Religion and Authoritarian Attitudes in Today’s Balkans

During the long 20th-century rule of Josip Broz Tito, Yugoslavians became accustomed to life under an authoritarian leader. A textbook benevolent dictator, Tito nevertheless suppressed dissent and exerted firm control over society and the economy. His death left a vacuum that contributed to the violent breakup of Yugoslavia, and the resulting Balkan republics came to embrace authoritarian leaders of their own. Today Serbia is ruled by the authoritarian Aleksandar Vučić, though he faces intense protests. The government of Bosnia and Herzegovina is rather decentralized, but powerful authoritarian currents are present especially in Republika Srpska. Croatia is a democracy and a member of the European Union, though its government struggles with corruption. In short, the specific circumstances vary cross-nationally, but there is plenty of cultural and historical rationale favoring authoritarianism across Former Yugoslavia. Even though levels of religious participation are not high in the Balkans, national identity is closely tied to religious affiliation in the region. Religious differences did not cause the wars of the 1990s, but they helped fuel them. Even today religion is a point of great contention in the Balkans. For example, Serbia’s claim to Kosovo is in part driven by the presence of significant Serbian Orthodox religious sites in Kosovo. We have conducted an original survey in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Croatia concerning religion and political attitudes. We included batteries of questions assessing sympathy toward authoritarian rule that enable us to assess the degree to which religious differences help explain authoritarian attitudes in the Balkans today. We included a mix of straightforward questions (e.g., agreement with the statement “Under some circumstances, an authoritarian government and strong leadership may be preferable to democratic ones”) and more subtle ones (e.g., agreement with “Our leaders know what is best for us” and agreement with “It is necessary to use force against people who are a threat to authority”). We will analyze the extent to which religious affiliation and practice might explain sympathy for authoritarianism in this critical region of Europe.