Abstract

During the period of party system stabilisation after 2003, Serbia experienced two major party trajectories, the repositioning of the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS), and the emergence of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). This article explains both of these moves as strategic choices by the party leaders: the SPS attempts to abandon its difficult electoral position as part of the nationalist bloc, and to reach new voters as a modern economic left-wing party, while the new reformist LDP profited from the natural move of its main competitor, the Democratic Party, toward the political mainstream, and forced it to come back to its ideological roots.