POLITICAL CULTURE, AUTHORITARIANSM AND DEMOCRATIC TRANSITION IN CROATIA
POLITICAL CULTURE, AUTHORITARIANSM AND DEMOCRATIC TRANSITION IN CROATIA

Author(s): Ivan Šiber
Subject(s): Politics / Political Sciences, Sociology, Nationalism Studies, Transformation Period (1990 - 2010), Post-Communist Transformation
Published by: CEDET Centar za demokratsku tranziciju
Keywords: transition; political culture; authoritarian personality; Croatia
Summary/Abstract: Political changes that occurred in 1989 and 1990 both in the former Yugoslavia and in the entire Eastern Europe, have revealed a historical collapse of a model and an idea - a utopia, and at the same time, have further actualized the problem of political culture and its appropriateness for a democratic organi­zation within the framework of a multiparty political system. In other words, the basic question arises: to what extent are the absence of civil society tradition and the presence of authoritarian tradition hindering the development of democratic processes and relations? The paper shows that the value vacuum generated by the breakup of the previous system has been simply replaced by new footholds, primarily the nation, religion and history. The development of a democratic political culture, as well as the change of the authoritarian consciousness require both time and a process of political resocialization. Empirical studies have shown that in the former Yugoslavia until 1990 and in the Republic of Croatia after 1990, authoritarian evaluations are evidently present, with all the characteristics found in research studies throughout the world: the more intense authoritarianism is, the greater the exclusiveness towards the others, the greater the presence of right-wing (nationalist) parties, the greater the religiousness, the greater the focus on traditions etc. It is primarily the question of the so-called cognitive authoritarianism, namely the type of evalua­tion and behavior acquired through the process of socialization in a traditional environment with a dominant parochial political culture. According to research results, younger and more educated interviewees show a much lesser degree of authoritarianism than the older and less educated population.

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