Reforming the children, absolving the state: disciplinary discourse and depoliticized crisis management in Serbian PM Đuro Macut’s 2025 exposé

This article offers a Critical Discourse Analysis of Serbian PM Đuro Macut’s 2025 exposé, delivered amid nationwide student-led protests following the Novi Sad train station tragedy. The speech reframes institutional failure as a moral and educational crisis, strategically redirecting blame away from the state and towards Serbia’s youth. Through parental metaphors, sacralized references to the nation, and technocratic language, Macut simultaneously delegitimizes dissent and asserts the government’s reformist posture. The analysis demonstrates how elite discourse leverages depoliticization, masked agency, and moralizing frames to neutralize political unrest and re-establish legitimacy in the wake of catastrophe. Methodologically, the article applies a Critical Discourse Analysis framework grounded in Fairclough’s three-dimensional model, supplemented by van Dijk’s theory of elite discourse and Wodak’s discourse-historical approach to topoi and political legitimation. In doing so, the exposé exemplifies how post-crisis political communication can substitute structural accountability with affective appeals to unity, tradition, and order.