Only one generation back historical changes of such dimensions occurred in Slovenia that Slovenians have hardly been able to grasp their extent as they were happening, let alone could they assess their impact. Under the influence of global victory of democracy that was actually a victory of corporate neoconservative capitalism Slovenians almost overnight transformed their economic and political system and subsequently, the education and value systems as well as developmental approaches and visions. In the last few years in particular, numerous fundamental misunderstandings on crucial political and societal concepts (in some cases simply too literal interpretations) have become more and more apparent in political and public (media) discourse that few had bothered to ponder on in the process of transition from previous social model to the current one. These misunderstandings have deepened if not caused the current complex crisis in the country, actually a sum of several crises, from economic and financial to political and environmental as well as crisis of the party system, of values and developmental vision. In the context of these misunderstandings, democracy has been interpreted as literal rule of the people i.e. everyone, regardless of education and skills, is competent to govern; capitalism has been understood as a guarantee of prosperity for every citizen; equality has been mistaken for biological sameness; law was supposed to grant justice; rule of law has been reduced to adopted legislation; the institution of the State has however, remained an abstraction having nothing to do with the citizens and has been frequently erroneously equaled with government in power; authorities have automatically turned into elites; nationalism has been mistaken for patriotism; judicial and legislative brunch have been interpreted as passive instruments of the executive; difference has become a threat, while competition is, paradoxically, a matter of consensus of competitors, and corruption is now almost the norm to get through life, while institutions, with few exceptions, rise and fall with their key employees and the Roman Catholic Church has been “naturally” reinstated as major political actor. Several of these misinterpretations can be traced to traditional Slovenian (and in some cases, Communist) notions such as egalitarianism, fervent nationalism, specific social networking in small closed societies, absence of democratic tradition and intolerant exclusiveness. An interesting “path dependence” pattern can also be observed here as hastily adopted yet not internalized concepts have been transformed by local (political) culture, communication customs and institutional continuity to produce a hybrid such as the Croatian political scientist D. Grubisa calls a “minimal democracy” – a political system with free elections and political parties that is actually an oligarchy without influential civil society, independent media, professional bureaucracy and other attributes of mature democracies
