Zkoumání politického vkusu: post-moderna v metodě?

Abstract

The article summarizes (he results of empirical research on the image of politicians and political parties before the elections in 1992 (Czech Lands, N=760). It draws on experience from France (P. Bourdieu. La Distinction. 1979|, but it brings some new views. It combines attribution (of the sets of associations and symbols) with the posing of open-ended, projective questions (alocation of political parties as restaurants, eventually characterized by offering food or drinks). The technique of division of the circle to analyze voters’ preferences or politicians is also used. Applying sets of pre-selected associations, their number as well as their structure are changed (when comparing pilot-study results and main research). It also allows a comparison between politician’s images (leaders of 6 political parties) and the profiles of their parties. At the same time, the symbolism of colors is used, as applied to sets of plants, cars, games, relatives, weather, famous actresses, tools and so on. The author’s aim has been, firstly, to enlarge the heuristic experiment being aware of the open character of many theoretical questions. He considers the relation between validity and creativity, and the problem of the pre-construction of reality. The chosen methodology resembles postmodern efforts, and also, underlines interpretative procedure and explorative approach. Comparison of the election results allows the use of interpretation post factum, and even explanation of some surpising facts. The article shows the less clear definition of the image of some parties (Christian democratic, Social democratic, Civic movement), as well as some differences between a politician’s imagine and that of party (J. Dienstbier and Civic Movement). It indicates the difficulties which are met by parties with the same orientation (Civic Democratic Party, Civic Democratic Alience) on the right of the Spectrum: the images overlap and differ, only in some aspects. The research has shown that it is possible to apply projective techniques which react to social differentiation and can express social distance in a relatively exact way. Moreoever, it has brought impulses to considerations of the efforts of some voters to preserve the political spectrum in balanced form while it confirmed the predominance of rather right orientation of voters in the Czech Republic.