Socio-demographic and psychological determinants of political (in)tolerance: Hungary at the dawn of the 21st century

Abstract

The paper presents a socio-psychological causal model of political intolerance in Hungary, on the basis of a national random sample survey data (N=1002). The research improves on the existing models in two directions: by constructing a more complete model through inclusion of a wider set of potentially relevant variables, and by using more reliable operationalisation of the examined concepts. The results indicate that political tolerance in Hungary, as defined by the 'content free' method, can only weakly be explained by an extensive set of socio-demographic, psychological and political variables. Contrary to the commonly reported results, socio-economic status variables displayed a rather complex and often direct pattern of influence on political tolerance, while psychological variables proved to be relatively weak predictors. In Hungary, psychological factors have a relatively strong role in determining the choice of target groups and socio-demographic variables have a stronger role in determining the degree of intolerance. In general, the findings suggest that intolerance of different groups is not uniformly related to social and psychological explanatory variables.