Mechanisms of Centralisation towards a Post-Yugoslav Dominant Class: The Case of Slovenia

This article analyses Slovenia’s independent statehood as the result of interactions between three relatively autonomous societal groups which had coexisted, albeit not harmoniously, since the liberal reforms of 1960s socialist Yugoslavia: the political bureaucracy, the ideological–cultural bureaucracy, and the technocracy. The transformation of these three groups into the dominant class in the newly independent Slovenia materialised through mechanisms of mediation of state power, as identified by Göran Therborn. Specifically, these mechanisms of centralising the three groups consisted of coercion, ideology, and extraction. Over the course of the 1980s, the three groups coordinated and began to project themselves as one class. They presented themselves to the working class through the emerging state institutions, and completed the transition to capitalism in Slovenia by dismantling the Yugoslav federation. Ultimately, the configuration of this dominant class through the process leading towards sovereignty created the conditions for its subsequent reproduction.