engleski

Ideology, Clientelism and Media in Croatia: Two Sides of the Same Coin?

Clientelism has established itself as a defining feature of not just the Croatian model of capitalism, but of models of capitalism present in the majority of post-socialist countries in the Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe. On the other hand, the aggregate effects of clientelism measured by the number of media articles that contain terms related to clientelism have yet not appeared in the literature. By applying a VAR analysis to this large and unexplored dataset of monthly media news, over the 10/2001 – 12/2018 period, preliminary results prove that during the rightwing government the number of media news that contain terms related to clientelism has a negative effect on the rate of employment growth. Thus, value added is distributed among fewer agents which is a defining characteristic of the clientelistic model of capitalism. On the other side, preliminary estimation by a probit model, confirms that the number of media news containing terms related to clientelism does not have a negative effect on re-election of incumbents in the observed time period. Our study revealed that voters in Croatia are stubborn when it comes to their political choices. They cast their votes to the incumbents who clearly work against their economic interest. Croatia represents an example of a country locked in a sub-optimal political economy equilibrium that explains trends present in the most of the Central, Eastern and Southeastern European countries.

political economy ; clientelism ; ideology ; media ; business cycles ; re-election

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