Autor: Karolina Gemza
In July, the Polish Political Science Yearbook published an article “Liberals Among Us”, which examines the structure and determinants of liberal attitudes in Poland. The article is based on research supported by the Economic Freedom Foundation.
Why do some people support liberal ideas, while others are their fierce opponents? Radoslaw Marzecki, Marcin Chmielowski and Kris Kaleta, authors of the article “Liberals Among Us”, attempted to describe in detail the determinants and structure of the beliefs and views of Polish society. The article is based on research supported financially by the Economic Freedom Foundation.
It turns out that a consistent and strong liberal (libertarian) orientation is not widespread in Polish society. In Poland, people with near libertarian views represent a relatively small number. Liberal views are held by 19.4% of Polish society, while only 4.3% are libertarian. Poles are also slightly more liberal in a social sense and less liberal in an economic sense.
The results showed that more liberal views tend to be held by younger, better educated and less religious people, as well as those with higher incomes. The most important factors influencing these views are age, certain political preferences and religious practices.
The article shows that more substantial and more consistent liberal (libertarian) orientations are accompanied by younger people who prefer voting for the Confederation, Civic Coalition, and Poland 2050 and less intensely religious people.
The survey used an original questionnaire consisting of 31 quantitative scales, which were used to construct the Liberalism/Libertarianism Index (LLI) and to categorize respondents into “Polish Liber-als” and “Polish Libertarians.” The detailed hypotheses were verified based on an analysis of data collected in a nationwide telephone survey (CATI) conducted on a representative sample of 1,000 adult Polish citizens.
You can read the article in English here>>
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