Original scientific paper
SOCIO-POLITICAL EXPECTATIONS OF YOUNG PEOPLE IN CROATIA WITHIN THE MODEL OF HISTORICAL CONSCIOUSNESS
Nebojša Blanuša
orcid.org/0000-0002-9430-7446
; Faculty of Political Science, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
The author looks into the structure and the explanation of the socio-economic expectations of young people regarding Croatia's future within the theoretical framework and the operational model of historical consciousness as well as the findings of the 1995 international study of 27 European countries and the repeated study in Croatia in 2000. The findings of those analyses show that (1) the structure of such expectations may be explained away by a universal factor of sociopolitical pessimistic/optimistic expectations of Croatia's future. This structure is in line with the expectations of young people from other European states concerning the future of their respective countries. Unlike other European states, both generations of young people in Croatia in 1995 belong to the group with optimistic assessments. The same conclusion regarding the differences applies to the 2000 samples, the only exception being the pupils of Serbian extraction from the Danube region; this group represents the most pessimistic group at both levels of comparison; (2) “The perceptions of the present” can account for between 8 and 20% of the variant of the variable of the expectations of young people. There is a significant decrease in the predictive power of the ethnic-religious value orientation, while the influence of attributing material differences to injustice in the society is constant. Concerning inter-ethnic differences in the Danube region it seems that the opposite expectations are partly due to the identical ideological ethnocentric pattern, indicative of the perpetuation of the attitudes generated during the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia. “The notions of the past” can explain between 12 and 13% of the variant of the criterion variable. In most samples, the best single predictor is the critical attitude towards democracy as a historical product, with the exception of the pupils of Serbian extraction in the Danube region; together with other predictors this indicates that the expectations about Croatia’s future of these pupils are not based on the perception of the democratic processes. Also, they reflect a lower level of confidence in the democratic institutions of the Republic of Croatia.
Keywords
historical consciousness; notion of the past; perception of the present; expectations for the future; young people; Croatia; inter-ethnic differences
Hrčak ID:
24301
URI
Publication date:
13.8.2002.
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