The Vicious Circle

ABSTRACT

The reaction of citizens deeply disappointed with their government and its decisions differs from country to country, and in some cases, such as Latvia during the recent economic crisis, has been surprisingly passive. In this paper I argue that political passivity can be partly explained by psychological mechanisms triggered by constant under-performance and unresponsiveness of political authorities. Using International Social Survey Program 2006–2007 data, I construct a structural equation model which shows that government's performance can facilitate or hinder the development of civil society through its impact on (1) a sense of political efficacy, (2) political competence, and (3) interpersonal trust. Poor institutional performance and the following loss of trust in political authorities has a negative effect on people's perceptions of politics, of themselves and of each other, discouraging further engagement in all kinds of political activities. Considering the importance of civic participation for the quality of governance this creates a vicious circle which might not be easy to break. Finally, several theoretical perspectives are discussed that help to explain the formation and persistence of the vicious circle.

Key words:

• Latvia
• political efficacy
• vicious circle
• trust
• social capital

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions. I would also like to thank the AABS foundation for making possible my research visit to the University of Illinois at Chicago with the support of Mudītes I. Zīlītes Saltups scholarship, during which most of the paper was written. I am indebted to Martin Paldam, Natalia Letki, and my colleagues at the University of Latvia for inspiring my work and suggesting important improvements.

Notes

1. For many years Latvia has had very low levels of social expenditure (Eurostat 2011), and neither the EU accession nor the remarkable economic growth in 2004–2006 contributed significantly to the growth of the welfare budget (Toots and Bachmann 2010: 33).

2. The process of political transition in Latvia from historical perspective was profoundly analyzed in a book ‘Latvia in transition’ by Juris Dreifelds (1996) and ‘The challenge of change’ (Pabriks and Purs 2001).

3. Although at least as many studies have investigated and emphasize the opposite link - the effects of participation in organizations on political attitudes and orientations, and regard political efficacy, as a potential consequence (internal effect) of organizational involvement (Pateman 1975; Putnam 2002; Morales and Geurts 2007).

4. Most missing values were observed in questions about corruption: ‘Politicians involved in corruption: (10.1%) and ‘Public officials involved in corruption’ (11.2%). People might be hesitant to answer them while not being sure about it. Using data imputation was deemed unreasonable in this case, especially since the number of remaining cases is still high.

5. The government respondents describe is the same that held power at the time when the economic crisis began. Thus, the passivity can not be explained by a change in incumbents, that would make expressing anger less meaningful.

6. The questionnaire did not contain exact questions about the frequency of engagement in such activities, however these items can be considered an acceptable proxy. ISSP 1996 included questions about whether one has participated or would participate in unconventional activities, and their approval, and statistical analysis allows to conclude that they essentially measure the same dimension. In factor analysis approval of mobilized political actions and the expressed readiness to participate in them load on one dimension that explains 63% of the variation in the data. Crombach's alpha is .85, and Spearman's correlation coefficient .5.

7. The standardized coefficient linking institutional trust to internal efficacy is .38, plus there is small indirect effect that goes through external efficacy (.22×.12/100=.026) which makes a total effect of about .41.

8. According to Mihails Hazans calculations, from 2000 to 2010, 170,000–200,000 people – most of them below 35 years of age – have left Latvia for an other country. The emigration intensified in 2009–2010 due to the effects of the economic crisis: 80,000 left the country during this time alone (Hazans 2011: 76).

9. Matej Makarovič et al. (2007) on the basis of EVS data concluded that most post-communist countries, except for Czech Republic, Croatia, Slovakia and Slovenia, can be classified as ‘passive democracies’.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Inta Mieriņa

Dr Inta Mieriņa is an assistant professor at the Institute of Sociology, University of Warsaw, where she is a researcher in the ERC Starting Grant ‘Public Goods through Private Eyes: Exploring Citizens’ Attitudes towards Public Goods and the State in East-Central Europe'. She is also a researcher at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, University of Latvia. Her main research interests are related to post-communist democratization and the formation of political attitudes. Her recent publications explore the relations between the citizens and state in Central and Eastern Europe, as well as the sources of the weakness of civil society in post-communist countries.