Political Culture among the Youth in Serbia: Interest, Participation, Satisfaction and Trust

Abstract

The main objective of this paper has been to empirically examine the four aspects of political culture of the youth in Serbia by using the statistical analysis based on the data from the eleventh round of European Social Survey. The new theoretical explanation of political culture is introduced, followed by its new classification with four distinct types – passive, cynical, protest and participatory political culture. We propose a general hypothesis that the dominant type of political culture among the youth in Serbia is cynical. Four supporting hypotheses related to the different aspects of political culture are established: political interest, political participation, satisfaction and trust in institutions. We expected that sociodemographic factors and ideological positioning would influence these components. The results indicate that the interest in politics and overall political participation among the majority of youth is low. Although some forms of participation have relatively high percentages, most of the respondents participated in only one political activity. Next, overall satisfaction and trust in institutions are below the neutral midpoint, indicating a dissatisfaction with the state of the country, particularly regarding political institutions, and a general distrust in these institutions. In addition, we observe that certain sociodemographic variables, such as education, emerge as significant in specific instances. However, those results are inconsistent and the available evidence is insufficient to support definitive conclusions about the presence of another form of political culture in certain sociodemographic categories. Based on these results, we argue that in the analysed period the prevailing type of political culture among the youth in Serbia was cynical.