The history of Serbia’s youth protests illustrates the importance of learning and adaptation in protest tactics

In the wake of the Arab Spring, it is clear that protest movements can be a viable means to affect change on a national level. In this light, Olena Nikolayenko looks at the development of the Serbian youth protest movement, Otpor, from its antecedents in the early 1990s to its role in the electoral defeat of the President of Federal Republic of Yugoslavia Slobodan Milosevic in 2000. She writes that the protest movement owes much of its success to its ability to learn from its own experiences and those of protest movements in other countries.