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Disaffected New Democracies? Identities, Institutions and Civic Engagement in Post-Communist Europe
Hubert Tworzecki
Department of Political Science Emory University htworze@emory.edu
draft - please do not cite without author's permission
Paper prepared for the ECPR JOINT SESSIONS OF WORKSHOPS April 12-18, 2004, Uppsala, Sweden
1
Introduction1
During the past decade, a vigorous scholarly debate has
focused on explaining the nature, severity and causes of
declining public trust and confidence in democratic
political institutions. Numerous surveys have reported
increasingly critical evaluations not just of governments
and their performance, but of the "political class" in
general, as indicated by agreement with statements that most
politicians are dishonest, that they lose touch, do not care
about ordinary people, are only interested in votes, and so
forth. (Pharr and Putnam 2000) Often coupled with similarly
negative evaluations of parliaments, state bureaucracies
and, especially, political parties, as well as a declining
sense of political efficacy, such findings seem to suggest
that something is amiss with conventional channels of
political representation. (see Table 1) Unlike the "crisis
of democracy" literature of a quarter-century ago, this
current research does not diagnose the problem as one of
excessive public demands on government, which create a
condition of "overload" that could ultimately undermine
democracy itself. (Crozier, Huntington, and Watanuki 1975;
1 This paper is part of a research project supported by a grant from the University Research Committee (URC) of Emory University. Warsaw's Center for the Study of Public Opinion (CBOS) carried out the survey fieldwork. Rafal Raciborski provided valuable research assistance.
2
O'Connor 1973) Instead, its authors speak of public
disaffection, cynicism and disengagement from civic life,
all of which, while perhaps not placing the future of
democracy as such in doubt, does have negative consequences
for the performance and effectiveness of democratic
institutions.
[TABLE 1 ABOUT HERE]
While much of this research has focused on Western
Europe and the United States, scholars working on the post-
communist region have also observed symptoms of public
disillusionment, declining trust in political institutions
and disengagement from politics. As Table 1 shows,
confidence in political parties is particularly lacking.
However, such findings are often analyzed in the broader
context of obstacles to democratic consolidation in these
new, and still arguably fragile, regimes. But while it is
true that in some post-communist cases declining evaluations
of political institutions and government performance go hand
in hand with doubts about democracy itself, in other cases
(primarily the Central European ones), the two kinds of
evaluations remain clearly separate in people's minds (see
Figure 1). In other words, whatever is going on in places
such as Poland in terms of public dissatisfaction with
politics, it is not necessarily a turn away from support for
3
democracy.2 Indeed, it may even have some similarities to
the malaise experienced by western democracies. It is this
latter possibility that will be explored in this paper.
[FIGURE 1 ABOUT HERE]
Theoretical Overview
Broadly speaking, two major explanatory frameworks have
been put forward to account for this state of affairs, one
focusing on identities and institutions, the other on values
and social networks. With regard to Western democracies,
the first school argues that the explanation lies first and
foremost in the inability of political parties and other
representative bodies to keep up with rapid social change.
It is not just that, as Lipset and Rokkan have famously
argued (and other scholars still do, albeit with various
modifications and caveats), West European party systems were
"frozen" into their present shape close to 100 years ago,
under social and economic circumstances almost
unrecognizably different from the ones that prevail today.
(Bartolini and Mair 1990; Kalyvas 1998; Lipset and Rokkan
1967) More importantly, the very issues that gave rise to
the party systems we know today -- issues related to, in
Dahrendorf's words, "basic civil and political rights and
continued...
2 As Figure 1 shows, in 2003 there was some decline in support for democracy in Poland. It remains to be seen, however, whether this is the beginning of a new trend, or simply a reaction to the political
4
the social conditions that lend substance to these rights" -
- have largely been settled or at least defused. (Dahrendorf
2000, 311) But instead of adapting to changing
circumstances, political parties have switched their focus
from the pursuit of increasingly fickle voters to the
pursuit of control over state resources. Competition among
parties has thus given way to collusion, leading to cozy
"cartel" arrangements that breed corruption and only
increase public dissatisfaction with and disengagement from
politics. (Katz and Peter 1995; Kitschelt 2000; Lewis 2002)
Furthermore, historically representative democracy has
been inextricably tied to the idea of the nation-state,
which itself is under pressure from numerous sources.
(Dahrendorf 2000) The problems of public dissatisfaction
and withdrawal from political life can therefore be seen as
symptoms of a broader crisis of democratic legitimacy
prompted by various contemporary challenges to conventional
ideas about nationhood. (Maier 1994) A viable democracy
requires a demos that sees itself as a collectivity on the
basis of affective bonds rooted in common culture (with
culture serving as "the bonds of solidarity that underlie
consent" (Schopflin 2000, 30)), considers itself represented
by national political institutions, and believes that these
institutions do, in fact, have the power to make the most
important decisions that shape people's lives. (Fuchs and
corruption scandals ("Rywin-gate") that dominated the headlines for most of the year.
5
Klingemann 2002; Lacroix 2002; Schopflin 1996) But with
national cultures being redefined by immigration, and with
the authority of democratic institutions increasingly
restricted by transnational forces (globalization, European
integration) the result is a sense of disorientation,
disempowerment and fear. In the words of one observer,
... the average voter has lost control of the political and economic forces that control his life; parties in power have become absorbed only in perpetuating their tenure; outside peoples and abstruse concepts have achieved too great an influence. Identity -- defined as the expectation of predictable relationships within a given spatial domain, familiar faces in familiar places -- must be defended. The remedy is to realign a meaningful territory and political voice (Maier 1994, 61)
In other words, the problem -- at least in Western
democracies -- may well lie in a growing mismatch between
the realm of politically relevant individual identities and
the realm of political representation. For some voters, the
solution lies in turning to populist, often xenophobic
parties and movements that speak to such concerns; for
others, the reaction is one of disaffection and withdrawal
from politics they no longer recognize as their own.
The second broad category of explanations, associated
most closely with the work of Robert Putnam, sees the source
of the problem in the decline of values of trust and
reciprocity prompted, in turn, by the weakening of
associational life in western democracies. Active
membership in community organizations -- bowling clubs,
choral societies and the like -- is said to generate trust
6
in fellow citizens, which leads to greater civic engagement
and forms the basis of "social capital" that is critical to
the efficient performance of democratic institutions.
(Putnam 2000; Putnam, Leonardi, and Nanetti 1993) This
theory has been criticized from various angles, most notably
for its inability to specify what kinds of associational
memberships should matter and which should not (the so-
called "Hell's Angels" problem), the likelihood of a self-
selection effect (joiners may be more trusting to begin
with), as well as an inability to specify the exact causal
mechanism that leads from trust to better institutional
performance. (Rose-Ackerman 2001; Rothstein 2002) Despite
these shortcomings, the social capital theory does offer a
persuasive "big picture" explanation for what ails
contemporary democracies.
How applicable are these two schools of thought to
explaining disaffection in the post-communist region? At
first glance, the "institutional obsolescence" hypothesis
would seem inappropriate, not just because post-communist
democracies are little more than a decade old, but also
because of the relative instability of their party systems
during this short period of time: instead of parties that
have been around for decades, East European voters have had
to contend with immature parties that often lasted no more
than a few years. In other words, the problem is not
organizations that have outlived their usefulness, but
organizations that do not last long enough to become useful.
7
Of course this difference does not preclude the
possibility that post-communist societies, just like their
western counterparts, face major problems of political
representation. The post-1989 voter alignments were formed
on the basis of identities that seemed the most relevant to
people during those early, tumultuous years. But whereas in
the 1990s one of the sharpest political cleavages was
between, as I had argued elsewhere, between anticommunism
and anti-anticommunism (Tworzecki 2002), this is less the
case today as the old regimes fade in people's memories.
Conversely, whereas at the beginning of the economic
transformation process people were often unsure of their
economic status and their interests, today the divisions
between the winners and losers have become quite visible and
well understood. Combine this with the fact that whereas
party organizations come and go, the cadre of politicians
remains relatively stable (regardless of organizational
reshuffles, the same faces tend to show up in leadership
positions), and one can plausibly claim that the major
source of voter dissatisfaction in post-communist
democracies has to do with a kind of mismatch between supply
and demand for political representation. (Bielasiak 1997;
Ilonszki 1998)
In other words, one possibility to be explored in this
paper is that the manner in which post-communist political
systems are set up to articulate demands, aggregate
interests, provide representation and serve as legitimate
8
decision-making mechanisms, is out of sync with how the
voters conceptualize the political realm and how they
understand their own place in it. If people do not see
mainstream actors as relevant to the way they think about
and experience politics, the end result may well be
disenchantment and withdrawal, or, perhaps, the channeling
of political activity into certain limited patterns, such as
protests and demonstrations. (Ekiert and Kubik 1999)
The alternative explanation to be explored in this
paper, focusing on the sphere of values and shared patterns
of thinking, is not a simple test of the social capital
theory under post-communist realities. In the east, the
problem extends well beyond the fact that communism, by
clamping down on civil society and eradicating most
independent organizational activity, undermined the values
of trust and reciprocity. First of all, the concepts of
nationhood and citizenship developed in the east under very
different circumstances from those in the west. In the
east, where the history was largely one of rule by foreign
powers, states did not create nations; instead, national
consciousness emerged in parallel with or in opposition to
state structures that were perceived as something alien,
imposed from the outside, and designed to serve the
interests of outsiders. The communist regimes were
similarly regarded as alien impositions, and as such did not
generate feelings of shared civic pride and responsibility
for a common good.
9
As to civil society, its virtual destruction under
communism resulted in the emergence of what has been
described as a "sociological vacuum" between the level of
family and the level of nation. Consequently, people in
communist Eastern Europe came to conceptualize politics in
rather simplistic "us vs. them" terms: the "nation" (defined
ethnically, since civic nationalism was not possible for
reasons described above) against the "regime," both
perceived in undifferentiated, monolithic terms. This type
of thinking led to the belief that politics was a great
moral struggle in which specific interests and goals did not
have to be identified because they were obvious to all
right-thinking people. (Marody 1990; Matynia 2001)
This basic pattern continued into the early post-
communist era because the habits and attitudes and
orientations developed under communism could not be expected
to change overnight. The state -- even though it was now a
democratic and sovereign state -- continued to be perceived
as something remote, abstract, distinct from "society";
something on which you could make demands without sharing in
the responsibility of making tough choices. In the same
vein, the networks of civil society were slow to emerge, and
when they did, the new political parties, pressure groups,
business and civic associations were often viewed with
suspicion by the wider society as little more than cliques
or, worse, "mafias" out to exploit the common people.
10
It can be argued, therefore, that one of the basic
aliments of the post-communist condition is not just the
ongoing influence of the mental legacies of communism,
but a wider syndrome of what Piotr Sztompka has described as
"civilizational incompetence." (Sztompka 2000) Sztompka's
theory is complex and multi-faceted, but at its core lies
the claim that post-communist publics may have difficulties
in three major areas: first, the ability to participate in
public deliberation, which requires open-mindedness,
tolerance, respect for opponents and rejection of absolutist
modes of thinking; second, acceptance of pluralism, in the
sense of acknowledging that society is made up of a number
of different and quite often conflicting interests -- in
other words, rejection of the myth of society as an integral
whole; and third, an ethic of responsibility, both in the
personal sense of self-reliance, strong work ethnic,
entrepreneurship and so forth, and in the wider political
sense of understanding that democratic governance requires
an active and involved citizenry -- in other words, a
rejection of the old "us vs. them" mentality in favor of co-
responsibility for public life.
To sum up, the alternative hypothesis is that
disenchantment with politics in post-communist democracies
is not due to shortcomings of party systems or
representative institutions in general, but is the result of
the voters' intellectual unpreparedness for participation in
democratic politics.
11
The Data
The results presented here are derived from a survey
prepared by the present author and administered in November
2003 on a national, random sample of 1000 Polish
respondents. All interviews were conducted in-person by
staff of the Center for the Study of Public Opinion (CBOS).
For the dependent side of our analysis, the survey asked a
battery of questions, loosely modeled on a design used in a
recent British study of citizenship3, about participation in
a variety of civic activities ranging from voting to signing
a petition to taking part in a demonstration. The results,
presented in Table 2, are striking for how low most of the
figures are, especially if we bear in mind that the question
asked about participating in each activity at least once
since 1989. Indeed, a quick comparison with British data
(which asked about participation during the previous 12
months; see Table 2) suggests that civic disengagement may
be a far greater problem in the East than in the West.
[TABLE 2 ABOUT HERE]
3 The British Citizen Audit. Pattie, Charles, Patrick Seyd and Paul Whiteley. 2002. Citizenship and Civic Engagement: Attitudes and Behavior. Paper read at The Political Studies Association Annual Meeting, University of Aberdeen, April 5-7, Seyd, Patrick and Paul Whiteley. 2002. Is Britain Still a Civic Culture? Paper read at The Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Boston, August 29-September 1.
12
Because the Polish figures were so low, we decided to
reduce the large number of activities shown in Table 2 into
a smaller number of more generic types of participatory
behavior. To this end, the responses were subjected to
principal components analysis, the results of which are
shown in Table 3. Five dimensions of participation were
identified, accounting for 15%, 12%, 11%, 10% and 7% of the
variance, respectively. The first dimension is clearly
about political contacting (the media, politicians, state
institutions), both to share own views and to seek solutions
to specific problems. The second dimension is more
difficult to interpret, but it appears to be first and
foremost about what the literature sometimes calls
"consumer" or even "checkbook" participation: donating
money, buying or boycotting products on political grounds,
signing a petition, volunteering -- activities that for the
most part do not depend on sustained involvement with
political organizations. This is in sharp contrast to the
third dimension, which is precisely about organizational
membership and involvement, especially with political
parties during election campaigns. The fourth dimension
captures protest-type activities and the fifth one is about
voting.4 Factor scores were then computed to estimate each
continued...
4 The survey contained both a vote intention question and questions about participation in past elections (presidential, parliamentary and local). But whereas the intention question ("would you vote if an election were held next Sunday"), asked at the beginning of the interview, produced results in line with recent turnout figures, questions about past turnout, asked toward the end, were inflated by about 20-22 percentage points. It is possible that by the end of the
13
respondent's position on each of the five dimensions. These
scores will be used as dependent variables in the analysis
that follows.
[TABLE 3 ABOUT HERE]
On the independent side of the equation, the
civilizational incompetence hypothesis will be tested by
means of a battery of questions designed to tap into
Sztompka's realms of discourse, pluralism and
responsibility. As shown in Table 4, the questions were
asked in the form of ten 7-point scales anchored at each end
by statements expressing opposing viewpoints, such as "If I
had to choose, I’d rather be governed well than participate
in governing" versus "If I had to choose, I’d rather
participate in governing than be governed well" (respondents
were shown a card with a graphical representation of the
scale and asked to indicate their position on it). Three
index variables (Discursive, Pluralism, Responsibility) were
then created by adding the responses in each category
together.
continued...
interview some respondents -- who had just given detailed answers on a variety of political issues -- were reluctant to admit that they did not bother to vote. In other words, the interview process itself heightened their awareness of certain norms. Bishop, George F., Robert Oldendick and Alfred Tuchfarber. 1984. What Must My Interest in Politics Be If I Just Told You 'I Don't Know'? Public Opinion Quarterly 48:210-19. Rather than re-weigh the sample (and effectively reduce the N to about 600) we decided to use the vote intention question only. We did, however, run
14
[TABLE 4 ABOUT HERE]
Histograms of the three indices show fairly normal
distributions, with only the Pluralism index slightly skewed
in the negative (i.e. "non-pluralist") direction (see Figure
2). Do these results give prima facie support to Sztompka's
hypothesis, or do they place it in doubt? Answering this
question is a classic case of deciding whether to focus on a
glass as half full or half empty. On the one hand, the
majority of Polish respondents do not espouse the kinds of
values and attitudes that would arguably make it difficult
for them to participate in democratic, pluralistic politics.
On the other hand, the majority does not hold values that
would make this task especially easy, and the fact that so
many respondents place themselves in the middle of the
scales is somewhat disappointing. The question remains, of
course, to what extent do these value patterns correlate
with participatory behavior.
[FIGURE 2 ABOUT HERE]
For testing the alternative hypothesis, having to do
with deficiencies of representative institutions, the survey
also employed several different questionnaire items,
including the fairly straightforward "Do you feel that there
the principal components analysis both with and without past vote questions and generated essentially the same results.
15
are political parties in Poland that represent people like
you?" As Table 5 shows, fewer than 22% of respondents gave
a positive reply, 65% a negative one, and the remaining 13%
chose "Don't know." At first glance, therefore, it seems
that there may be something to the idea that political
parties are failing in their function of providing political
representation. But this question also presented an
opportunity: by asking about "people like you," it prompted
the respondents to think how they see themselves in relation
to the political system. In order to take advantage of this
opportunity, we followed up with: "When we talk about
'interests of people like you', what kind of people do you
have in mind?"
[TABLE 5 ABOUT HERE]
This was an open-ended question, so a wide range of replies
was possible: everything from generational identifications
(e.g. "the elderly") to regional, religious and ideological
ones. In the event, however, the bulk of responses
mentioned socio-economic characteristics: some people
referred to social stratification categories (e.g. "working
class" or "intelligentsia"), others mentioned their
occupation or profession, others still referred to their
employment status (e.g. "wage earner," "part-time employee"
or "unemployed"). Taken together, these kinds of criteria
accounted for close to 60% of the total. Age or
16
generational identifications were a distant second, at
roughly 14%, with character traits ("honest," "hardworking")
in third place, at 7%. It is particularly revealing that
this breakdown is almost the same for those who feel
represented by a party and those who do not. In other
words, it does not appear that political parties are failing
to make themselves relevant to the kinds of self-
identifications that matter the most to ordinary citizens.
Extrapolating from this a little bit, one could even argue
that these findings place in doubt the hypothesis that
Poland's party system is in trouble because it is built on
the wrong (irrelevant) kinds of social cleavages.5
Another way of measuring the representativeness of a
country's party system is to present the respondents with a
series of questions about specific social groups -- women,
the elderly, farmers, business owners -- and for each group
ask whether there exists a political party that represents
this group well (if so, which one), or whether no party
represents the group in question. For the purposes of this
project, a battery of questions about 13 different social
groups was used to create a "Party system non-
representativeness index." It was constructed as follows:
5 Exploring the reasons for the Polish public's low regard for political parties demands a separate paper. However, preliminary evidence from this project suggests that much of the disenchantment or even anger directed at politicians (especially members of parliament) is due to a sense that they violate the trust placed in them as people's representatives. For example, when asked "How would you describe most politicians?" 77% of respondents chose "Dishonest," 9% "Honest", 14% "Difficult to say." In answers to a similar question 78% chose "Untrustworthy," 8% "Trustworthy" and 14% "Difficult to say."
17
for each respondent, all the "no party represents this
group" answers were added together, so that someone who
feels that no groups are represented at all would earn the
score of 13, and someone who feels that all groups are
represented would earn the score of zero.6
[TABLE 6 ABOUT HERE]
In Table 6 the two competing explanations of civic
disengagement are put to the test. The dependent variable is
a composite measure of political participation, created by
summing up each respondent's scores in the five dimensions
identified earlier (Contacting, Consumer participation,
Party involvement, Protest and Voting). The model is
estimated in stages, in order to first assess the strength
of the key independent variables, and later to see how they
fare when various controls are introduced. The first model
shows that signs on all the coefficients point in the
expected direction, and all the coefficients except for the
"Discursive Index" are statistically significant. The
second model introduces several additional items generally
believed to influence participation: interest in politics,
generalized trust (i.e. whether "most people" can be
trusted) and a sense of efficacy. The third model adds
continued...
6 The groups asked about were: 1. workers, 2. farmers, 3. pensioners, 4. civil servants, 5. the intelligentsia, 6. youth, 7. women, 8. the unemployed, 9. religious believers, 10. political elites, 11. ordinary
18
further controls for a range of socio-economic
characteristics, in order to make sure that the observed
effects are not due to education, age, occupation and so
forth. But even with all the controls in place, at least
one of the value indexes (Responsibility) remains
significant, as does the "Non-representativeness of the
Party System" index.7
Conclusion
The analysis presented in this paper shows that in the
case of Poland both the basic values held by respondents and
their assessments of the representativeness of political
institutions play a role in explaining the extent of
participatory activity. In other words, some support was
found for both hypotheses. The findings indicate that the
phenomenon of civic disengagement on the part of post-
communist publics is a complex and multifaceted one. It is
clear that fundamental beliefs about how a "good society"
ought to look like (how it should be structured, how
decisions ought to be made), as well as about relations
between individuals and the state (what individuals ought to
be prepared to give of themselves, what they can expect to
receive in return) do play a role in explaining political
people, 12. small business owners, 13.managers/owners of large companies. 7 Table 7 extends this analysis by looking separately at each of the five areas of participatory activity. However, the results should be interpreted with caution given that relatively few respondents indicated involvement in areas other than voting.
19
behavior. These findings are very much in line with
previous research on post-communist societies, which
demonstrated that commitment to democratic values may be
strong in a simple declarative sense ("democracy is better
than any other form of government"), but is in fact quite
shallow when it comes to the acceptance of pluralism,
respect for political opponents, tolerance of different
viewpoints and so forth. Perhaps predictably, the ethic of
responsibility was found to be a consistently significant
predictor of civic engagement.
As regards assessments of political parties, this paper
found that overwhelmingly negative opinions about their
ability to provide representation are not due to a mismatch
between the realm of individual political identifications
and the realm of partisan competition. On the contrary,
Polish respondents see themselves primarily in socio-
economic terms and the party system is structured by an
economic cleavage, with parties at one end appealing to
voters who have done reasonably well, and those on the other
side appealing to the bitterly disappointed "losers" of the
transformation process. What appears to be the case instead
is that political parties and their parliamentary caucuses
are judged primarily on their performance as "trustees" of
people's interests -- and the judgment here is crushingly
negative.
In the final analysis, however, both explanations
account for only a limited amount of variance in
20
participation data (about 13%; see Table 6, Model 1). Those
old staples of participation research -- interest in
politics and a feeling of efficacy -- as well as the more
recent, Putnam-inspired "generalized trust" indicator, carry
a considerable amount of additional explanatory power. So
indeed do certain socio-economic characteristics that would
not surprise any students of political participation in the
U.S. or Western Europe: gender, education, occupation, and
even residence in a large city. The post-communist
environment does have its unique characteristics, but it is
not some kind of terra incognita. The forces behind civic
engagement in these new democracies, however complex, in the
end turn out to be quite familiar.
21
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Politics in East-Central Europe. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Tables and Figures
Table 1a: Trust in Political Institutions, EU Candidate Countries, 2003 Institution Mean Std.
Dev. Bulga ria
Czech Rep.
Estonia Hunga ry
Latvia Lithua nia
Poland Roma nia
Slova kia
Slove nia
Television 71.5 8.7 73 70 81 58 81 84 60 71 71 66Radio 67.7 9.0 54 69 77 53 74 79 65 65 75 66Army 54.5 11.1 62 38 61 48 49 47 59 75 62 44Written press 53.5 11.4 39 61 48 33 62 72 54 56 59 51EU 49.6 9.8 64 43 38 56 45 47 40 67 51 45UN 49.6 7.1 55 47 46 56 48 38 54 62 47 43Churches 43.8 15.3 34 28 32 40 42 45 51 82 48 36Charities 42.9 8.7 27 46 44 45 46 38 59 37 50 37Police 39.8 8.0 48 33 51 48 39 27 42 43 31 36Civil service 33.4 8.6 22 30 51 40 31 39 24 34 36 27Government 32.5 11.4 28 30 50 38 46 31 14 38 17 33Legal system 31.7 9.8 23 30 46 48 37 24 24 35 19 31NGOs 31.3 7.0 19 33 25 38 30 24 42 33 33 36Big companies
26.7 6.2 16 25 36 21 33 27 23 32 23 31
Parliament 25.8 8.4 16 20 36 36 30 23 13 33 20 31Trade unions 25.4 7.0 10 30 32 18 23 26 25 27 33 30Political parties
12.9 3.5 9 13 14 15 12 10 8 17 12 19
Note: entries are % of positive responses to "I would like to ask you a question about how much trust you have in certain institutions. For each of the following institutions, please tell me if you tend to trust it or tend not to trust it?"; Source: Candidate Countries Eurobarometer 2003.4 (Oct-Nov 2003).
Table 1b: Trust in Political Institutions, EU 15, 2003 Institution Mean Std.
Dev Bel
gium Den mark
Germa ny
Gree ce
Spain France Ire land
Italy Luxem bourg
Nether lands
Austria Portu gal
Fin land
Swe den
UK
EU 43.8 13.1 45 40 35 65 57 37 53 57 52 38 36 61 33 28 20Government 43.3 11.1 40 68 31 54 41 33 34 33 53 41 43 46 52 53 27Parliament 38.9 10.6 38 53 24 47 42 30 31 27 60 37 40 39 49 42 24Political Parties
19.9 7.2 22 39 12 20 23 12 22 12 26 26 19 17 19 18 12
Note: Entries are % of positive responses to "I would like to ask you a question about how much trust you have in certain institutions. For each of the following institutions, please tell me if you tend to trust it or tend not to trust it?"; Source: Eurobarometer 60 (Oct-Nov 2003).
Figure 1: Poland - Satisfaction with Democracy, 1992-2003
(CBOS data)
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
1992 1993 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003
Perc
ent
Democracy better than any other form of gov't Satisfied with way democracy functions
Table 2: Involvement of Participatory Activities Activity Poland UK Would vote if parliamentary election were held next Sunday 49.9 Worked as volunteer with others to solve some problem 18.7 Encouraged friends to vote 18.3 Signed petition 17.6 41 Took part in political rally 11.0 5 Contacted politician to present own views 10.2 13 Avoided buying products for political or moral reasons 9.7 30 Joined trade union 7.6 Contacted state institution about some problem/issue 7.5 Gave money to political party or civic organization 7.5 28 Contacted the media 6.2 Took part in demonstration 5.7 4 Took part in strike 5.4 2 Used personal contact with politician/official to solve problem 5.1 Joined political party or civic organization (other than trade union) 4.4 Volunteered for party or civic organization during campaign 4.3 Displayed button/sticker during campaign 3.5 21 Took part in illegal protest action 1.9 1 Note: Entries for Poland are % of respondents who engaged in given activity at least once since 1989; entries for UK are % of respondents who have done so during past year; not all questions were asked in both surveys or were comparable, hence the gaps in the UK column.
Table 3: Dimensions of Political Engagement 1 Contacting 2 Consumer
Partic. 3 Active
Partisanship4 Protest 5 Voting
Used personal contact with politician/official to solve problem
0.712
Contacted state institution about some problem/issue
0.701
Contacted politician to present own views 0.686 Contacted media 0.568 Avoided buying products for political or moral reasons
0.714
Signed petition 0.673 Gave money to party or civic organization 0.610 0.372 Worked as volunteer with others to solve some problem
0.468 0.473
Took part in political rally 0.429 0.425 0.365 Became member of party or civic organization 0.710 Displayed button/sticker during campaign 0.668 Volunteered for party or civic organization during campaign
0.462 0.524
Took part in illegal protest action 0.744 Took part in strike 0.738 Took part in demonstration 0.651 Would vote if election were held next Sunday 0.926Encouraged friends to vote 0.421 0.448 Principal components extraction, Varimax rotation. A scree plot was used to determine the number of principal components to be extracted. Entries less than abs(.3) were removed for emphasis.
Table 4: Construction of "Civilizational Incompetence" indices
1. Discourse Index There exist clear and unalterable laws that allow us to tell good from evil. These laws apply to everybody and to every situation.
Clear and unalterable laws that allow us to tell good from evil do not exist. What is good and what is bad depends entirely on a given situation.
Society should not tolerate political views that differ significantly from the views of the majority.
Every person should have the right to express his political views, even if they differ significantly from the views of most people.
With so many different ideas, theories, and political views, it's difficult to know who is right.
Despite there being so many different ideas, theories, and political views, it is easy to tell demagogues from rational and level-headed people.
2. Pluralism Index It is obvious to all reasonable people what should be changed and fixed in Poland in order to solve our problems.
It is not obvious at all what should be done to solve the problems of our country. Reasonable people can have different views on this matter.
Disputes among political parties are one of the causes of our problems.
Disputes among political parties are something normal and indispensable for the proper functioning of democracy
The majority of people in Poland want the same things; that is why politicians should care above all about the interests of the whole society.
People in Poland have different, often contrary, interests; that is why politicians should care above all about the interests of those who voted for them.
3. Responsibility Index A good society is a society which gives the lives of its citizens order and discipline
A good society is one in which citizens have as many opportunities as possible to shape their own lives.
If I had to choose, I’d rather be governed well than participate in governing.
If I had to choose, I’d rather participate in governing than be governed well.
It does not matter whether citizens show interest in politics or not because politics is a matter for politicians.
Citizens should show interest in politics because everybody is responsible for what happens in Poland.
The state should provide for the needs of all its citizens. People themselves should provide for their needs.
Figure 2: Distribution of Responses along "Civilizational (in)Competence" indices
Discursive index
10.07.55.02.50.0-2.5-5.0-7.5-10.0
500
400
300
200
100
0
Std. Dev = 2.99
Mean = .8N = 1000.00
Pluralism index
10.07.55.02.50.0-2.5-5.0-7.5-10.0
300
200
100
0
Std. Dev = 3.43
Mean = -2.3N = 1000.00
Responsibility index
12.510.0
7.55.0
2.50.0
-2.5-5.0
-7.5-10.0
-12.5
400
300
200
100
0
Std. Dev = 3.93 Mean = .2
N = 1000.00
Table 5 : Political Representation and Self-Identification
Feels Represented? Self-Identification Category
No Yes
Column Percent
Age 13.9% 13.4% 13.8%
Alienation .8% 2.8% 1.2%
Character Trait 7.0% 5.6% 6.7%
Education 1.3% .9% 1.2%
Employment Status 14.4% 15.3% 14.6%
Family Status 1.5% .5% 1.3%
Happiness 1.5% 1.9% 1.6%
Health 1.8% 1.4%
Life Chances/achievements .5% 1.4% .7%
Occupation 14.3% 15.3% 14.5%
Place of Residence 1.9% 2.3% 2.0%
Political Goal .1% 1.4% .4%
Political Identification .3% .9% .4%
Religion .3% .2%
Socio-economic status 27.5% 26.9% 27.3%
Sex .3% 1.4% .5%
Nation .6% 1.4% .8%
Don’t know/NA 12.0% 8.8% 11.3%
Total 100.0% 100.0% 100.0%
Row Percent 64.8% 21.6%
Note: Entries in "Feel Represented" column represent responses to question "Are there political parties in Poland that represent people like you?" The self-identification categories were derived from answers to a follow-up, open ended question "When we talk about 'interests of people like you', what kind of people do you have in mind?"
Table 6: Regression Analysis of Political Engagement
Model 1 Model 2 Model 3Discursive Index .05 .04 .00Pluralism Index .09 ** .07 * .05Responsibility Index .15 ** .09 ** .06 * Feels represented .10 ** .06 .05Non-representativeness of party system Index -.24 ** -.18 ** -.16 ** Interested in politics .24 ** .19 ** Generalized trust dummy .09 ** .07 ** Efficacy index .15 ** .11 ** Under 30 yrs -.06Over 60 yrs -.04Highly Religious .05Not Religious .02Primary Education -.04Post-Secondary Education .15 ** Unemployed -.06Professional/Managerial .07 * Unskilled Laborer -.04Female -.11 ** Farm Household .01Large City .06 *
Adjusted R square .13 .22 .27
Note: Dependent: combined political engagement index. Entries are standardized regression coefficients; ** - sig. at 0.01 level, * - sig. at 0.05 level.
Table 7: Regression Analysis of Political Engagement, by Area of Activity
Contacting Consumer Partisan Protest VotingDiscursive Index .06 .01 -.06 -.03 .02Pluralism Index -.06 * .01 .03 .08 ** .04Responsibility Index .06 * -.03 .03 -.01 .09 **Feels represented -.02 -.07 * .04 .01 .16 **Non-repres. of party system Index -.01 -.11 ** -.05 .03 -.23 **Interest in politics .15 ** .09 ** .14 ** .01 .04Generalized trust dummy .04 .05 .05 .01 .01Efficacy index .14 ** .07 * .02 -.01 .03Under 30 yrs -.08 ** .03 -.03 -.05 .00Over 60 yrs .06 -.07 * .02 -.17 ** .06Highly Religious .00 .03 -.04 .04 .10 **Not Religious .07 * -.01 .03 .02 -.06Primary Education -.07 * -.06 -.04 .08 * .01Post-Secondary Education .11 ** .16 ** .06 -.04 .03Unemployed .00 -.02 .01 -.09 ** -.02Professional/Managerial .09 ** .06 .02 .02 -.03Unskilled Laborer .02 -.01 .05 -.10 ** -.05Female -.06 .03 -.04 -.14 ** -.02Farm Household .05 -.03 .00 .05 -.04Large City .01 .14 ** -.04 .02 .00
Adjusted R square .14 .14 .05 .06 .14
Note: Entries are standardized regression coefficients; ** - sig. at 0.01 level, * - sig. at 0.05 level.