alt Hacker NewsYeah, there's plenty of high-profile academic politicians in Europe with debatable legacies including Thatcher and Merkel. Time will tell.
A quick search suggests the economists associated with this movement are fairly 'mainstream' institutionalists of the type that's popular with government these days in the west. I don't think there will be big changes soon beyond dealing with corruption/nepotism.
Later on, I imagine they will push for faster EU integration on possibly slightly worse terms. Serbia may become marginally less independent in terms of fiscal policy at least and the markets might become even more exposed/beholden to foreign capital. This process has been in motion for years now and I don't expect the student movement to care - the upsides are broadly popular with younger people globally. Personally, I think it is deeply ironic that in the age of tariffs and huge government spending by the superpowers, small countries like Serbia are still signing up to be bound by the 'free market' consensus which is rapidly disintegrating globally.
Thatcher was a scientist, but no more an academic than most politicians.
She had a honors bachelors degree. An Oxford MA is awarded three years later on application, and is not an earned master’s degree. Unusually for a politician, it was a science degree (chemistry), and she worked in a lab at school and after school briefly, but she got a law degree later, which is a typical politician thing.
If that bachelor’s degree was in humanities, like almost all elected officials, no one would refer to her as an academic.
In contrast, Merkel earned a PhD, and some of these newly elected Serbian reps are long-time professors.