Freedom House gives Croatia a democracy score of 4.25, where 7 represents the highest quality of democratic process and 1 the lowest. This is not the lowest score in the EU (with Poland scoring 4.54, and Hungary 3.57) but still leaves significant room for improvement. Indeed, this is reflected in the attitude of the Croatian public towards democracy.
In our survey we see that democratic dissatisfaction is particularly concentrated among those dissatisfied with the performance of their representatives, and who feel unrepresented by political parties. With several ongoing corruption cases involving government ministers, this is perhaps unsurprising.
The impact of this dissatisfaction and loss of faith can be seen in our survey too. Among the countries in the survey, Croatia has the highest proportion of people believing voting will not change anything. 47% of those who believe their MP is doing a bad job at representing their constituency also believe that there is no point voting because it does not change anything. They are therefore essentially stuck in a cycle of being unhappy with their representative. Even among those who have more positive assessments of their MP, 36% believe that their vote has little impact.
Their beliefs may be well-founded. Freedom House observed that in Croatia elections are free, but uneven electoral districts need reform to ensure voter equality- something which Croatia has begun to tackle by recently passing a new law addressing disparities.
Corruption is still a significant issue, and the Croatian public are dissatisfied with not only how democracy is working, but how valuable their participation is. These sentiments are worrying at any time – but not least during a year which has been dubbed by the Croatian press as the ‘super election year’, with European, parliamentary and presidential elections all taking place in 2024.
By Dr Stephanie Luke, researcher, UK in a Changing Europe.
You can find the data referenced in this blog here.
Ipsos conducted a survey between 21-30 September 2023 using the KnowledgePanel, Ipsos’ probability-based online panel. The survey was conducted in Croatia, France, Italy, Poland, Sweden and the UK with adults aged 16+, and in the US with adults aged 18+. Data was weighted to adjust for unequal probabilities of selection and calibration weights on key demographics in each country.
Source link : https://ukandeu.ac.uk/dissatisfaction-with-democracy-in-croatia/
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Publish date : 2024-04-12 07:00:00
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