Economic liberalism in societies of Serbia and Croatia during the period of post-socialist transformation: A comparative empirical analysis

Abstract

The processes of post-socialist transformation have been marked by systemic, structural, normative, institutional and value-ideological changes. Changes in dominant value orientations are of undoubtful research importance since they may point out to the patterns of legitimation of the system, but also to desirable forms of collective and individual actions. The main objective of this paper is to analyse available empirical data for Serbia and Croatia in order to determine whether changes in the level of adherence to the value orientation of economic liberalism occurred during the process of post-socialist transformation. The analysis is based on a double comparison - temporal, aiming to explore changes in the level of adherence to economic liberalism over time (as the starting point of the analysis data from 1989 were taken, while the endpoint represented data from 2003), and lateral, examining differences in the level of acceptance of economic liberalism in Serbian and Croatian societies. The specific objective of this study was to determine whether the level of acceptance of economic liberalism is related to class position.