Summary: The research is conducted on the basis of several global and European researches made by renowned experts in the field of political culture, like the research project “Civil Culture” of the notable scientists from Standford University – Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba. This study has three parts: public opinion survey on national level in order to gather relevant statistical data on the political culture of the general public, then focus-groups with the citizens for reviewing the gathered data from the survey, but for the sake of quality, also individual interviews and one expert focus-group, where the role of the experts is giving suggestions and comments on the results from the survey, with the aim of acquiring a qualitative basis for analysis.
The report portraits the political culture in Macedonia, by focusing the following topics;
support for a certain system/ regime;
support for the political system contrasted with the support for violence for political aims;
political socialization and values (responsibility, entrepreneurship, gender, family);
social capital and association capacity;
social clientelism/ patrimonialism, legalistic culture/ civil activism;
religion against secularism;
views on ethnical questions;
support and solidarity for the marginalized groups.
The main conclusions from this research are that the political culture is thus structured in Macedonia, that it lacks personal responsibility, deriving from the deeply rooted social clientelism and patrimonialism, so typical for the Macedonian society.
The majority of the respondents support the democracy (72,6%), but there is still a tendency of believing that the intellectuals should make the largest part of the decisions for the country. For more information, read the publication.