Šaper defined his political stance - democracy and a multiparty system, in 1945 when he, then nineteen, returned from the Syrmia Front. The experience of the conscious sacrifice of an entire generation fundamentally influenced his democratic political views, to which he remained faithful until his death. Never a member of the League of Communists, in January 1990, he was one of the first members of the newly established Democratic Party. He remained in the party the rest of his life, and was at various times a member of its Political Council, chairman of the University Council, president of the Belgrade Committee and a member of the General Committee of the Democratic Party.