Research theme: “Young people in Poland vs. clientelism and democratic values”
The objective of the research will be to analyse attitudes of young people in Poland in relation to clientelist practices. Understanding the attitudes of high-school students (last year of high school education) in this area will allow the researchers to answer the question concerning sociodemographic profile and attitudes of a part of the Polish society which can be described as sincere. This will be a chance to study people who will soon participate in elections for the first time in their lives.
The research will answer the following questions:
– does the level of satisfaction with functioning of democracy in Poland affect perception of clientelist practices among high-school students in Poland?
– does the level of education and knowledge of political processes and consequences of voting decisions affect attitude to clientelist practices?
– is attitude to clientelist practices correlated with a specific pattern of media consumption?
– does high level of social capital among young people translate to their attitude to clientelist practices?
The above questions imply four related hypotheses:
H1: People who are satisfied with functioning of democracy are less prone to approve of clientelist practices;
H2: People of broader knowledge on political processes are less prone to approve of clientelist practices;
H3: Consumers of public media in Poland are more prone to approve of clientelist practices;
H4: People involved in non-profit activity for their environment (on the local level or in communities they belong to) are less prone to approve of clientelist practices.
The team wants to verify the hypotheses by a survey on a representative group of students aged 18-19 in Lubuskie and Podkarpackie voivodeships. Those voivodeships were chosen due to differences in electoral preferences in those regions – Podkarpacie has the highest share of supporters of Law and Justice (PiS), while Lubuskie is one of the regions where representatives of the Civic Platform (PO) gain relatively higher support than in the case of voivodeships in eastern Poland.
The team members are: dr hab. Piotr Sula – team leader, dr Kamil Błaszczyński, dr Michał Kuś (Institute of Political Science) and dr Grzegorz Kozdraś (Institute of Sociology). The theme covered by the research projects exceeds theoretical and methodological framework of individual scientific disciplines, and this is why the team includes representatives of political science and administration, sociology and social communication and media science.
