Serbia just elected the world's brainiest parliament

It was an amazing achievement for the students list movement to get such a diverse group of new politicians elected. I’m very curious to see how government formation without a figurehead/leader goes. Most parliamentary democracies assume you are electing a person with the knowledge/hope the party leader will be sitting in the big chair at the end. Most also put a lot of power in that person’s hands with backbenchers sidelined from the day to day running.

I really hope their success carries over into governance.

Knowing nothing about it this particular movement, the main danger I foresee is essentially hubris. That the PHDs will be overly confident in political decisions they make in new domains completely foreign to them, primarily due to their expertise in their own domains and that this will lead to disastrous policy decisions.

I see this often in many areas. Perhaps they'll be lucky and have a few behavioral psychologists among them to maintain intellectual humility.

I hope it works out for them. In my home country students overthrow the government and put a Nobel Prize winning economist in charge. Now GDP growth has collapsed and the security situation has become precarious.

I’m also reminded of Ashraf Ghani, the last President of Afghanistan, who was a professor and wrote a book “Fixing Failed States.” He ended up fleeing the country like a coward as it collapsed.

It’s notable that students played a major role in the 1979 Iranian revolution that ended up putting the Ayatollah in power. In fact to my knowledge, student-led revolutions have never produced a long term positive outcome. Any examples?

I feel most comments in this thread do not really understand what Vućiċ regime was.

Google Aleksandar Vućiċ Voja Nevolja meat grinder…

Vučiċ is successor of people that assassinated Zoran Ðinďić, a Serbian prime minister. Basically drugs and arms dealers from either mafia, secret service or special forces.

Even if this government ends up being corrupt the level of moral lows they would need to hit to reach previous regime is staggering.

So people justifiably think it can’t get worse… but that only the time will tell…

Just because they are academics and experts in some scientific or technical field does not mean they are immune to corruption and abuse of power. Arguably they are just as vulnerable to these things.

I am from Serbia, a student, and supported the movement from the start, and I hope it works, but there are a few risks

I think it's inevitable that the "leaders" will just appear from the student list, then the student list gets destroyed, those leaders form their own parties and we'll elect another radical idiot who's not from the student list

Even now a few days after winning the election, you already have people from the SL who have a "brand", and who get idolized

Also people in our country are accustomed to corruption in our country, and if the new government starts beating down the corruption, the people will start hating the new government

IMO more than the academic prowess, the key positive is that the newly elected representatives will have different priorities and perspectives, and be younger. I can’t help but thinking that young people that went through high achieving secondary studying must have internalised delayed gratification and long term thinking by necessity, and be at least trying to improve things for the longer term rather than short term gain.

Then again, I might just be hoping it is so. Given that, sadly, similar movements elsewhere (perhaps with not as much laurel leaves) have quickly fallen apart. (5 star movement in Italy and Piraty in Czech Republic come to mind)

Hopefully the Serbian youths learned from them.

Quite a lot of cynicism and contempt expressed in this thread, and not entirely unjustified: historically, "governments of intellectuals" led to some of the worst regimes.

However, I want to look at this experiment more optimistically, see if this assembly can defeat the stereotype. I'll be observing its activity with interest!

which brings to mind the old William F. Buckley Jr., who famously remarked that he would rather be governed by the first 2,000 names in the Boston telephone directory than by the faculty of Harvard University.

But the idea of randomly selecting leaders as a leveling distribution is as old as Athens. We still practice it in Jury selection in much of the world.

So this experiment in Belgrade might be worth watching and it wouldn't surprise me at all if they outperform previous and regional governments.

I dunno man. Having worked with organisations that exist purely to coordinate academics and doctors in the medical field made up of a committee of the same folks...I only have concern. Smart as they maybe in their fields...academics are usually poor at management, logistics, empathy and organisation.

The committee of doctors, surgeons and biophysicists I supported couldn't organise a piss up in a brewery...they all had PhDs.

It's extraordinary they managed to form a list in 2025 and defeat the super corrupt, super established incumbent. A huge win for Serbia and democracies everywhere.

I'm a bit skeptic on all those professors and PhDs being a boon, though. In Portugal, we've been ruled by PhDs since 1926, if not before. Most ministers are professors, many of them independent. Results haven't been good. I hope Serbia proves us wrong.

At least student movement succeeded in an authoritarian / totalitarian country. The movement was a dangerous move and can be fatal. Please remember that in 1989, Chinese students and workers protested in Tienanmen Square, and got massacred and failed.

At least this parliament is elected by people, not manipulated by a corrupted authoritarian / totalitarian party or such.

At least Serbia society can get a chance to rest or recovery after a lot of destruction happened.

Wish them the best.

US CIA and US State Department Behind Serbia's "Student List" Media N1 and Nova S (United Group) [video]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50300051

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5lwZU7Q5U0

    US government-funded pro-opposition outlet BIRN through its Media Ownership Monitor Serbia project admits the central Student List media channels - N1 and Nova S - were created by former US director of the CIA David Petraeus via KKR and former US Ambassador to Serbia Cameron Munter; 

    The parent United Group was acquired and the media platforms built up from 2013-2014 onward as the center of opposition media in Serbia opposing Serbia’s existing leadership and institutions, and playing a central role in both “student protests” last year and the “Student List” movement this year; 

    United Group was only recently (earlier this year) acquired by Alpac Capital, but KKR still maintains an undisclosed amount of shares 

    When “leaderless” and “decentralized” protests are praised in the Western media, scroll down in the article where they eventually admit who the leaders and organizations are behind them, perform a simple internet search to identify the key people and investments making them possible to determine whether a movement is indigenous or the product of foreign interference;

This situation is very similar to a case where you'd have a solid specs on paper but it rarely translates well in practical use.

Highly qualified scholars are often socially awkward, to the point where their "life experiences" are nonexistent. And that makes them barely relatable to a common person of the society.

Sure they're great problem solvers in their respective fields but in a well functioning administration, you don't want overengineered solutions. Not to mention that politics requires a strong people skill, which is often missing in these class of people.

I'd be curious to know how this experiment turns out eventually.

I think somehting a lot of the top comments seem to miss is, ok sure there are risks, but the existing system isn't working, so why not? Like the regular politicians (in Serbia and beyond) aren't: immune to politicking, getting too deep into a rathole, spinning in circles with planning and bureaucracy, and especially to corruption etc.

The idea that as students or young people they're uniquely going to fail, WHEN IT WAS ALREADY A FAILED SYSTEM doesn't make sense to me, it seems like just poo-pooing?

I guess, a lot of it seems to just be reactionary thought to any change at all eh?

It is a courageous experiment, I wish them the best.

I hope they are confident enough to reach out to people who can help them in matters where not smarts but experience is needed.

In India at one point AAP had raised hopes. But they couldn’t work as a team. Let us hope Serbia shows the way for others. If they get some good advisors it might help. AAP infighting felt to me like infighting of French revolutionaries though it was not that bloody.

If there's a group that argues more than politicians, it's academics.

It's going to move things to the extreme edges. On things they agree on things will move fast. On things they disagree on it'll stall indefinitely.

And in the case of the latter, corruption and assassinations become the only answer to moving the needle.

The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.

F. A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit (1988).

Maybe it might lead to Serbia turning it around. The fewer lawyers, lobbyists, professional politicians, landlords, real estate people and bankers, who have had their chance around the world running various governments, to no avail in many cases. A wider variety of professions in the legislative body is needed and it can’t hurt anymore than what has gone on in the last 80 years.

I understand China has a large number of engineers. Involved in their government in comparison to the United States…

Im so hyped to see how this goes!

Power to the people man!

I'm really excited for this to be successful and stay in place.

It's going to end up being something quite unique perhaps in a ways similar to Switzerland's unique democracy.

We will see how spectacularly it will fail. But hey at least some young blood, they will probably try honestly.

Ah, our old pal scientific governance. I'm very curious to find out how it will turn out this time.

In this global political idiocracy that we live that last few years I hope this parliament will set an example for other countries to follow

good thing they're stem oriented. serbia can only go up from here.

vs electing lawyers as done in other countries.

Holy mother of credentialism. This will not end well. Let's look at the country again in 5 years.

So much of human political discourse of late is dedicated to ring-fencing off a particular demographic and presenting them as either The Solution or The Problem.

It may be that some types of academic ('of the Academy') learning predispose their adherents to see that distinct failure pattern, behind all the noise. I hope so.

Are we still doing this thing where we attribute success in one area to completely different fields? You may as well elect Opus 5.5, seen as it is already superhuman at certain tasks.

The shiny-brained parliament started with a decision to revoke the license from Alta bank. This one was the most popular bank of Russian relocants, because only this one allowed to transfer money from the Russian banks. As a result - a lot of people now have their accounts blocked, and the promise was left, to start the insurance payouts, so I believe it was said "your money are completely safe". Closing of the bank was a low-hanging fruit decision, which everybody liked, because Alta bank was under dictator Vucic's protection, presumably the corruption schemes took place, and so on. In fact, thousands of Russian relocants have been left with blocked accounts and with no money. On Monday, hundreds of those people will siege the 1 or 2 Serbian bank branches in attempt to open the account there. Other banks there are European - Raif, OTP, etc, so they're not allowed for Russians.

Interesting, that the brainiest parliament in the world started with a very populist decision, so it's the degradation from the very beginning. These brilliant minds better would've been stayed in science, rather than getting into politics.

I wish them all the success. This may threaten many governments. Youth and citizens around the world will watch how this government will perform. Hope.

I feel governments are made of people who barely know anything. It is getting worse. From the US to European nations, India to Australia. Make deals with powerful people, get a seat, serve the powerful. That is modern democracy.

The entire world should be cleaning up the toxic lead reside generation from it's legislative bodies. It's done enough.

People don’t know that the heyday of STEM governance was the Soviet Union.

What's the political leaning of this movement? Isn't this what's important?

Something similar happened in Spain with Podemos.

Turns out those who never worked in hard jobs don't value them as needed

> Rather than stand themselves, the students pulled together a slate of trusted figures—not just academics, but also farmers, lawyers, artists, teachers, and a former basketball player.

I came here to say that it's not "just academics", as many of the comments here seem to imply.

And they won't be able to change anything due to the massive HR-like bureaucracy.

There is often resistance to technocratic forms of government that, in my opinion, misses the mark, appealing to either a "they don't understand the real world" or a "we tried this before" argument, both of which deliberately ignore the "policy is personnel", reflecting the idea that their moral character is perhaps the most defining aspect when addressing large-scale change.

It is clear from populist approaches that conducting business-as-usual without any foundational knowledge is dangerous and leads to corruption and regulatory capture, and it is equally true that purely rationalist efforts neglect the messy nature of political governance and social complexity, leading to an overly narrow idea that ends up not serving the people it claims to support.

I expect that this government will rise or fall based on its ability to remain internally cohesive while also trying to resist (and hopefully influence) the many pressures that will be put on it by the regional and global vested interests.

We all know how well brainiacs work togther! :)

The generation above me in my family were largely life-long tenured senior academics. My father and uncle were both well respected academic administrators and my father was a small p politician within the confines of the university at which he was seated.

Lots of people told my father that he should go into big P politics and his response was always Groucho Marx: “I refuse to join any club that would have me for a member”.

I think he also found Politics of that sort futile and aggressive and based on all the things that he felt didn’t (or shouldn’t) matter in academia: who can speak loudest, build factions, and influence an agenda with no regard for data or facts. Of course many of those things are in fact present in academia.

But it’s very inspiring to see this parliamentary cohort. I do wonder whether they will find it exhausting and disillusioning to operate in the cut and thrust of modern personality politics.

I sincerely hope not though.

>> An electrical engineer who has helped design robots. An organic chemist who, during the pandemic, worked on COVID-19 drugs. An education researcher, a sociologist, several political scientists, economists, physicians, and medical researchers.

I have much more faith in an electrical engineer than the rest of the academics. Especially sociologist and economists.

Theory and practice are the same in theory but not in practice.

> Dozens of them come from the academic world, and more than half have a Ph.D. or M.D.

Pardon, i may be naive, but shouldn't a stable democratic parliament be somewhat a representation of the citizens who elected them? Do more than half of all serbians have a Ph.D.? I fear this "revolution" isn't what you think it is..

I suppose that “the impact of the new government will be brief but striking.” That’s how it always ends in situations like this.

If scientific intellect were that successful in politics and governance, then academic cliques would be in power all over the world. And every governor would have a Ph.D.

The more honest and highly educated people gather in one room to decide important issues, the harder the fight will be. And the more sad the outcome.

Science has more or less figured out the causes of such processes, but so far it cannot offer a recipe for sustainable governance. Dictatorship works most effectively, but only for a short period and then stagnates. Autocracy is theoretically better, but depends heavily on specific individuals. Oligarchy is, as a rule, the agony of transitional periods. Democracy in its classical form is complete rubbish; in the form of a masked plutocracy — well, it’s something in between, on par with autocracy. There was some hope for technocracy, but it seems to be failing because the technocrats aren’t really the real ones.

Alas, there’s no good news for anyone.

The Simpsons tackled this once.

good days are coming for my country, I am beyond happy <3

people who don't understand politics and economy (defined as study of human behavior), it will be a crazy show

Many say this cannot work.

... checking notes ...

Ah yes. China used to have 100% technocrats in their leadership 30 years ago. No one with a law degree in sight. Nowadays it is less, but they still have quite a few.

It can work.

Just a reminder that the alternative to this was a corrupt russian puppet. They don't need to set an example in government management, just to not push whatever the kremlin asks them to push and not embezzle money.

technocratic governments are great when a strong leadership is present that also listens to the technocracy. But it's important to realize that technical skill does not correlate with political skills like consensus building, horse trading, compromise, etc that make governments actually work.

What will happen here will strongly depend on how good these people are at actually playing the game of politics. I don't have any particular reason to be more or less optimistic than any regular slate of politicians.