Suchergebnisse

This paper tries to differentiate cultural trauma from political taboo, as well as to show the manifestations of both in Croatia. By capturing the recent tendencies of political tabooization and de-tabooization of the main national identity signifiers, it is possible to discern several clear lines of collective relationships towards the country's cultural traumas. First, the cultural victim trauma related to the Homeland War is sanctified and frozen. Furthermore, narratives built from that period have been increasingly applied to the Second World War, in order to represent the quisling Independent State of Croatia in a more positive light. Such attempts of making an ideological continuity are a clear falsification of history. Second, the cultural perpetrator trauma from both periods is denied and silenced. There have been several attempts to question both forms of cultural trauma in the fields of arts and civil society, but they are of limited reach and influence, especially because the mainstream media, political and religious actors promote the relativization and revision of the past. At the end of the paper, the author gives several pieces of advice for public action in order to change this mainstream condition of silencing and the tabooization of troubling traces from the past.

This paper explores the main cleavages of the Croatian body politic, their interrelation and consequences for political behavior and collective identities through the two nationally representative surveys conducted in 2007 and 2012 in time of parliamentary elections. The results show significant relationship between recent political cleavages, expressed through conspiracy theories, and the one from the Second World War. Analyzed conspiratorial interpretations, as well as historical legacy of military affiliation of ancestors in the Second World War are substantial predictors of party preferences. But, predictive power of these interpretations varies due to the level and issues of party competition in these two elections. Furthermore, different type conspiracy theories promote different political values, goals and identities and express wider political antagonism between nationalism and democratization. Also, analyzed conspiracy theories are highly correlated to the perception of "simulated democracy", which is the common problem of newly established democracies, as well as the symptom of more global political crisis.

According to results of a survey in 2007, this study analyses conspiratorial beliefs in Croatia and their correlates. Conspiratorial beliefs consist of politically controversial events and processes in recent Croatian history. Factorial analysis has revealed two factors: Government conspiracies during the 90's and Conspiracies of internal and external enemies. Based on the ideas of Sloterdijk and Žižek, we can name these Factors – Kynical and Cynical conspiracy theories. The first ones are a cheeky and bold exposure of cynicism of the power elite: secret meetings with the enemy and trade in territory during the war, political crimes, corruption, etc. The second ones are the back side of the public façade, obscene reactions to 'thefts of enjoyment' in the National Thing. Further analysis has revealed strong differences in beliefs in conspiracies between citizens of different ideological affiliation and different political legacy, and between voters of two main political parties, HDZ and SDP.* ; Sukladno rezultatima anketnog istraživanja iz 2007. godine, ova studija analizira konspirativno mišljenje u Hrvatskoj i njegove korelate. Konspirativno mišljenje odnosi se na politički kontroverzne događaje i procese iz nedavne hrvatske povijesti. Provedena faktorska analiza pokazala je postojanje dvaju faktora. Jedan se odnosi na zavjere vlasti u 90-ima, a drugi na zavjere unutarnjih i vanjskih neprijatelja. Na temelju Sloterdijkovih i Žižekovih razmatranja o cinizmu, ova dva faktora možemo nazvati kiničnim i ciničnim teorijama zavjera. Prvi je tip teorija zavjera drsko i odvažno raskrinkavanje cinizma elita moći – njihovih tajnih sastanaka s neprijateljem tijekom rata, političkog kriminala, korupcije itd. Drugi je tip naličje "javne fasade", opscene reakcije na "kradljivce užitka" nacionalne Stvari, u koje takva ideologija ubraja civilno društvo, oporbu, EU, MMF, Velike sile itd

This article examines attitudes of the Croatian final grade high school students towards the burdensome legacy of the Second World War and Croatian war for independence (1991–1995). Following the theoretical framework of memory studies, and implementing the concept of postmemory, we have developed a structural model connecting ideology and legacy of the wars. In addition, we have further modelled postmemory and its reliance on democratic values, namely political attitudes, trust in state institutions and political knowledge. Individualised predictors offered more nuanced analysis away from the binary understanding of pro-collaborationist and anti-fascist divide, in line with wider European trends and political culture(s).

This paper reaffirms the methodological potentials of Lacanian psychoanalysis for the theories of nationalism. From the Lacanian perspective, national consciousness and self-determination are only possible in the fantasmatic frame­work through the (mis)recognition and retroactive construction. National imagination is the form of transference, necessary for performing the nation through invented traditions and rituals. However, beyond symbolization and imaginary (mis)recognition, there is always something that resists closure, linked with the subjects' desire and organized around the lack of the subjects' full enjoyment. Taking together all these aspects, we build an analytical framework for the study of nationalism, which comprises a quadruple system of identifications by referring to the concepts of Ideal-Ego, Ego-Ideal, Super-Ego and specular Other, and illustrate it through the example of the AKP's Turkish nationalism.

The authors are presenting and interpreting the data on Croatian citizens' attitudes on regulating hate speech, contentious symbols and public commemoration. The data was collected in two nation-wide surveys conducted in 2016 and 2018. The data is analyzed within a normative framework of militant democracy versus anti-democratic tendencies. In the conclusion the authors, invoking the available data, advocate a minimal model of regulating public speech by focusing on public utterances of direct and symbolic hate speech.

In the last thirty years uneasiness among scholars and political actors has been growing larger as more citizens demonstrate cynical attitudes. These citizens feel that politicians are immoral and incompetent, have less faith in democracy, and show lower levels of political participation. However, Peter Sloterdijk points out that the dominant view of cynicism is simplified. He divides cynical reason into two separate ways of thinking: cynicism and kynicism. The main difference between them is in individual's reaction to the cleavage between public ideological mask and individual's idea of social reality. Cynics persist in keeping the ideological mask on and have an "enlightened false consciousness", while kynics highlight this cleavage, oppose the dominant ideology and point out misuses of political power. This research was conducted with the goal of creating cynicism and kynicism scales. Their validity was tested for two samples - a smaller sample of students and later on the representative sample of Croatian citizens (N=1002). Also, connection of cynical and kynical thought with an array of relevant political attitudes and political behavior was tested. Results indicate that cynicism and kynicism are relatively separated and coherent types of political thought. Kynicism is primarily related to low trust in political institutions, but also to lower support of democracy. Specific combinations of these two types of thought have a highly negative potential for abandoning the democratic way of thinking. This work offers an empirical confirmation for Sloterdijk's model, and confirms usefulness of it in understanding political thought and behavior of Croatian citizens.

Abstract: In recent years, scholars have started to measure and explain populism at the micro-level, as an attitude that individuals hold about politics. Multiple scales have been proposed but, as the overview by Van Hauwaert et al. indicates, they all have limitations. Most do not capture a broad range of the phenomenon – being able to discriminate only among moderately populist and moderately not-populist individuals – and have little cross-cultural validity. Starting out with 145 items, we have used standard scale-development approaches from psychology to produce a short battery of six to nine indicators measuring populist attitudes, divided into three dimensions. The scale has conceptual breadth, and travels well across 18 samples collected in 14 different countries from Europe and the Americas.

Research suggests that belief in conspiracy theories (CT) stems from basic psychological mechanisms and is linked to other belief systems (e.g., religious beliefs). While previous research has extensively examined individual and contextual variables associated with CT beliefs, it has not yet investigated the role of culture. In the current research, we tested, based on a situated cultural cognition perspective, the extent to which culture predicts CT beliefs. Using Hofstede's model of cultural values, three nation‐level analyses of data from 25, 19, and 18 countries using different measures of CT beliefs (Study 1, N = 5323; Study 2a, N = 12,255; Study 2b, N = 30,994) revealed positive associations between masculinity, collectivism, and CT beliefs. A cross‐sectional study among U.S. citizens (Study 3, N = 350), using individual‐level measures of Hofstede's values, replicated these findings. A meta‐analysis of correlations across studies corroborated the presence of positive links between CT beliefs, collectivism, r = .31, 95% CI = [.15; .47], and masculinity, r = .39, 95% CI = [.18; .59]. Our results suggest that in addition to individual differences and contextual variables, cultural factors also play an important role in shaping CT beliefs.