Calling your opponents a foreign plot is a convenient way to avoid asking why they live next door.

Aleksandar Vučić has now conceded defeat to Serbia’s student-led opposition, the Associated Press reports. He had portrayed the movement as foreign-directed while receiving Vladimir Putin’s endorsement. The concession is a major development beyond this morning’s voting story, not a completed transfer of power or a certified final tally.

The foreign-plot explanation has encountered a technical difficulty: the electorate.

It is a wonderful system for a leader who enjoys representing the nation but finds portions of its population inconvenient. Supporters are the authentic people. Opponents are evidence that somebody else has been tampering with the people. The country can never disagree with you; it can only suffer a maintenance issue.

AP describes students walking and cycling into rural areas to reach voters. The candidates on their list are not students themselves. That matters: organizing a movement is different from appointing your friends to every available chair.

Make powerful people uncomfortable.
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There is something particularly rude about answering a grand conspiracy theory with ordinary political work. The alleged international masterminds apparently left a considerable amount of the operation to people willing to knock on doors. No glamorous command center can spare you a conversation with someone who has questions.

A concession is worth welcoming without declaring that an entire political system has been repaired in an evening. The practical test comes next: whether the result is respected and democratic institutions can do their jobs. A defeated leader’s statement is not a substitute for either.

Nor should the movement’s success become an excuse to turn its participants into decorative young heroes, useful chiefly for inspiring people elsewhere. The point of political organizing is not to supply a stirring photograph. It is to change who can make decisions and how they are held accountable.

The students were not a distraction from Serbian politics. They were Serbian politics. The man who kept explaining them away finally had to explain a defeat.