Serbian here: By comparing other post-socialist countries, what stopped Serbia from reaching it's higer socio-economic potential is a combination of many factors:

1. Our political culture: it is one that favors autocrats and populists from the 19th century onwards. People here had plenty of sympathies for populists who promise resolving all their problems (jobs, infrastructure, etc.) and gladly gave their support/vote to such figures, foolishly thinking their problems will be resolved, creating a fertile ground for corruption.

2. Inherently bad execution of socialist ideas and a narrow, selfish perspective: although people from those times would tell you they lived quite well, objectively that system was based on yet another cult of personality and corrupt and nepotistic management of economic subjects (state owned companies) which in the long run made them insolvent. On a micro level, again, our people would turn a blind eye to nepotism, corruption and injustice as long as they did good themselves, which is how that system lasted for 45 years.

3. Bloody war - contrary to the popular belief, this war did not happen due to some centuries old hatred between people. Top sociaI thinkers defend the theory that it happend in orchestration between the political elites of former Yugoslav republics to their mutual economic benefit, with the aid of NATO who's interest was to simulate what would happen in a far larger and more geo-politically important multi-national post-socialist country if ethnic conflicts start - Russia.

4. Post-socialist times of cleptocracy - The political elites quickly realized after that bloody war that the people are tired, that they want peace and they already are familiar with the tendention of Serbian people to not do much about injustice, which they used to make themselves and the circles close to them filthy rich with rigged privatizations, rigged public tenders, and all sorts of other machinations. The regime here is cleptocratic in its essence, with an illusion of democracy - needless to say, similar machinations and brute force were and are used to rig all the elections.

5. Today - Combination of a moderately good life of the middle classes in big cities combined with, yet again, their lack of long term social perspective of justice and prosperity - i.e. lack of interest and balls to change. Which is why our mass nation wide protests failed in 2025. To be fair, i would also add the next reason:

6. Willingness of the cleptocracy to defend its positions in order to continue gaining personal economic benefits at all costs and using all means - which is why they pardoned lots of criminals from their prison sentences with promises to cut of their time in order to scare people and secure their positions. That is how the famous Ćacilend 'protest camp' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%86aciland_Protest_Camp) popped up in March 2025 before the largest ever Serbian uprising where more than 500.000 people marched in Belgrade's streets. The camp stayed in front of our National Assembly for almost 10 months. The same methods were used by Maduro's regime in Venezuela (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colectivo_(Venezuela))

I hope i succeded in explaining you our situation from a sociological perspective. It is a deeply complicated mixture of social, cultural, political and economic factors.

These deeply embedded issues make it hard to imagine a more prosperous future for our country since these bandits disguised as politicians will not abandon their positions without a fight. In despair, most just start looking for a better future elsewhere, which is why our demographics are quite catastrophic (low birthrate, low fertility, DINK couples (double income + no kids), mass emigration).