Individualna autoritarnost kao prediktor izbornih preferencija u Srbiji, od 1990. do 2022. godine
Individual authoritarianism as a predictor of electoral preferences in Serbia, from 1990 to 2022

Author(s): Bojan Todosijević
Subject(s): Politics / Political Sciences, Politics, Government/Political systems, Electoral systems
Published by: Институт друштвених наука
Keywords: Serbia; authoritarianism; elections; voting; democracy
Summary/Abstract: In order to verify the thesis about the importance of the dimension of authoritarianism for differentiating the voters of opposing political camps in Serbia in a systematic and comprehensive way, data from a series of public opinion surveys conducted since 1990 were analysed. The first part of the analysis deals with the recalls of respondents’ vote choices over the previous three decades. The second part presents the results of the studies conducted at the time of specific elections since 1990. The analysed data refer to 12 elections, with the total of 22 individual analyses carried out, 9 of which referring to presidential and 11 to parliamentary elections. Authoritarianism is operationalized in several ways, most often in the form of a short scale with questions that can be linked to the original operationalization of the authoritarian orientation by Adorno and associates (1950). The presented results consistently show that the voters of parties characterized by traditionalism, conservatism, national orientation, and often resistance to the democratization of society, generally show above-average scores on the scale of authoritarianism. The voters who support parties with a social-liberal and democratic orientation are generally characterized by lower average authoritarianism scores. Electoral abstainers (except when including those who boycotted elections), as well as the voters of moderate right-wing parties, are also around the national average. The general conclusion is that the association between authoritarianism and electoral preferences has represented a general characteristic of the voters’ behaviour in Serbia during the last three decades.

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