Politička kompetencija i konsolidacija kapitalizma u Srbiji: analiza (ne)davanja odgovora na stavove o poželjnom politčkom i ekonomskom poretku

Abstract

The main aim of this paper is to analyse non-responses (“do not know“ and „no answer“ categories) on a wider set of empirical state- ments measuring different attitudes of Serbia’s citizens (towards mar- ket economy, neoliberal economic policies, democracy, ethnic relations, gender roles, morality issues and respecting the law). Following the post-politics (and/or post-democracy) thesis, we assumed that the share of those who have given any answer to the analysed questions will be higher in the case of attitudes related to the issues embedded in the res- pondents’ immediate experiences or to those issues defined as legitimate within the public sphere (such as perceptions of gender roles or ethnic relations) than in the case of attitudes related to abstract concepts of the functioning of political and/or economic systems. The results of the analysis confirmed the hypothesis: the highest share of non-responses was recorded for questions measuring attitudes on democracy and pre- ferred type of economic regulation. The second hypothesis has been formulated following Pierre Bourdieu’s research on the social conditions of political dispositions and class distribution of competences. His research focused on the structurally determined possibility of articulating political opinion by using legitimate political language, based on the self-recognized ability and the feeling of being competent to express this opinion publicly. Taking these insights as starting points, we assumed that probability of giving non-responses would be higher for people with lower social background, those who have lesser degrees of education, and/or who have been systematically excluded from political processes based on their place of residence (residents of vil- lages or small towns) or gender (women). Although a descriptive analy- sis confirmed the second hypothesis, more precise, regression models showed that education (the possession of cultural capital) – and not the class position – is by far the strongest and the most consistent predictor of non-responses when controlling all other factors.