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By David Averre
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Serbia’s students have just pulled off a political miracle. After nearly two years of protests, a grassroots youth movement with no conventional leader or governing experience has defeated Aleksandar Vučić’s enormous political machine, ending 14 years of his party’s dominance.
Whether the Student List can actually govern remains to be seen, but its stunning parliamentary victory sends a powerful message to disgruntled youth movements worldwide. From France and Albania to India and Indonesia, young people are taking to the streets against governments and institutions they believe have failed them.
Their chances of success vary wildly—and recent history suggests that even getting what you want isn’t always all it’s cracked up to be.
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Here’s how five major student movements stack up, from those facing the biggest obstacles to those with the greatest political leverage.
5. Albania
Albania’s young people are furious with Prime Minister Edi Rama, and are eager to show it.
The unrest grew from months of protests initially directed against a controversial luxury resort development backed by Atlantic Incubation Partners, a company linked to the investment firm founded by President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. That unrest has escalated into mass demonstrations and violent confrontations with police over alleged government corruption, high unemployment, and poor education.
Now students want a complete political reset, including Rama’s resignation and his replacement with a transitional government of technocrats and experts to implement sweeping reforms. They face a steep uphill battle.
Rama has flatly rejected the students’ demands, and unlike in Serbia, there is no election waiting around the corner. His Socialist Party won 83 of parliament’s 140 seats in May 2025, securing a fourth consecutive term. His government has proposed tougher penalties for protesters, while international observers and U.S. officials have called for restraint.
Unlike their counterparts in Serbia or Indonesia, Albania’s student protesters have yet to build a comparably cohesive national organization capable of sustaining political pressure.
There’s public anger aplenty, but little evidence yet that Rama’s grip on Parliament is weakening. Students could still extract concessions on education, but forcing a government from office is another proposition entirely.
Prospects: Bleak. Rama has the votes, years left in office and no intention of surrendering power.
4. France
France’s teenagers have spent the past month turning their schools and streets into battlegrounds.
Anger over missing teachers, crumbling classrooms and an unpopular university admissions system has sparked nationwide school blockades, drawing support from teachers, unions and other protesters frustrated with President Emmanuel Macron’s floundering government.
Hundreds of thousands demonstrated across France on Saturday, after weeks of fiery protests. The Interior Ministry counted 410,000 participants; unions estimated as many as 800,000 took to the streets. But France has a long tradition of mass demonstrations, and its governments have become accustomed to surviving them.
The students have secured some initial concessions: the government has pledged to deploy roughly 3,000 substitute teachers to struggling schools, while Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu is meeting student representatives Monday, with further education measures expected.
It’s better than nothing, but not much more—and France’s problems run considerably deeper than a shortage of teachers. The country’s national debt stands at 119 percent of GDP, its pension system remains a political minefield, and its fractured Parliament can’t agree on how to balance the books.
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Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s hard-left France Unbowed party has positioned itself as a champion of the protesters, while Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally hopes to capitalize on the wider discontent ahead of the 2027 presidential election. Neither side can simply wish away France’s financial problems.
Student protests might contribute to some major political upheaval in Paris without coming close to fixing what’s broken.
Prospects: Limited. They might make progress in the classroom; France’s deep political and financial mess is a much more complex problem.
3. Indonesia
Indonesia’s students have spent more than a year challenging President Prabowo Subianto over corruption, political privilege and what they see as the erosion of democracy.
Protests erupted in August 2025 over generous allowances for lawmakers, then exploded into deadly nationwide unrest after a motorcycle taxi driver was killed during police action. The demonstrations forced Prabowo to roll back lawmakers’ perks, but student activists want much more.
Campus groups, labor organizations and online activists coalesced around a campaign called "17+8," which stands for 17 immediate demands and eight longer-term reforms, including police accountability, greater transparency and an end to the expanding role of the military in civilian affairs.
So far, those deeper reforms have failed to materialize, and students returned to the streets again this month, protesting economic hardship and the government’s response to devastating forest fires and toxic haze. Prabowo’s popularity has also taken a battering: his approval rating fell to 44.5 percent in an October survey, down from 81.2 percent less than a year ago—one of the lowest ratings for an Indonesian president since the restoration of democracy in 1998.
But while the students have demonstrated impressive organization and staying power, Prabowo retains substantial institutional strength. His declining popularity has yet to translate into the sweeping changes they demand, and there’s no sign that’s about to change.
Prospects: Mixed. Prabowo’s popularity is collapsing; his grip on power isn’t.
2. India
India’s Chief Justice Surya Kant sparked fury in May for seeming to compare unemployed young people and outspoken activists to "cockroaches". Kant subsequently said he had been misquoted and that his criticism concerned people using fake qualifications to enter professions, rather than unemployed young people generally.
The students adopted the insult and transformed it into a political identity, forming the Cockroach Janta Party, which has since posed a serious problem for the government and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Anger over unemployment and leaked medical entrance examination papers sparked weeks of demonstrations over the summer, culminating in Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation in July. But the cockroaches aren’t finished: they have since turned their attention to controversial changes to India’s electoral rolls, demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over alleged irregularities that the commission denies.
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This will prove the true test of the cockroaches’ power. The government can replace an unpopular minister with relative ease; it will be far less enthusiastic about accepting structural challenges to the institutions overseeing the political process. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party suffered a significant power check in 2024, losing the outright parliamentary majority most expected it to maintain, but remains the commanding force in a coalition government.
Prospects: Promising, with limits. They’ve brought down a minister, but the machine behind India’s political process is a much tougher fight.
1. Serbia
Serbia’s students have achieved what most protest movements can only dream of: actually winning an election.
They built a remarkably democratic movement organized through university assemblies known as plenums, where decisions are made collectively rather than dictated by party leaders. Students even barred themselves from standing for election so as not to fall into the trap of "careerism," instead recruiting independent doctors, academics, lawyers and other professionals as vetted and approved candidates.
It worked spectacularly in opposition. The decentralized, ruthlessly fair and transparent approach to political campaigning shone an unforgiving spotlight on Vučić and his increasingly authoritarian government. On Sunday, the Student List swept to victory, winning a projected 140 seats in the 250-member Parliament.
Now the real work begins. Beyond the obvious problems—the movement has no conventional leader, no confirmed prime minister and no collective governing experience—its entire democratic structure is about to face a serious test.
Ahead of the elections, the student plenums exercised considerable authority over who could stand for office. But once those candidates take their seats in Parliament, they gain real political power and their mandates belong to them; the students can’t suddenly recall an elected lawmaker who decides not to carry out their wishes.
Once the Student List settles the pesky question of who’s actually in charge, its new government has a long list of issues to get stuck into: confronting entrenched corruption, freeing courts and public institutions from political interference, and delivering economic improvements, all while balancing Serbia’s competing interests with Russia and the European Union and navigating the tension over Kosovo.
These are formidable problems, but Serbia’s student, and their chosen representatives have already shown they can achieve what most people thought impossible. Their government’s record will serve as a model, or warning, for youth movements everywhere.
Prospects: Historic. They’ve won the power to remake Serbia. Now they must prove they can wield it.
What Happens When the Students Actually Win?
Recent history offers two instructive examples of what may await Serbia.
In Bangladesh, students helped topple Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in 2024, ending 15 years of rule. But their elation was short-lived: when elections finally came in February 2026, the traditional Bangladesh Nationalist Party stormed to victory, while the student-founded National Citizen Party won just six parliamentary seats.
Human Rights Watch says the new government has already rolled back protections against human rights abuses and arbitrarily detained perceived political opponents—exactly the kind of practices the students revolted against.
Nepal’s youth uprising also brought down a government in 2025. Elections this March produced a remarkable victory for a new anti-establishment party led by former rapper Balendra Shah. Yet his administration has already drawn criticism for bypassing Parliament, centralizing decision-making and struggling to deliver promised institutional reforms.
Both countries demonstrate an uncomfortable truth about political revolutions. Getting rid of the people in charge is one thing; building something better is much, much harder.
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