Politics Of World Views

The book analyzes the organization of political attitudes in Serbia, and the role of ideological dimensions in understanding political behavior. The analysis combines detailed analysis of survey data with qualitative analysis of Serbian politics between 1990 and 2002. The results of structural analyses show that Serbian mass political attitudes vary along fifteen latent dimensions, including dimensions such as nationalism, militarism, economic liberalism, and environmentalism. They converge toward more general ideological dimensions such as the "regime divide" dimension, or the right-wing conservatism. Both more specific and abstract dimensions predict political preferences. This work offers an insight into the structure of political and ideological space in a deeply polarized democratizing country. It also offers an interpretation of Serbian politics in terms of a cleavage of world-views. The book is relevant for students and scholars interested in post-communist politics, and Serbia in particular. It should be equally useful to those interested in more general problems of the structure of political attitudes and their role in political behavior.