Equality, Participation, Transition: Essays in Honour of Branko Horvat

xxvi Introduction
though friendly, criticism, as he tried to keep the right balance between
encouragement and critique.
Throughout his life, Horvat has also been a political activist. Starting
from his partisan days, he has not remained indifferent in front of
important developments on the political scene in his country. He was
close to a number of critical social scientists in former Yugoslavia and
with them participated in various interdisciplinary research projects
and discussions. He openly and usually very critically, sometimes provoking
major public controversies and strong reactions from official
politicians, raised his voice regarding poorly designed institutional
changes or major crises in Yugoslavia: for example, on the occasion of
the 1965 economic reform or the 1971 Constitutional amendments; or
still later, in the early 1980s, motivated by the worsening of the crisis
in Kosovo, he felt the need to investigate key problems in this region,
which resulted in the publication of a book on the problem of Kosovo
(Kosovsko pitanje, 1988).
With the worsening of the political and economic crisis in Yugoslavia
in the 1980s, Horvat became one of the harshest and most open critics
of nationalism, its ideologues and political leaders. While strongly
opposed to such political options, which in his view led to an undemocratic
and overcostly resolution of the Yugoslav crisis, he actively tried
to promote an alternative political agenda: a democratic reconstruction
of Yugoslavia. Such activities, very much opposed by the prevailing
political climate, made him an active participant of numerous public
debates.
After the introduction of multi-party democracy in Croatia in the
early 1990s, he founded (and has been leading) a new political party,
the Social Democratic Union, which promotes the concept of full
democracy – including political democracy, social democracy and economic
democracy – as one of its basic principles. However, he has left a
much stronger impact as an outspoken critic of the course that transition
and privatization in Croatia (and elsewhere) have taken, than as a
leader of this rather marginalized political party.
Horvat has been, and remains, a controversial – for some, even
eccentric – scholar, an economist beyond the mainstream. Yet he has
always been fully consistent as a theorist, and has remained faithful to
himself and to his ‘ideas and ideals’ which he defended throughout his
rich and fruitful life. Being committed from his early youth to socialist
values of economic and political democracy and social justice, he
has never shied away from the normative side of economic theory.
This combination of rigorous reasoning and strong convictions place