Structure of ideology: evidence from Serbia

Abstract

The paper contributes to the research on the structure of socio-political attitudes through an analysis of survey data from Serbia. The main problem tackles two research traditions: one dealing with the existence of stable political attitudes and ideological orientations among the mass public, and the other dealing with the dimensionality of political attitudes or ideology. The analysis revealed a complex hierarchical organization of political attitudes. First-order factor analysis resulted in 15 attitudinal dimensions including nationalism, militarism, and traditionalism. The second-order factors resulted in 4 general ideological dimensions, labeled as the socialist conservatism, right-wing conservatism, social order and hierarchy orientation, and post-materialist orientation. The results are discussed with reference to the literature on hierarchical organization of political attitudes. (author's abstract)