POLITICAL IDENTITIES IN THE REPUBLIC OF MACEDONIA
POLITICAL IDENTITIES IN THE REPUBLIC OF MACEDONIA

Summary/Abstract: Political identities in one society are undoubtedly related to political parties, the social cleavages that these parties are structured on, i.e. their ideological (political) profiling. Can we talk about political identities when depolitization, departization and floating voters have become the most significant characteristic of contemporary political life? If these tendencies can be recognized in established democracies, do they and how do they pour into or are recognized in the so-called postcommunist societies, one of which is Republic of Macedonia itself? The additional challenge for the research team was to examine this issue in the specific political environment in Macedonia, which is represented by strong political confrontations on the political scene, confrontations that oftentimes interfered with normal political dialogue. The main goal of the research project was to determine the different political identities in the Republic of Macedonia, to see on which social cleavages they are differentiated on and where are their positions on an imagined ideological spectrum. Or to put it differently, whether the strictly distinguished political confrontations represent one dichotomous, i.e. segmented political structure, soundly founded on the social cleavages of the Macedonian society. We’ve tried to do that by: analysis of the social affiliation of citizens, analysis of their party affiliation and analysis of a certain number of political attitudes and values that they’ve accepted. We started from the basic assumption that if these three elements are related then we can say that the party-political divisions are founded on social divisions and that the high political polarization in Macedonia is based on the existence of differentiated social profiles of citizens, who belong to different and strongly confronted cultures/poles.

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