Explaining public support for the law on the use of languages in Macedonia

Abstract

This article aims to explain citizens’ support for the Law on the Use of Languages (LUL) through their demographic characteristics, political participation, party affiliation and ethnic belonging. We base this article on an empirical ordered logistic regression models using an original database of 669 Macedonian respondents. We compare the support of Macedonian public for the LUL with the support for the general idea of promotion of the use of the languages of the non-majority ethnic communities in Macedonia. We argue that both the support for promotion of minority languages in Macedonia, as well as the support for this concrete Law depends mainly on citizens’ ethnicity and party affiliation. We find statistically significant opposition for the LUL among the ethnic Macedonians, the (Macedonian / mainstream) opposition parties, the participants in the so called ‘For a Shared Macedonia’ initiative, and those whose mother tongue is a minority language other than the Albanian.