Analyses of protest dynamics in Croatia and Serbia are rare, partially because until now it was not possible to overview them systematically. Addressing this gap by relying on newly collected protest event data for the period from 2000 to 2017, this paper first describes protest dynamics in these countries in the observed period. In general, the protest dynamics was influenced by consequences of political and economic changes in the “transition period”. Second, the paper re-examines claim about the absence of austerity related protests in Croatia and Serbia in the period after the 2008 economic crisis. Drawing on the paired comparison between two national cycles of contention, the analysis shows that protests directly addressing specific austerity measures were indeed relatively scarce in both countries. However, the existence of movements demanding free public education, advocating labour rights, and fighting for the right to the city challenges the notion about “quietism” in the age of austerity. These movements managed to connect specific grievances to the universal fight against the state of permanent austerity simultaneously addressing the lack of “real” democracy, inequality of chances, and corruption of dominant neoliberal system. The Serbian cycle of contention differs primarily from the Croatian one in the higher frequency of protests that were organised by labour unions and which addressed labour-related issues and articulated workers’ grievances. In Serbia anti-austerity contention led to realignment of pre-existing alliances among labour unions and leftist NGOs, while in Croatia protests left an important mark on the political system by enabling some of their initiators to establish an anti-system political party which would gain significant electoral success in the short span of time.

How do different representations of a nation’s history affect which social groups seek out, and obtain, positions of power? Across the world, political entrepreneurs wrestle over which groups are represented, and how, in collective memory. Drawing on the notion that historical representations serve to define and legitimize claims to the nation, we suggest that the way history is remembered may affect the extent to which minorities are perceived as entitled to take decisions on its behalf. Specifically, we expect that historical representations that exclude the minority group or depict them as “the other” will lead minorities to feel less entitled to assume positions of leadership, and will lead members of the majority to more forcefully deny them access to these positions. Historical representations that include the minority group and positively describe their contributions to the nation are expected to have the opposite effect. We test our theory through a virtual lab experiment in India, where Muslims are heavily underrepresented in political institutions and there is an active movement to minimize Muslim historical contributions to India, and to recast the country as a Hindu nation. Leveraging stark differences in historical depictions across official history textbooks from different Indian states and time periods, we randomly assign participants history exercises based on either an exclusive, an inclusive, or a neutral representation of history. We subsequently assess the effect of these historical representations on participants’ willingness to act as a group representative as well as their preference ranking of their group partners as group representative. Our study contributes theoretically to our understanding of the effects of historical representations on socio-political outcomes, and offers policy-relevant insights into how inclusive historical representations may encourage the political involvement of marginalized groups.