Is protest participation in Post-Yugoslav countries motivated by pro-democratic political culture?

ǂa ǂcross-national study

Marina Tavčar Krajnc (Author), Sergej Flere (Author), Andrej Kirbiš (Author)

Abstract

In the recent decades protest participation has become most widely accepted and practiced form of citizen engagement in western democracies. Many researchers believe protest participation is crucial for democracy to be consolidated and effective, and previous studies have shown that protest participation is one of the main characteristics of a democratic public. Though protest is on the increase in western democracies, it declined in postcommunist democracies from 1990 to 2000. The bulk of participation research still comes from western countries and less is known about participation patterns of postcommunist and especially post-Yugoslav citizens. More importantly, previous cross-national studies have mostly not dealt with the motivations behind protest participation in post-Yugoslav countries. The aim of our research was twofold: firstly, we compared levels of protest participation (signing petitions, joining in boycotts, and attending lawful/peaceful demonstrations) in three regions: seven post-Yugoslav countries (BiH, Croatia, Kosovo, FYR Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia), seventeen established EU democracies, and nine East-Central European EU member states. Secondly, we analyzed the relationship between protest participation and prodemocratic political culture (i. e. democracy index consisting of items indicating acceptance of democracy and rejecting authoritarian rule) in all three regions. We employed the newest (2008) wave of European Values Study, which consists of representative national surveys. The results indicated that post-Yugoslav population is almost as protest oriented (Mprotest = 1.89) as citizens in western countries (M = 1.93), and significantly more than ECE EU member states (M = 1.55). Interestingly, within post-Yugoslav countries, citizens of Kosovo and Macedonia report the highest levels of protest potential. The results also showed that protest participation is positively and statistically significantly associated with prodemocratic orientations in all three regions, as well as within all seven post-Yugoslav national samples. If Europeanization of West Balkan countries is understood in terms of their populations taking part in elite-challenging behaviour (e. g. protest participation) motivated by pro-democratic orientations, then all non-EU post-Yugoslav countries are well on their path to Europe. Indeed, if Europe keeps them out, democratic protests might follow shortly, if, of course, pro-EU membership attitudes will be present in six post-Yugoslav countries at the critical times in the future. Implications of the results and future research suggestions are discussed.

Keywords

politična kultura;postkomunistične države;postjugoslovanske države;mednacionalne študije;ne zaključna dela;protest participation;post-communist countries;Post-Yugoslav countries;cross-national studies;political culture;

Data

Language:	English
Year of publishing:	2012
Typology:	1.01 - Original Scientific Article
Organization:	UM FF - Faculty of Arts
UDC:	316.334:32
COBISS:	19362568
ISSN:	Y506-8312
Views:	1237
Downloads:	52
Average score:	0 (0 votes)
Metadata:

Other data

Secondary language:	English
Secondary keywords:	Politična kultura;Politična sociologija;Postsocializem;Slovanske študije;
URN:	URN:SI:UM:
Type (COBISS):	Article
Pages:	str. 95-117
Volume:	ǂVol. ǂ2
Issue:	ǂiss. ǂ2
Chronology:	Summer/Autumn 2012
Keywords (UDC):	social sciences;družbene vede;sociology;sociologija;social structure;society as a social system;družbena struktura;družba kot družbeni sistem;globalne družbe;basic elements and subsystems of global societies as sociological categories;social sciences;družbene vede;politics;politika;politične vede;
ID:	1440193