Institutional violence in the countries of Southeast Europe

The subject of this paper is the research of public perception based on the selected samples of highly educated persons on the existence of institutional violence as a breaking factor in the development of Serbia, Montenegro, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. The aim of the paper is to quantitatively analyse the impact of five independent variables on the basis of a hypothetical theoretical approach and relevant questionnaires: a) institutional underdevelopment, b) reduction of economic freedom, democracy, and individualism, c) hegemonic theoretical governance, d) dictation of "new entrepreneurs" and "new elites", and e) domination of privileged choices and interest motivation of the nomenclature in power on the dependent variable, which we defined as the existence of institutional violence in society. The paper starts from the hypothesis that the factors defined by independent variables dominantly influence the manifestation and maintenance of institutional violence as a key development boundary. Multiple regression linear approach is methodologically applied to the samples from 150 selected respondents in the three countries mentioned above. The results have confirmed the validity of the hypothesis and, consequently, the need for significant social reforms in the part of independent variables, which would lead to the reduction of institutional violence in these countries, or the influence of alternative institutions.