Civic Virtues and Political Participation: The Role of Normative and Evaluative Attitudes on Electoral Turnout in Serbia and Montenegro

Normatively, electoral turnout is considered crucial for establishing legitimacy of representative democratic systems. Yet, low and/or decreasing turnout characterizes many contemporary democracies. The problem seems to be even more pronounced in the former socialist countries of Eastern Europe. Among the reasons for such situation in the region, literature often emphasizes the inadequacy of democratic political culture, i.e., the insufficiently developed civic awareness of the importance of political participation, including electoral turnout. From a more evaluative angle, dissatisfaction with the system performance in general, and negative evaluation of government performance are also seen as contributing to citizen apathy, and therefore electoral abstention. This paper examines the relative influence of these two groups of factors onto electoral participation in Serbia and Montenegro. Indicators of the normative aspect of political participation include variables such as general political interest, interest in electoral campaign, evaluation of democracy as a political system, and political efficacy. The evaluative factors include the past government performance, satisfaction with the functioning of democracy, as well as prospective and retrospective economic evaluations. The analysis is based on the 2012 and 2017 Serbian election studies, and on a comparable 2012 and 2015 Montenegrin election studies. Each of these public opinion surveys was conducted after the respective parliamentary and/or presidential elections. The results indicate that both normative and evaluative factors are important for understanding electoral turnout in Serbia and Montenegro. However, normative attitudes proved to be more influential, thereby indicating the relevance of political culture for political participation in these Balkan countries.