Chapter 4 contextualizes the earliest explorations in the domain of electronic music in Yugoslavia. Besides Malec and Kelemen, who left Yugoslavia in 1955 and worked in electronic music studios abroad, a decade later, a handful of other composers traveled to learn techniques of electroacoustic music at the newly formed studios in Europe and the US. Rajko Maksimović, Natko Devčić, and Aleksandar Obradović went to the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center in New York City to study with Vladimir Ussachevsky, James Randall, and Milton Babbitt. Ludmila Frajt, the first woman in Yugoslavia to work in the domain of electronic (and film) music, went to the Experimental Music Studio of Czechoslovak Radio Plzeň. Vladan Radovanović was trained at the Polish Radio Experimental Studio in Warsaw before returning home to establish the first electronic studio in Yugoslavia – a state-of-the-art, third-generation digital-analog Electronic Studio of the Third Program of Radio Belgrade (EMS). This ethnographic study with interviews with the founder of the studio reveals a compelling, yet little-known story of the formation of the electronic studio in Yugoslavia, the acquisition of the legendary Synthi 100 – the first custom-made instrument designed by Peter Zinovieff and David Cockerell at EMS in London – and how EMS Radio Belgrade became the center for creation, collaboration, and experimentation in electroacoustic music both within and outside the borders of Yugoslavia.

This chapter examines the pervasive issue of media capture within the European Union (EU) and its detrimental effects on media freedom and democratic governance. Using a theoretical model of media capture consisting of four critical components (control over national media regulators, manipulation of public service media, misuse of state funds for media control, and the consolidation of private media ownership by government-aligned businesses), it maps past and ongoing EU interventions in those areas. Despite the EU’s legal frameworks such as the European Media Freedom Act and the Audiovisual Media Services Directive, significant gaps remain in enforcement and oversight, limiting the Union’s ability to address these challenges. The analysis highlights the EU’s struggles to effectively intervene in safeguarding media independence due to constrained competences, weak enforcement tools, and reliance on politicised national regulatory authorities. The chapter underscores the need for enhanced regulatory mechanisms and stricter monitoring to counteract media capture and uphold democratic principles in EU Member States.

Chapter 5 is a case study of two notable pioneers of electronic music in Yugoslavia – Vladan Radovanović and Ludmila Frajt. Even though Frajt joined the Communist Party early on, which enabled her to hold some of the most powerful positions in the country, her creative process was not guided by the doctrine of socialist realism. Rather, she was seeking innovative ways to expand her sound palette. Her distinctive oeuvre of film, instrumental, electronic, and vocal music is derived simultaneously from Yugoslav folk and Western avant-garde elements. Thus, although she was particularly drawn to Lutosławski’s aleatory processes, Penderecki’s use of clusters and nonstandard treatment of instruments, and György Ligeti’s micropolyphony, Frajt also presented these techniques within the Yugoslav folk idiom. Radovanović was a true catalyst for change. His oeuvre pushed the limits of every art form – in addition to his advances in the domains of electroacoustic and computer music, Radovanović pursued poetry and visual arts, which he synthesized with acoustic elements. In his other works, Radovanović also incorporated kinetic features, created conceptual and polymedia projects, and devised working with the body as an object, tactile art, plastic art, meta-art, transmedia, transmodalism, metamusical projects, and computerized music based on Stochastic principles.

The introduction sets the stage for the analysis of the political, social, and cultural events that led to the momentous avant-garde scene in the country. It follows the formation of postwar Yugoslavia – a multiethnic, multireligious, and multilingual nation – and the ongoing ethnic and nationalist conflicts that would by 1991 result in the collapse of the political state and bring about an abrupt stop to all musical and cultural activities.

Chapter 1 examines Yugoslavia’s abrupt postwar political reorganization – from a prospering kingdom to a restrictive communist state – and the impact this new political structure had on all spheres of cultural life. In the new communist Yugoslavia, avant-garde interwar composers had to carefully navigate the challenges of restricted travel, virtually no contact with the outside world, and constraints mandated by the newly implemented doctrine of socialist realism. These impediments marked the first fifteen postwar years as the most challenging for Yugoslav composers. Socialist realism stood in direct opposition to freedom of artistic expression, innovation, and modernism, which they had been exploring across European music centers. It mandated that artists create works that conveyed the communist-socialist message of rebuilding the nation through unity and brotherhood, art that had to speak directly to the “masses.” This chapter surveys the Yugoslavian version of socialist realism – “moderated modernism” – offers a history of complex regional alliances and territorial divisions among Serbs, Slovenes, and Croats, and examines the composers’ search for a pan-Yugoslav musical identity.

This concluding chapter reiterates the main contributions of the book. Growth in most African countries has been characterised by a transformation from low-value agriculture to low-value services. As a result, structural transformation has remained largely elusive within Africa. Services has been the fastest-growing sector on the continent. Rwanda is unique among rapidly growing African countries in explicitly focusing on becoming a services hub. Using the case of Rwanda, this book shows that contemporary late development, which is more dependent on services, results in more transnational forms of dependence and political contestation than experienced in prior experiences of late development. The book ends with thoughts about the future of Rwanda. It argues that in the immediate short term, any instability will depend on what happens in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). In the long term, Rwanda’s political stability depends not on the government’s capacity to contain domestic popular mobilisation alone but on the capacity of transnational coalitions of dissident elites and external actors capitalising on existing horizontal inequalities to challenge the Rwandan Patriotic Front rule.

The European Union’s (EU) media policy balances harmonising regulations across Member States with national autonomy. Traditional audiovisual media is heavily regulated, but digital media formats and user-generated content add complexity to policy frameworks. Public service broadcasters (PSBs), guided by the Amsterdam Protocol, have aimed to promote pluralism and public interest while grappling with market distortions due to public funding. Many PSBs have evolved into public service media (PSM), with websites and presence on third-party platforms. Member States face challenges defining PSB mandates amid technological changes and commercial competition, exacerbated by advertising revenue shifting to global platforms. Additionally, ‘information disorders’ such as disinformation and hate speech have pressured the EU to find ways to safeguard a healthy media environment. Media capture, where governments control propaganda outlets, further threatens democratic communication. The European Media Freedom Act recognises PSM as crucial to democracy, mandating editorial independence and proper funding. Yet implementation and governance lie with Member States, leading to varied outcomes. This chapter offers case studies from Finland and Hungary to illustrate how the lack of specific guidance for PSM challenges the information resilience of national media landscapes. The chapter argues for EU-wide guidelines to foster national and EU-wide resilience.