We kindly inform you that, as long as the subject affiliation of our 300.000+ articles is in progress, you might get unsufficient or no results on your third level or second level search. In this case, please broaden your search criteria.
The article analyzes the basic methodological principles and tactics, and Theoretical concept of cognitive approach to the study of electoral behavior, which is best obruntovuye position that the nature and direction of the electoral process in countries which are transformed, mainly depends on the personal qualities of its participants and their ability to assess tourists' objective political reality.
More...
The author identifies the main stages in the formation of behaviorist approach, and now dominates research among foreign political motivation, especially electoral. Analysis of Freud's achievements, D. Watson, K.-H. Jung, R. Lane, G. Lassaulla, O. Chizhevsky, J. Habermas and others. researchers.
More...
Here`ve been reviewed the relations between client and executor in the sphere of policy, main streams of professional activity of a political consultant, technologies and mechanisms of political consulting application, peculiarities of electoral campaigns with usage of the potential of political consulting.
More...
Electoral participation is the pilar of democracy. The declining trend of voting on the elections in a large number of countries has prompted a number of authors to search for causality in the paradox which implies the consolidation of institutional (formal) democracy and equal political rights on the one hand, and the disappearance of social equality on the other. As political and economic equality are in mutual interconnection, the question is next: can democracy work without the essential equality of its constituent elements? Does takeover of global power into the hands of economic giants means that democracy will remain a normative basis without its contents? Is our future age of capitalism in a democratic shell, without the factual participation of citizens in politics, even at the minimum level, at the level of voting in elections? A basic indicator that testifi es of a decline in confi dence that national governments will pursue a policy in accordance with willpower is the low level of political and electoral participation in most Western countries, especially in those which are less economically developed. In this paper, we investigate the relationship between the consolidation of capitalism and the decline in electoral participation on the example of Serbia. On the trajectory of the theory of the incongruity of the successive development of capitalism and democracy, we analyzed the data on the basic form of political participation, and in this way we have looked at the reflections of global trends on the countries of the world’s semi-periphery. The results of the irradiation indicate that Serbia fits well into the this theoretical-hypothetical framework, however, because the electoral participation is still at a relatively high level, we should be cautious with the final conclusions.
More...
The article outlines the theoretical and methodological bases of research of political attitudes as a standard, circuit, simplified, emotionally charged images of political and social facilities. The author focuses on the individual as a unit micro-oriented political knowledge.
More...
The paper explores the dynamics of parliamentary campaigns in Europe. Results obtained in the fields of pharmacology and psychology indicate that the emotional tension among the electorate rises as the election day draws closer. Therefore, parties should adjust their campaigning strategies accordingly. I am attempting to verify whether these dynamics influence the proportion between interest and value-related appeals within party communication. Using newly collected data from the Comparative Campaign Dynamics Project, I demonstrate that there is no general tendency towards the increasing saliency of either of the dimensions. However, the relationship under scrutiny becomes strong and robust after the moderating effects of inequality have been accounted for. Most strikingly, as the election draws closer, parties tend to focus more attention on economic issues only if the country experiences high or rising rates of inequality.
More...
Fear of crime is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon consisting of cognitive, affective, and behavioral dimensions. This concept is defined as a negative emotional reaction of dread or anxiety to crime or the symbols associated with crime (Ferraro & LaGrange, 1987). In recent years, fear of crime has been recognized as an important social problem. Conceptualizing, measuring, and analyzing this concept, therefore, have received increased attention in interdisciplinary research. Research on fear of crime has addressed four specific theoretical approaches, namely the vulnerability, victimization, disorder, and social integration models. The aim of the current work was to examine the existing literature on fear of crime and make some suggestions for further research. First, we provided a short review of the definition, measurement, and determinants of fear of crime. Next, we made some suggestions for future research.
More...
The aim of the study was to investigate the stereotype contents toward woman subgroups and relate these contents to social-structural predictors and sexism. In this respect, 119 university students were recruited for the first study and they were asked to rate 10 woman subgroups in terms of their competence and warmth, and their status and competitiveness. Participants' level of sexism was also measured using ambivalent sexism scale. The findings of the first study revealed that competence and warmth were the two fundamental dimensions of the stereotype contents, these stereotypes could be depicted in three clusters, the content of many women stereotypes were mixed, and status was linked to competence and competition was related to lack of warmth. Besides replicating the main hypotheses of stereotype content model, the findings supported its two basic assumptions, i.e. negative stereotypes are not necessary to reveal stereotype clusters and personal stereotypes are more open to motivational concerns. Finally, sexism was related only with competition, but not with stereotype contents. Since, high competent / high warm cluster was not observed in the first study, the number of woman subgroups was increased in the second study. Thus, 86 university students were asked to rate 18 women subgroups on the scales used in the first study. Results replicated the findings of the first study, supporting the main hypothesis of stereotype content model. The findings of the studies were discussed in the light of relevant literature.
More...
The aim of this article is to present the studies that illustrate collective guilt- a common phenomenon observed in the context of intergroup relations as a consequence of harming another group and stems from sharing group membership with the harm-doers. First of all, collective guilt is defined. In this description some psychological processes used as alternatives for collective guilt are mentioned and differences of collective guilt from personel guilt and collective shame are presented. Then, whether collective guilt can be experienced on the world stage is discussed and four social psychological factors that are asserted by researchers to generate collective guilt are elaborated. These factors are self categorization as a member of a group that has harmed another group, accepting one’s group to be responsible for the harm done to another group, perceiving the damaging behaviours done by ingroup as illegitimate and the cost of making reperations in terms of ingroup. Findings related to collective guilt experienced depending on mentioned four main factors and consequences of feeling collective guilt are shared. Finally, a general conclusion and future directions are presented.
More...
We employed the Brief Implicit Association Test (a recently developed short version of IAT) to measure implicit political attitudes toward four political parties running for Serbian parliament. To test its criterion validity, we measured voting intention and actual voting behavior. In addition, we introduced political involvement as a potential moderator of the BIAT’s predictive and incremental validity. The BIAT demonstrated good internal and predictive validity, but lacked incremental validity over self-report measures. Predictive power of the BIAT was moderated by political involvement – the BIAT scores were stronger predictors of voting intention and behavior among voters highly involved in politics.
More...
Individual differences in nationalist attitudes have been approached from a variety of perspectives. In the sociological tradition, nationalist attitudes are seen as specific for certain socio-demographic categories, typically those indicative of socio-economic and cultural deprivation. Psychological literature typically places stronger emphasis on dispositional constructs. Researchers studying the structure of social attitudes emphasize the importance of general ideological orientations. This paper examines to what extent the aforementioned approaches contribute to understanding nationalist attitudes in Serbia. The research is based on a random sample of adult residents of Belgrade. According to hierarchical regression analysis results, the socio-demographic variables explain about 19 percent of variance in nationalist attitudes. The model improves significantly when the dispositional variables are added (explaining 44 percent of variance in total), as well as the ideological variables (68 percent of variance in total). The results showed that ideological variables are proximal factors that mediate the influence of psychological dispositions and social factors. Authoritarianism proved to be the key dispositional variable. The paper concludes that a more complex model is superior in comparison with simpler models, limited by disciplinary conventions.
More...
It is considered that political knowledge is one of the most prominent features of democratic citizenship, which makes its analysis especially relevant in a democratising society. This paper explores the predictors and correlates of youth political knowledge in Serbia. Political knowledge was measured by 12 multiple-choice questions pertaining to three areas: everyday politics, the rules of political game and foreign politics. Research participants were 788 fourth-grade students from 25 Belgrade secondary schools. The results show that the level of youth political knowledge is generally low and unevenly distributed among students. Its main predictors are interest in politics, academic achievement, gender and father’s interest in politics. Other predictors that are usually regarded as very important (e.g. socioeconomic status, civic education) proved to be non-significant. Although political knowledge is positively correlated with political tolerance, political activism and diffuse political support, the coefficients are very low. The concluding part discusses possible causes of the obtained results.
More...
Our research aims to find out if there is a difference between women voters and abstinents in Bosnia and Herzegovina, considering certain socio-psychological characteristics. For the purpose of this research we used Likert scales to measure: tolerance to other ideas, nationalism, ethical superiority, attitude towards leader, conformism, liberalism/conservativism and locus of control. This research was conducted in May 2007 on the sample of 547 women voters and 214 women abstinents. Results show that socio-demographic characteristics differ potential women voters from women abstinents. Women who are more active (educated, employed or members of some political party) in their everyday life are more likely to go to the elections and vote. Discriminative analysis showed that women voters and abstinents significantly differed at four of total seven variables. The difference between women voters and abstinents is in ethical superiority, acceptance of nationalism, tolerance to other ideas and attitude towards leader. Therefore it seems that women abstinents have greater democratic potential than women voters.
More...
Tolerance of political opponents is one of the basic preconditions of a democratic society. Empirical research, however, typically reveals low levels of tolerance even in societies with long democratic tradition. This paper presents a comparative study of the sources of individual differences in the degree of political tolerance in Europe, with special reference to Serbia. According to Sullivan et al.'s theory (Sullivan et al. 1979, 53-55), socio-demographic factors are decisive for the choice of a group towards which the intolerance will be directed, while psychological factors are more important for the level of intolerance. Implications of this theory are examined using data collected in about 30 European countries. The research is based on World Values Survey data (WVS). The WVS data include the so-called ‘least-liked’ operationalization of political intolerance. The findings reveal significant impact of psychological factors on the target group selection, and not only on the degree of intolerance, contrary to Sullivan et al.’s theory.
More...
The main objective of this paper is establishing structure of acceptance (of preferences) 18 personal and 18 social goals. Sample has been consisted of 243 final year high school students. There are seven extracted factors in domain of the personal goals that were named: selfishness fulfillment of duties, strive for power and popularity, competence and independence, affiliation and love, material achievement, hedonistic orientation and conscientious and healthy life. There are another seven factor in domain of the social goals: normal state, tradition and territorial integrity, transition, and also socio-democratic, traditional socialist, democratic and ethatistic orientation. There are significant but not so high linear correlations between two lists. It justifies idea to examine those two lists separately. The most acceptable, among personal goals, are friends, love and independence, and the least are popularity, obedience and social power. The biggest importance among social goals was given to employment and living standard, and the least to one-party state and finishing of privatization.
More...
The paper present the results of the survey that was designed to examine attitudes towards reconciliation, traumatic experience, as well as some basic values, attitudes and stereotypes in two cities of the former Yugoslavia where the nationalities that were in conflict live together. The survey was conducted on 400 subjects in Vukovar (inhabited by Serbs and Croats) and 400 subjects in Prijedor (Serbs and Bosniaks). The results show that the level of traumatic experience, as a single variable, has no correlation with the readiness for reconciliation. On the other hand, in General Linear Model, best predictors of the readiness for reconciliation were attitudes and values represented by the factors “Non-Ethnocentric” and Non-Nationalistic/ Xenophobic”. Also, having friends among the “opposing” nationality and having positive experiences with the members of opposing national groups is highly related to a readiness for reconciliation. Finally, a belief in war crime trials, combined with a readiness to admit the war crimes among its own nationality, was a significant predictor of readiness for reconciliation.
More...
This paper deals with political attitudes of voters in the Vojvodina region and some correlates of these attitudes. Sample was 302 people, all voters of either six of the parties currently in the Serbian parliament (DSS, SRS, SPS, G17+, DS or SPO), or three of the other major parties in Vojvodina *LSV, PSS or SVM). Instruments used were: political attitude scale, social dominance orientation scale (SDO), and a questionnaire dealing with several important issues, such as support for the integration of Serbia into European Union. Factor analysis extracted six factors at the political attitudes scale-antimilitarism, support for the better minority status in the society, support for the different social issues, openness to the world, liberalism and convervativism. All differences concerning the voters’ preferences were statistically significant (p < .01). Also, differences at the SDO scale also proved to be significant, as well as correlations between SDO scale and all of the political attitudes factors (correlation varied from .17 to .39). All of these correlations were negative, except for the SDO-conservativism scale. Another difference has been found at the perceived importance of different group identification. Groups were- person`s ethnic group, Vojvodina, Serbia and Europe. Most important identification was with the Europe and the least one with the Serbia. Finally, more than 77% of the people in the sample said that they would vote “yes” at the Serbia joining the EU referendum.
More...
The subject of this paper is the comparison of the results of the survey of public opinion before and after the change of the regime in Serbia as of 5th October 2000. Both researches (May 2000 and June 2001) were field researches, reaching for households, using random sample of the citizens of Serbia, without Kosovo. The obtained results show that the change of regime in Serbia was followed with the change in the sense of decreased expression of authoritarianism and ethnocentrism after one year of democratic rule. However, the question which still remains is - whether the registered change is the result of social-political circumstances, and whether it is the reflection of essential changes of value systems, or just different experience of social desirability of particular attitudes.
More...
The basic ideological conflict of the 20th century was between capitalism and socialism. This conflict occurred between the supporters of the capitalist ideology and those opposing the capitalist ideology. In the 21st century, this ideological clash is witnessed to be evolved. The basic ideological conflict of the 21st century is between globalists and capitalists. The conflict between globalists and capitalists is developing between different factions of capitalist ideology, not between oppositionists of capitalist ideology and their opponents. These developments need to be evaluated in the context of this new ideological conflict. In this work, the development of the international system is evaluated within the framework of different ideologies, and then the analysis of change in the ideological power struggle is being conducted in the 21st century. Finally, the conflict of ideologies and the process of unification are explained.
More...
In recent years, many theoretical and empirical analyses about the changing regimes of Central and Eastern Europe have been written, pointing out the authoritarian tendencies and radicalization in the region. Hungary is a significant case in the changing landscape of Central and Eastern Europe. The right-wing government rules the country with incontestable force, despising and disrespecting the norms of liberal democracies. Although the general impression is that the government has such a strong grip on power that resisting it is futile, in fact, it only enjoys only the support of 30 per cent of Hungarian citizens. Thus, it would be reasonable to expect the opposition to be able to effectively mobilize against the regime. In reality, no political opponent seems to stand a chance of defeating it. In order to explain why this is so, we focus on the way Orbán constantly creates images of ‘the enemy’ that keep alive an atmosphere of vigilance that blocks the efforts of critical actors to efficiently mobilize citizens. Since the political system in Hungary is highly centralized, the prime-minister’s speeches epitomize the logic and ideology of the regime. Our aim is to understand the mechanism through which the dominant political actors frame the enemy in a system of images, thereby creating an environment where critical actors are stripped of the resources needed to mobilize against them.
More...
