Determinants of young people's readiness for elite-challenging activities in Croatia

ABSTRACT

This article aims to identify the determinants of youth readiness to engage in elite-challenging activities in Croatia. It argues that this form of civic engagement is influenced by an emancipatory set of values, on the one hand, and bonding and bridging social capital, on the other. The results show that both types of social capital have positive and significant influence on civic engagement of youth, whilst the set of emancipatory values has a limited role in this respect as well as socio-demographic characteristics. The analysis uses data from a survey conducted in 2013 on a representative sample of 2000 young people in Croatia (15–29 years old).

KEYWORDS:

• Elite-challenging activities
• emancipatory value set
• social capital
• youth
• Croatia

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Anja Gvozdanović is a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Social Research in Zagreb where she is affiliated to Center for Youth and Gender Studies. Her main research interests are political culture of youth and social capital.

Notes

1. Although political party membership is generally low in Europe, many studies show that that is particularly evident in Eastern compared to Western European countries (Van Biezen, Mair, and Poguntke 2012; Gherghina 2014).

2. Although support for liberalism and democratic governance is expected to rise with the establishment of democracy, the trends are found to be the opposite. The latter can be explained by widespread corruption and general erosion of trust in the capacity of the “government with statism and populist features to respond to the economic crisis (Sekulić 2014).

3. These research findings are supported by the example of the Arab Spring in 2011. The demonstrations were not completely spontaneous, as it was presented by the media – despite the efforts of the authorities to wipe out citizens' civic activities; the mass movement of youth was in fact formed and designed in smaller cells of youth groups (Flanagan et al. 2011).

4. Re-traditionalisation of Croatian society, which slowed down the process of establishing democratic political culture, also contributed to the indifferent and inadequate role of formal political and educational structures with respect to young people. Namely, throughout the period of democratisation, the institutions have not ensured proper civic or political education necessary for active participation in democratic society (Šalaj 2015). That is particularly evident in recent research of Croatian high school students' general political literacy, which included knowledge of fundamental political terms, constitutional and political structure and political awareness (Bagić 2011). The main findings suggest that most students have low political knowledge with a very poor understanding of fundamental political terms that encompass political processes and concepts that represent the basis for political participation. The worryingly low level of general political knowledge amongst young people is largely a product of a Croatian educational system that fails or rejects to incorporate civic or political education in elementary and high school programmes (Bagić 2011). Therefore, support for civic engagement in terms of youth acquiring political knowledge and skills is largely dependent on their socialisation outside the educational system – in primary (family and peers) and secondary groups (civil society organisations).

5. These data, compared with those from EU-27 (Flash Eurobarometer 375, 2013), point to a somewhat lower level of structural social capital amongst Croatian youth. Namely, on average, EU-27 56% of young people (15–29 years of age) are members of at least one organisation in other EU countries (EU-27) – 56%. According to the same source, less than half of respondents from Croatia – 41% are members of at least one organisation (Flash Eurobarometer 375, 2013).

6. The scale of religious self-identification begins with 1 indicating religiousness and 6 indicating anti-religious attitude.