The collection deals with the (recent) phenomenon of hijacked institutions, not from the point of view of the need for inalienable and independent institutions for the sake of reaching a certain goal, but as a kind of symptom of the loss of capacity of being social. To that end, Serbian institutional reality is considered in a systematic way. The texts in this volume take into account different perspectives of seeing this phenomenon (such as the usurpation of institutions by the elite or those in central positions within the ruling party, as well as the perception of the power(lessness) of institutions reflected in citizens’ reluctance to rely on their work), while analyzing certain discourses that accompany and support these processes. Structurally, the collection is divided into two units that contain both scientific analysis and vignettes that serve as examples or illustrations of the process of alienation of institutions. The first part, “Alienation of Institutions or the Institutionalization of Alienation,” discusses the conditions and causes of different modalities of alienation, while the second part, entitled “Alienated Institutions and Threatened Domains of the Public Sphere,” maps out and explains concrete instances of the endangered institutional reality.