engleski

Institutional Trust and Democracy Satisfaction in Croatia: Partisanship- versus Outcome-Driven Evaluations

The article investigates the determinants of trust in institutions and satisfaction with democracy in Croatia. The article starts with the proposition that effective governance requires efficient accountability mechanisms, whereby political actors and institutions, as well as democracy performance, are evaluated on the basis of the outcomes they deliver to citizens. However, in highly polarised societies, evaluations of political institutions and regime performance are more likely to depend on how well these express the preferences and identities of citizens rather than on the governance outcomes they deliver. Thus, in strongly polarised societies, where politics is seen as a zero-sum game, evaluations of political institutions and democracy performance are likely to be dependent on partisan identification and political identity representation. Evaluations of the democratic regime and trust in institutions in Croatia as a highly polarised society are more likely to be shaped by partisan identification and representation than by the outcomes delivered. The article proceeds to test these propositions with survey data collected for the 2011, 2015, and 2016 elections. The article tests these propositions using multiple regression analysis testing the impact of partisanship in comparison with a range of other factors measuring political attitudes, political efficacy, economic evaluations, social trust, political knowledge, and socioeconomic position. The analysis finds that the impact of partisanship, and variables found to be related to partisanship, is strong and significant, both for political institutions, such as trust in parliament and government, and non-political institutions, such as trust in judiciary and public administration. Similar findings are also established for evaluations of democracy. The analysis also establishes that the impact of partisanship is more consistently significant than the impact of other variables, and that it is strongest for evaluations of democracy, followed by trust in government and parliament, and finally trust in public administration and the judiciary.

trust in institutions ; democracy satisfaction ; political support ; polarization

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