Milica Delibasic,

Mediterranean University,

Faculty of Business Studies, 

Podgorica, Montenegro,

E-mail: 23.mildel@gmail.com

Socio-cultural capital as a cause of economic and institutional crisis in Montenegro, Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina

Abstract. The subject of the article is to explain aspects and essential elements through which socio-cultural capital causes crisis effects (institutional, economic, and social) in the selected post-socialist countries of South-Eastern Europe – Montenegro (MNE), Serbia (SER), and Bosnia and Herzegovina (B&H). The aim of this paper is to: a) model the structure and the role of socio-cultural capital; b) draw attention to the negative impacts of path dependence and new neoliberal culture; and c) suggest a new methodological criterion for the division of integral components of socio-cultural capital (inherited and imposed factors), which affected its decline in those countries. Its starting hypothesis is that legacy factors (conditionally: path dependency) and imposed factors (external and internal origin) in the observed transition countries have caused an erosion of many socio-cultural contents, which has led to a slowdown in economic, institutional, and social growth. Besides common methods of social sciences, the survey method has been used. The survey results show that socio-cultural capital suffered a decline, mostly due to a stagnation of bridging social capital and an increase in linking social capital, that is, due to a greater impact of imposed factors (generated in the new neoliberal culture) than inherited factors.

Received: December, 2017

1st Revision: March, 2018

Accepted: June, 2018

DOI: 10.14254/2071-789X.2018/11-4/14

JEL Classification: Z13

Keywords: socio-cultural capital, imposed impact factors, inherited impact factors, institutions, Montenegro, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina