Serbian democracy is burdened by external as well as by domestic pressures: the legacy of Yugoslavism, the struggle for Kosovo and Metohija, the absence of the desired national consensus. The conclusion underlines the increasing criticism of these processes in foreign and domestic democracy which bring its values and institutions into question and point to a tendency of self-contradiction of democracy in the new reality.