Spectators of a phantom democracy: Vučić’s Serbia through the lens of Walter Lippmann’s The Phantom Public

This article examines the political regime of Aleksandar Vučić in Serbia through the theoretical lens of Walter Lippmann’s (1925) The Phantom Public. Lippmann’s critique of democratic idealism (particularly his portrayal of a passive, manipulated public) offers a compelling (and almost prophetic) framework for understanding how modern hybrid regimes maintain legitimacy while subverting democratic substance. By analysing Serbia’s media landscape, institutional decay, and symbolic politics, the article argues that Vučić has constructed a “phantom democracy” in which electoral procedures remain but public participation is hollowed out. The paper situates this within the broader context of democratic backsliding in post-communist Europe and considers counterpoints from alternative democratic theories, employing interpretive case analysis to apply Lippmann’s framework to Serbia’s political system. Ultimately, it suggests that Lippmann’s century-old scepticism remains highly relevant in explaining the mechanics of contemporary illiberalism and media-engineered consensus. This study contributes to Lippmann scholarship by extending his epistemic critique of the public beyond liberal democracies to hybrid post-socialist regimes, offering a transnational theoretical adaptation of The Phantom Public.1