Original scientific paper
SOCIAL CONSERVATISM AND PARTY PREFERENCES: THE CASE OF SERBIA
Zlatko Šram
; Croatian Academic Society, Subotica, Serbia
Abstract
The aim of this article is to discribe the distribution of social conservatism in the Serbian population and the association of its latent dimensions with sociodemographic characteristics and party preferences.
The research was carried out using the sample of 1,172 full aged participants from the territory of Republic of Serbia (without
Kosovo and Metohia). Internal reliability of the measure of social
conservatism (Cronbach alfa=0.89) allows for the standardisation of
the scale. About one third of the examinees express a high degree of
social conservatism. A factor analysis yields five latent dimensions
explaining 67.59% of the variance. The factors were labelled authoritarianism, anti-European sentiment, collectivism, traditionalism, and patriarchal syndrome. Statistically significant but low correlations were found among age and education and dimensions of conservatism.
Results of canonical discriminative analysis prove a significant influence of social conservatism and could interpret about 41% of the total variance of party preferences. Discriminative functions derived on the basis of party preferences show the existence of the three latent political options among the Serbian voters. The first option is labelled the radical-conservative, characterised by anti- European sentiment and authoritarian tendencies. The second is labelled the democratic-liberal that makes the opposite pole of the first option. The third is labelled the traditionalistic option accompanied by pro-European orientation.
Keywords
conservatism; authoritarianism; anti-European sentiment; traditionalism; party preferences; political culture; sociostructural variables; Serbia
Hrčak ID:
20782
URI
Publication date:
18.12.2007.
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