Civic Education as Education for Peace in the Context of Serbia's 2000 Democratic Revolution

The introduction of civic education in Serbia in 2001 marked a beginning of an allencompassing reform that set the tone for future changes designed to support the country’s democratization. This article draws on documentary and elite interview data to unpack the conceptualization of this policy, revealing it to be a multi-level positioning exercise in the national and international political space. It argues that, by using favorable political and international policy conditions, Serbian policymakers created a version of civic education that significantly drew on grassroots peace education programs developed during the 1990s, recognizing the priority of needs in building a democratic society. The latter offered Serbian policymakers agency in the context of what critical literature perceives as a transfer/imposition of policies in societies facing “Westernization.”