engleski

Formation of youth’s political trust in Southeast Europe: a cross-national analysis

Many studies emphasize the importance of research of youth's political trust for its socio-political implications on emergence of participative political culture and social capital (Sztompka 1999 ; Torney-Purta et al. 2004). In addition, research of political trust is relevant because many studies show that young people tend to be detached from formal and conventional politics and political institutions (Kestilä-Kekkonen, 2009 ; Cammaerts et al., 2013 ; Sloam, 2014). Moreover, study of political trust is particularly relevant in the context of challenging socio-political and economic factors in Southeast Europe, which define the pace and direction of democratic institutions’ development, as well as their overall stability. In this respect, some researchers even argue that the process of democratic backsliding is taking place in this part of Europe (Bieber, 2018 ; Čepo, 2020 ; Kapidžić, 2020 ; Lavrič and Bieber, 2021). This presentation tackles the question of formation of political trust among youth ; specifically it aims to detect the measure in which perceived quality of institutional performance on one hand and individual socio- political orientations on the other, determine the emergence of youth's political trust accross ten countries of Southeast Europe. The comparative analysis is based on the data from an international youth research project, FES Youth Studies Southeast Europe 2018/2019 that was carried out in 2018. National surveys were conducted simultaneously in ten countries in Southeast Europe: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia and Slovenia. More than 10000 respondents aged 14–29 participated in the survey. Political trust as a dependent variable in multiple regression analysis is operationalized as composite scale that consists of four variables - trust in government, parliament, local authorities and political parties. Conceptually, the foundations of youth’s political trust are: 1) (perceived) quality of institutional performance (Sztomka, 1999 ; Mishler and Rose, 2001) and 2) individual socio-political orientations (Inglehart and Welzel, 1997 ; Sztompka, 1999 ; Kestilä-Kekkonen and Söderlund, 2015). These two sets of factors were, along with sociodemographic variables, used as independent variables in the model. Perceived institutional performance factor consists of young people’s perceived status of economy, their satisfaction with democracy, external efficacy and perception of social incivility. It is expected that perceived status of economy, satisfaction with democracy and external efficacy are significant and positively related to political trust and that perception of social incivility has opposite effect on political trust. The results show that perceived status of economy, satisfaction with democracy and external efficacy significantly and positively contribute to variation of political trust and that perception of social incivility is not significantly related to political trust. Individual socio-political orientation factor consists of youth’s interest in politics, their postmaterialist value orientation and societal optimism and it is expected that interest in politics and societal optimism are significantly and positively related to political trust while postmaterialist value orientation is negatively related to the dependent variable. Results show that interest in politics and societal optimism are significant and positive factors of political trust across countries however, postmaterialist orientation in most countries has no effect on political trust. Overall, it can be stated that although in all countries the variation of youth’s political trust is significantly determined by both sets of factors (individual socio-political orientation and perceived institutional performance factor) in various degrees and in expected direction, the evaluative factor of perceived institutional performance consistently represents a better predictor of youth’s political trust.

youth, political trust, Southeast Europe, cross-national youth study

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