Interests or Something Else? Economic Attitudes in Croatia and their Foundation in Social Structure

Abstract

Existing empirical research has demonstrated that Croatian politics is dominated by political cleavages based on attitudes toward history and sociocultural values and by the absence of divisions between voters based on economic and distributive issues. However, the absence of political competition based on redistributive issues does not mean that a structure of attitudes related to economic issues does not exist and that these attitudes are not grounded in individuals’ positions within the social structure. Using survey data collected following the parliamentary elections of 2011, 2015 and 2016 on representative probabilistic national samples of 1,000 participants, the authors explored the structure of attitudes toward distributive issues in Croatia. Using the regression analysis and data collected in 2015 on a representative probabilistic national sample of 1,260 respondents in the second step, the authors examined the associations between economic attitudes and socioeconomic position. The analyses indicated a clear and relatively stable structure of attitudes towards economic issues consisting of two dimensions, one encompassing economic protectionism and the other views about the role of markets as an economic organising principle. However, a very weak association between elements of the social structure and attitudes towards distributive issues was found.