The Belgrade Waterfront real estate development project has attracted a considerable amount of interest among scholars from various disciplines in a short period of time. Nevertheless, these works are limited in scope. This paper draws upon existing literature on nation building by first contextualizing it before adding insights from party strategies and cultural studies (with a particular focus on identity issues) research streams. It thus aims to contribute to the nascent debate about how the new ruling elite of Serbia uses such urban projects to emancipate from the nationalist rhetoric and supporting symbols of the 1990s. The main argument of this paper is that state narratives, media coverage and branded icons of Belgrade Waterfront illustrate political regime’s switch to the global to contain the national in order to build and publicize its own ‘revitalized’ idea of the nation and legitimize its take on power. The underlying strategy consists in manipulating individuals’ preferences by marginalizing opposition parties. The research design relies on a multi-method approach crossing participant and ethnographic observation over a period of 7 years, as well as a critical analysis of the Serbian regime’s discursive strategies and project’s branding efforts using an original visual material.

The Catholic religion has been inextricably connected with the Polish state through numerous historical experiences. Being an important aspect of connecting society, it can be used in an instrumental way on the political agenda. Moreover, religiousness is an important determinant of electoral decisions. The aim of the research (N=238) is to check whether religiosity affects the perception of the importance of religious principles in everyday life and religion in political life. In the presented approach, religiosity was a multidimensional variable and was conceptualized using a modified five-point Religiosity Centrality Scale (Huber 2003). It was confirmed that all dimensions of religiosity are significantly related to the assessment of the importance of religious principles. The dimension that showed the strongest correlation with the created variables was the dimension of religious cult, and the dimension that correlated the least was the dimension of reading the Catholic press.

Political relevance is one of the most essential elements of political subjectivity. The process of its acquisition by political parties is not only a factor of their success, but also the foundation of their ability to influence the sphere of current politics. The political relevance of political parties combines both the institutional dimension of political processes and the practice of competition in three dimensions: electoral, parliamentary and cabinet. Only when parties are able to participate in all the three dimensions will they be able to perform the most important functions. The following article presents a specific dimension of acquiring political relevance, which is the management of political change.