Monitoring Social Capital in Hungary: A Short Review of Recent Research
Author: Andrew Cartwright Endre Sik Sara Svensson
Publisher: Center for Policy Studies at the Central European University, Budapest, Hungary
Nádor utca 9
H-1051 Budapest
Hungary
Tel: +36 1 327 3118
Fax: +36 1 235 6170
http://cps.ceu.hu
Since 1990, the public opinion agency Szonda Ispos has been asking people how they would rate various state and political institutions. Their latest ‘Prestige of Institutions’ report is from October 2006. It found that there were increasing levels of trust in the police, local government, central ministries, the military and the Church. Trust in politicians and political parties was low, something that was also found in a survey by the social research institute TARKI and the Community Development Department. Low levels of trust in national politics is a consistent theme.
We would argue that the information on trust in institutions should be disaggregated so as not to restate the simple stereotypical view that Hungarians (and other countries in the former socialist block) have little trust in their political institutions. The recent European Social Reality report produced by Eurobarometer is a good illustration of this problem with aggregation.The section on Trust in Institutions sought opinions on trust in national governments, parliaments, political parties and finally, local authorities. They revealed an EU-wide scepticism towards central political institutions, the average being that only 20% expressed trust in political parties. Far higher levels of trust were found in local institutions with the average being 49%. The authors concluded that it was possible to say that ‘the more distant the political entity, the less likely respondents are to trust it.’
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